eBay

rose-dee · ‎04-16-2018

As an experiment (and also to take advantage of a recent FVF promo), I recently listed an item (as a new listing) on eBay.ca that had previously been listed (as a new item) on eBay.com for a month. This is an item that normally, i.e. prior to 2017, would have been snapped up within a few days to a couple of weeks at most. The .ca listing is precisely the same as the earlier .com listing, except that the price is now in $CDN and actually works out to a few dollars lower than the price was in $USD on .com.

What's interesting to me is that the initial listing on .com had over 300 views during the first week and accumulated 6 watchers during that time. The same listing on .ca has had fewer than 50 views in two weeks, and no watchers so far. I'm going to let the .ca listing run for a month to compare at the end of that time, but so far it doesn't look good.

My buyers are over 90% U.S., and I've always listed all important items on .com in $USD. I had toyed with the idea of moving back to eBay.ca permanently, but this experience has put the kibosh on that idea. If I can't get comparable attention with this particular item, nothing else will do any better.

I'd be interested in knowing if anyone else has had a similar experience. I can think of no reasonable explanation for it.

ricarmic · ‎04-16-2018

My recent experience is backwards to yours, but might also be instructive.

After nearly 20 years of being on .COM only, this year for a variety of reasons I began listing on .CA as well (store is on .COM)

One of the reasons was that some of my product line (Canadian stamps etc) is more likely to be of interest to Canadians.

We all know the .CA vs .COM frustrations, I REALLY know about what all the rest of you have been complaining about for a long time now.

My observations have been that the .CA stuff is getting as many if not more views than it would on .COM, and it seems to have a better sell through rate. I have not observed what I think to be a reduction in the number of USA folks buying the same material. When I do my searches to see how the .CA stuff is coming up on .COM it comes up just as high as before.

So I think the moral of the story is that it is best to sell it on the site where one believes the most buyers to reside, at least in the stamp category that appears to be the case....

lotzofuniquegoodies · ‎04-16-2018

I'm not sure it's as cut and dried as this but my experience was as soon as I started listing in Canadian funds my business did a nosedive from 75% USA/20% Can/5% Intl to 70% Can/15% Intl & 10 % USA. Is it site visibility or is it something else? Who knows? Possibly only the people at eBay know for sure!! I know I have no idea what caused this to happen!!!

-CM

lotzofuniquegoodies · ‎04-16-2018

Sorry, that should have read currently 75% Can/15 % Intl/ 10 % USA. Abacus was still warming up when I hit send.

-CM

ricarmic · ‎04-16-2018

@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:
I'm not sure it's as cut and dried as this but my experience was as soon as I started listing in Canadian funds my business did a nosedive from 75% USA/20% Can/5% Intl to 70% Can/15% Intl & 10 % USA. Is it site visibility or is it something else? Who knows? Possibly only the people at eBay know for sure!! I know I have no idea what caused this to happen!!!

-CM

I believe the comparison is different though. You're selling a wide range of different categories and the statistics above cover them all.

I suspect that if you listed your Canadian stamps on .CA in Canadian$ they would probably have similar if not better experience than before.

Everything else you have up running I'm no expert in in terms of "where the customers are"....

In my stamp world, it seems as though Canadian stamps which normally tend to sell to Canadians are best to list on .CA, all the other stamps I list from other countries I continue to list on .COM

lotzofuniquegoodies · ‎04-16-2018

That would be definitely a valid explanation for stamps. I'm just trying to rationalize my drop in business. Fortunately for me my US business is larger dollar value from/with repeat customers. Business and Electronics are currently my main sellers. Best price wins. Vintage books used to sell no problem. Now even priced competitively they have become almost impossible to sell. The big discriminating factor still is for us as Canadian as postage options and I try to offer an assortment of postage options. Unable and not viable to offer free postage and if I increase postage, sales totally drop off. Sales have become entirely random and the last 2 months have been terrible compared to very constant totals. Have to believe every change made causes an opposite reaction on dot ca and in the end that is entirely visibility.

-CM

ricarmic · ‎04-16-2018

Based on the statistics you had of 75% to the USA, I would say that you would be better to list on .COM in US$ for most of your stuff as folks in the USA are the primary customers..... but that is only a guess, from the statistics....

lotzofuniquegoodies · ‎04-16-2018

That would work if they offered Canadapost as a shipping option on dot com. Unfortunately flat rate shipping is too complex to use when rates vary by distance and most of my items are heavier. And it appears I would need to open a new store or there would be added fees for listings. Would that be 3 strikes against?

