Christmas strategy for increasing sales. What's your advice:

[musicyouneed]

This year has been dismal.  Normally, sales in previous years have been good from Sept to January.  Sales are down 70% from last year.   Part of the issue is that I sell in a dying field (CD's) and the 2nd is that many of the sellers from the river have moved to ebay and are selling CD's dirt cheap with free shipping.  I find that ebay's algorithm is also partly to blame as many times I will have consecutive sales within minutes apart from some obscure place or province.  Recently I had 2 sales from Saskatchewan, within 2 minutes of each other and I never have sales from Saskatchewan from different buyers.  Also the same happened with Tennessee.  

I have tried a few things, selling 10%, 15% and 20% off.  I only have a sale for 4 or 5 days over a every weekend as when it was longer it didn't work for me.  Tried promoted listings with some success.  On older stock I have included best offer.  I don't really see sales increasing that much from the % sales.  I sell the same of amount of CD's sale or no sale.  This month I have sold 31 CD's; 7 were either 10% to 20% off and 5 were promoted listings, some with a % off sale and 1 was a best offer. 

I have stopped buying CD's unless they are really valuable. Hard to get motivated without any sales. 

For the next few weeks, buyers are looking for Christmas gifts and many buyers have purchased CD's in the past from me as gifts.  

Dilemma:  Should I continue to do sales as I want to catch those few buyers?  What % would you do? I already offer combined shipping.  I need some advice.  Thanks

[reallynicestamps]

Well you've identified most of the problem-- the death of interest in CDs.
I feel the same, I think of myself as selling books, but really I've stopped buying them in favour of sewing patterns.

And I'm nagging DH for his backlog of stamp lots for this ID.

I'm taken with Promoted Listings. They do (so far) seem to work for views and to some extent for sales. @ricarmic 's ongoing survey of his own experience is interesting. He is careful to say that what is working for him is not necessarily what will work for everyone.

Do those AZ sellers still ship through AZ Fulfillment? Is that a moneysaver for them? Is it available through AZCanada?

If someone isn't interested in the medium, dropping the price isn't going to help.
I keep looking at a vinyl LP that I would love to own, but I'd have to buy a record player. 

[mrdutch1001]

I agree for most part as I have been selling vinyl LP records on eBay for 16+years and 3 years ago sales fell way off...I went from selling around 100+LPs/yr to a handful per year so the last remaining 425 or so LPs I am hoping to sell are taking way too long to sell online, so I may start offering them locally again...

As to CDs, for myself I have a collection of about 200 CDs which I rarely play anymore, but I do still play vinyl and still have an excellent record player that isn't go anywhere anytime soon...

Sure there is still a market for the various forms of music media but it's a lot more difficult to sell through these days...

Interests change and as sellers we have to change with them...