Feb sales down, 70% down from last month.

[musicyouneed]

The last week has been very slow.  I had a great January and beginning of Feb, but since Feb 9 sales have dropped off a cliff.   How are your sales doing this month?  Is it only me? 

[pjcdn2005]

Fecruary has been better than January for me this year but traditionally it’s the other way around.

[momcqueen]

Mine are down almost 50 per cent from last month as well as this time last year. I'm not pleased about this but neither am I stimulating sales with new inventory so I'm not in much of a position to complain about it.

[ichopshop]

In traditional retail, February is usually your slowest month for sales with January usually being the 3rd best.  This isn't traditional retail, but it's not that different either.

Ian

[marnotom!]

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@musicyouneed wrote:

The last week has been very slow.  I had a great January and beginning of Feb, but since Feb 9 sales have dropped off a cliff.   How are your sales doing this month?  Is it only me? 

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How are your February 2019 sales in comparison to your February 2018 sales?  Did your sales last February drop in comparison to your January sales from last year, too?

As noted earlier, February tends to be the slowest month of the year for sales.  People are dealing with a reality check in the form of bills from Christmas, and there really isn't a lot of reason to purchase items that aren't essentials such as food.

I think you just need to ride it out.

[triber]

Mine are way down, not sure of percentages yet, but very few sales.

[musicyouneed]

Last Feb 18, I sold 67 CD's. This year so far in Feb, I have sold 20, over half way through the month, most occurred before the 9th.  At this rate, I will be lucky to sell 35.  

I was just wondering if other sellers noticed a dip in sales or if it just was CD's that was slow.  I know CD's are dying and it is only the oldies (buyers) like me that buys them.  

[retroman_studios]

Yeah my sales are down.

I normally can do at least 5-6 shipments twice a week, but this week it's been 2. So that's quite a drop.

[darak10]

I was steaming along until Tuesday march 19 when sales dropped 35% for Wednesday Thursday then hovering barely above zero Friday and 0 so far today. Interestingly the few sales i made tues wed thurs were higher end items that are extremely hard to find with very few others being available for sale anywhere else online. It makes even less sense when I look at my Feb sales listing impressions (down 40%) yet my sales were up 12% month to month. This month my listing impressions are back to normal but my sales have dropped right off a cliff. I read some amazon eu forums and their sales drop off sounds more pronounced and consistent than it is here. It usually corrects but a now 5 day long consistent significant drop for me is moving outside anomaly territory. It may have to do with income taxes coming due, spring break vacations coming up so people with extra disposable income aren't around to buy, or recent Canadian economic forecasts which are horrible (record high consumer debt) with a recession being forecast. I'm not inclined to believe this is ebays fault in any way, it's likely demographic in some way very few understand. Come to think of it my customer base skews towards male 25 - 55 so the spring break vacation theory is starting to make sense. Just like the late August drop off when said folks are out buying school supplies or paying for their kids tuition for school. Guess I'll just have to ride it out. The joys of running an online business!

[2nd-time-around-jewelry]

Hard to figure out the rhyme or reason behind poor or nonexistent sales. I had a whole week without one sale. Then got 2 sales yesterday when an auction closed.  The last 2 months of last year & the first 2 months of this year were good but now I see a downward spiral again. A contributing factor may be income tax time or spring break vacations or the economy like has been suggested.

[darak10]

I'm not noticing a death in cd sales, I think of certain types of music yes but my metal sales are strong 18 - 50, Prog (25 - 65) is a bit weak but almost always higher end / hard to find items will sell no problem, and I'm noticing a dramatic increase in sales to women across genres. Classical ive found dont move well I think because online prices across platforms are uniformly out to lunch - i rarely got a sale until i dropped prices 50% then they started to move. I think this is where prices should be for classical stuff, not where it's at now. Consumers of this genre are also the biggest pennypinchers as they are 50 and over right. Interest in metal will never die. Punk I've found barely moves unless it's rare and gets little overall interest as fans of punk are bigger cheapskates than classical fans. Funk, R&b and soul (especially 70s stuff) have a solid interest base across age and socioeconomic status and so much of it is quite hard to find on CD that titles sell well even at inflated prices. The stuff i find that doesnt even draw flies is electronica / modern urban alternative indie rock as those fans just use spotify and arent interested in the format at all. For those titles just use them to get 20% off coupons at VV, that's all they are good for. I find the customers are there but again its about what you sell not volume. Also as Canadian sellers we do have a major competitive advantage over American and European sellers as our currency is worth 25% - 40% less than theirs, so much so that I can inflate my price to well beyond what the item sells for in Canada and still sell to the European as its a good price to them even with shipping. In Canada the strongest factor I see is the rural / urban split with a higher percentage going to small communities across Canada where they are forced to look online as theres nowhere local to buy. Higher end specialty items almost always go to major centres. NYC customers are particularly amusing, as virtually everything that is trendy of the moment goes there, it's as predictable as clockwork lol

[femmefan1946]

I don't think we should compare with the past week or month.

How do your February sales compare with February 2018? 2017?

This is my strong sales period, and has been ever since I started in 1998. This was also true of our B&M store.

By comparison, November through Christmas? Some years I just closed the store down. (And the shop was selling only gift certificates and giftable supplies.)

Boxing Day? BOOM! Sales soared.

[forester_studios]

Hi - I took a look at your items and you sell an impressive number of cds. I noticed that you sell to most countries. Do you think this generates more sales, as in do you sell to a lot of places outside North America and Europe? I've been thinking about expanding sales to more countries but wasn't sure if it's worth the potential risk as I wonder about some places postal reliability.

[femmefan1946]

I've seen the suggestion that if shipinsurance won't provide coverage for a given country, it is a Bad Idea to ship there.

Not that you necessarily have to use that company for 3rd party insurance, just that they have crunched the numbers and can't afford to cover shipping to those countries.

[forester_studios]

Hi - Yes I suppose checking shipinsurance to see risky countries would be a good idea. I noticed the seller I mentioned in my post above shipped to almost everywhere and thought it would be in interesting to see if they might add more about their shipping experiences in the thread.

[musicyouneed]

My Feb sales after this post picked up and I eventually sold 45 which I am OK with.  But March has been wonderful, sold 54 so far, several repeat buyers buying more than one, usually 3 to 8 at a time, which I take as a compliment.   Also every month I manage to sell some of my old stock too.  

I just learned a lesson in having everything digital.  I was looking for some pictures that I had taken about 10 years ago at a reunion.  In the old days, I would go to the correct photo album or envelope and find them, nowadays, that was 3 computers ago and who knows on what hard drive they are stored on and even where the hard drive is.  Sometimes having the physical thing is easier to find.  So much for having things digital.