-CM

silverpinups · ‎04-16-2018

What's interesting to me is that the initial listing on .com had over 300 views during the first week and accumulated 6 watchers during that time. The same listing on .ca has had fewer than 50 views in two weeks, and no watchers so far. I'm going to let the .ca listing run for a month to compare at the end of that time, but so far it doesn't look good.

The eBay.ca listing isn't fairing as well as the eBay.com listing because it is a relist.

You initially listed the item on eBay.com and it was a "new listing" and received lots of interest and views but didn't sell.

You then relisted the item on eBay.ca and now the listing has less views and no watchers because people who were interested in it already viewed it previously on eBay.com.

A relist will never bring the same amount of interest and views as a newly listed item.

That's why I like GTC, you keep that momentum going but a relist from my experience is usually a death sentence.

Now listing on eBay.ca may effect the interest level for Americans then if the item was listed on eBay.com but that doesn't compare to a relisted item from the previous month.

A better experiment would be to list a popular item on eBay.ca first and then relist on eBay.com and compare stats....

ricarmic · ‎04-16-2018

@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:
That would work if they offered Canadapost as a shipping option on dot com. Unfortunately flat rate shipping is too complex to use when rates vary by distance and most of my items are heavier. And it appears I would need to open a new store or there would be added fees for listings. Would that be 3 strikes against?

-CM

My situation is backwards to yours because my store is on .COM I don't have any extra fees for listing on either site, but perhaps things are different if you're listing .COMs from a .CA store.

Regarding boxes, I ship stuff right up to bankers boxes (yes even us stamp guys ship big boxes of stuff!) both with "free" (aka included) or added shipping. I generally pick the 2nd furthest rate code from my own as the distance. Because I'm a stamp guy and put stamps on my boxes, I have all the rate sheets from the CP website printed off so once I know the weight/dimensions, I can quickly identify the cost. This works for me because the larger boxes tend to have larger value, "free shipping" won't work for items where the shipping is an inordinate amount of the price (these are the items where I charge shipping on the item using my method described above).

rose-dee · ‎04-17-2018

@silverpinups wrote:

The eBay.ca listing isn't fairing as well as the eBay.com listing because it is a relist.
You initially listed the item on eBay.com and it was a "new listing" and received lots of interest and views but didn't sell.
You then relisted the item on eBay.ca and now the listing has less views and no watchers because people who were interested in it already viewed it previously on eBay.com.
A relist will never bring the same amount of interest and views as a newly listed item.

I don't know that this is necessarily always the case, i.e. that a listing isn't faring as well the second time due to over-exposure. Another in-demand item, which I initially listed for 30 days on .com, actually got better views and watchers the 2nd and 3rd time around on .com (same item, same price, same duration). This has been my experience with such items on .com in the past, i.e. using 30 day listings to avoid having them become stale, and it's been effective for me. Which is precisely why I was so surprised at the precipitous drop in views and watchers on my "experimental" listing on .ca.

My experiment was not exactly a relist in the sense you're referring to, as I'd left a few days between the .com listing ending and preparing an entirely new listing to upload from Auctiva for .ca. It's possible that buyers who had viewed the initial listing on .com weren't interested in looking at it or following it the second time around, but that hasn't been my own experience over several years of listing these sorts of higher-demand items on .com. Normally the renewed listing not only picks up fresh interest, but seems to do better than the first time around.

I do have my suspicions about the display of a "foreign-looking" listing to my mostly U.S. buyers being a turn-off. Perhaps they see the $CDN equivalency (which is of course a higher number), and/or the bizarre price point it creates in $USD, and/or that it's obviously not an American listing, and just decide not to bother even looking.

Unlike 'ricarmic's' items, mine don't particularly appeal to Canadians, so there's no great advantage there either, nor do I have the international collector appeal that stamp people rely on. This is the last time I try listing a higher-priced, normally very desirable item on .ca. In fact, I'm going to end it soon and start it over again on .com.

pjcdn2005 · ‎04-18-2018

@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:
That would work if they offered Canadapost as a shipping option on dot com. Unfortunately flat rate shipping is too complex to use when rates vary by distance and most of my items are heavier. And it appears I would need to open a new store or there would be added fees for listings. Would that be 3 strikes against?

-CM

Why would you need to open a new store? With a basic .ca store you get 250 fixed price listings on each site.