eBay

ricarmic · ‎12-03-2022

Generally for me in my (stamps) world black friday is a non-event, usually slower than normal sales.

So this year I thought I'd try an experiment because I've never done anything special around BF.

For my experiment I:

-put the oldest 500 items on sale (15% off) for a week, starting on Thursday

-on Friday I put them and another 1000ish items on higher promoted rate than before, generally they would be at or above the recommended rate. Intent here was to increase likelihood folks saw the on sale items above at least my other promoted items (ALL of my items are promoted)

The results of the experiment:

Bad:

Normal sales poor sales volume as normal.

Not a single on sale item sold.

Generally poor level of promoted listings sold, few if any of the special promoted ones sold

Interesting:

The promoted listings stats all increased EXCEPT sales.

I left the elevated promoted rates on after the sale ended and starting a couple days ago the "old stuff" with the elevated promoted rates has been selling relatively briskly.

What does it mean?

I've always expected collectibles really aren't going to draw attention during BF, folks are buying appliances, electronics etc. (This seems to bear true, sales of stuff have been pretty strong since Thursdayish, I saw Femme mentioned similar results for her as well).

Sales don't seem to make any difference, although I may have to run an experiment when things aren't slow to see what happens, although at the moment it is "cheaper" for me to let the elevated promoted rate sell them at full price.

Of course this is all theories but I figured it wouldn't hurt to share.....

regs43 · ‎12-03-2022

I have run a few % off sales since September, and they were all BAD. I feel % off sales dont really get the visibility like they used to. Once I ended them I started to get sales again lol??? and I find offers to watchers works 100% better then a % off sale. If someone is watching the item and you dod % off sale and they dont check their watch list, they wont see you have a sale. If you dod a offer to watcher they get a notification in some fasion (does ebay email these? I never get emails about it just the bell shows notification)

ricarmic · ‎12-03-2022

It is another interesting point that my sales also increased when the "SALE" ended on Thursday.... I can't imagine it is related but it is odd!

msmaggie060 · ‎12-03-2022

Sold nothing on Black Friday but didn't expect to, my items are not gift type items. However, I sold 3 yesterday and 6 today. Maybe buyers have money left now they have finished their Christmas shopping?

flipistics · ‎12-03-2022

@msmaggie060 wrote:
Sold nothing on Black Friday but didn't expect to, my items are not gift type items. However, I sold 3 yesterday and 6 today. Maybe buyers have money left now they have finished their Christmas shopping?

After 2 horrible weeks, I've had a number of sales yesterday and today in my media store. I strongly suspect it's a bug ebay fixed more than buyer behaviour (although I did expect there to be some reduction during that time period).

ricarmic · ‎12-03-2022

I've actually had some purchasing Xmas presents (for dad or gramps) who regularly do each year in the last couple days.

I do believe that us collectible folks get the "leftovers" discretionery cash wise after the BF hoohaww is over...

I'm happy with the last couple days, hopefully the weekend is strong!

kawartha-ephemera · ‎12-03-2022

Marked-down sale items were prominently featured in my outlook inbox this past week. First up was heh kawartha don't miss our black Friday deals, followed by cyber weekend deals, next up was cyber Monday, they followed those up with cyber week deals.

Just now I finally gave in and read the most recently received one ... every single item shown and there were thousands upon thousands of them were marked down sale items. The category list was awfully short though, tech and phones, clothing, jewelry, home and garden along with everything refurbished about covered it. There was absolutely nothing collectible, vintage or used featured anywhere to be found. They didn't feature inexpensive stuff either, about the only item I could find under $20 was boxer briefs! The majority though were $100 and up.

The wide availability of refurbished kitchen appliances surprised me ie: mixers, juicers, coffee makers etc. I wonder what exactly could be done to refurbish that sort of product and who would spend a hundred or two for them???

reallynicestamps · ‎12-04-2022

Refurbished boxer briefs? Umm.

kawartha-ephemera · ‎12-04-2022

Hopefully those were top of the line new Hanes or Stanfields ... didn't examine them up close though!

needsmorerobots · ‎12-05-2022

I was thinking of doing a Black Friday promotion this year (for the first time) but skipped instead.

Perhaps you're fighting an uphill battle for a BF promo against all the individually promoted items from stamps and other categories?

ricarmic · ‎12-05-2022

Yep I'm 90% sure folks %% are going to "required" things like appliances, electronics etc and use collectiles (stamps) folks get whatever discretionary $$$ are left afterward.

This was pretty pronounced for me, across ALL sites I sell on things were pretty dead until the Thursday after, when things picked up significantly and have been solid since.

I didn't hold out big hopes for the sale, my past experiments had poor if any impact on sales.

I know it sounds weird but I had much better results from putting stupid high promoted rates (like 10% or more) on the stuff INSTEAD of putting in on sale for 10% or more off. It is a sad result for the buyer, a great result for eBay.