eBay

oocypeanut · ‎10-04-2018

Hello. I need advice on how to increase traffic & sales in my store Oocypeanut's Dee-lites.:) I sell mainly uncut sewing patterns & a few miscellaneous items like cross stitch kits. I was doing all right with sales up until about 6 months ago but, since them, sales have really dropped. Any advice is appreciated & thank you.

Denise

ricarmic · ‎10-04-2018

Check out how your competitors are doing.

Do searches on similar items others are selling, both ongoing and closed. That will identify trending asking and actual prices.

You can also see how much of it is actually selling.

You can pull their successful selling strategies and apply to yours, or you can step outside the box and do it differently from the others, this will work until someone else notices you are doing well and copies you, then you have to repeat the process again...

reallynicestamps · ‎10-04-2018

I sell patterns on another ID.

If you have a scanner, you will get much better pictures of your items than the skewed ones taken by a camera. I also find scans faster to upload.

Think about Free Shipping.

DON'T PANIC!

Free Shipping just means including the price of shipping in the asking price.

Which is cheaper?

A $3.99 pattern with $5.15 shipping?

Or a $9.14 pattern with Free Shipping? (Actually a $9.99 +Free Shipping would do even better.)

Buyers hate paying shipping. They especially hate shipping that is higher than the selling price.

Smoke and mirrors.

Since your patterns can travel by LetterPost, why not list on dotCOM in US dollars?

We have to use US dollars there which everyone in the world understands, and Americans understand nothing else.

Which is cheaper $9.99Cdn or $9.99USD? -- Did you have to think about that for a nano-second?

We also have to use Flat Rate Shipping -- but LetterPost is Flat Rate anyway.

FWIW- on dotCOM I use Free Shipping for US customers and $0.00 Flat Rate for Canadians. (I charge more for overseas customers.)

Are you using GTC or relisting every 30 days? Are you using ReList or Sell Similar? Some claim that SS gives a tiny boost in Search because it looks like a new listing to the Cassini algorithm.

reallynicestamps · ‎10-04-2018

You do know you can add International Shipping more than once right?

And you can set limits on which countries.

Basically you just click on Add Other Services once you have set up your US shipping.

The Destination Blocks are lower down, near your location. You can block entire continents!

musicyouneed · ‎10-04-2018

Hi Denise, I took a look at your listings and your prices are really good so is the shipping amount you are charging. I sell a few patterns under this name and several more under another user name, although that is not my forte.

From my experience on CD sales, US buyers if they have a choice of buying of buying US $ or Canadian $, they will choose the US $. Canadians buy international but somehow US buyers will only buy my listings on .com and it is so obvious. Try listing a few on .com and see if that helps.

You can also take some more pictures of the front, back, what's inside etc. For an idea, go to my store and click under patterns, I think I have 3 listed under musicyouneed. It might give you a better idea of what I mean.

Take some better pictures, without background. Someone suggested to use a scanner however I find that takes too long for me. I just use a camera and then crop the picture correctly.

I would also use GTC listings, with a refresh every so often. I find that new listings are not what they are cracked up to be.

Your patterns might be a little too cheap, I would raise the price by $1.00 and then every few weeks have a 10% sale.

I'll probably think of something else later.

musicyouneed · ‎10-05-2018

This is further to my post regarding my experience with US buyers buying from .com in US$.

I just did a search of Simplicity Sewing Pattern Uncut Womens. I came up with 3,702 SOLD and of those 3,598 were listed on .com. So only 104 were sold on something other than .com. Get my drift.

As I just sold one, listed on .com to a US buyer. I did a search of Dire Straits CD's, there are 635 listings of those 434 are located in the US. There were 350 Dire Straits CD sold and the breakdown is (I counted them) 19 were sold from UK, British Pounds, 4 were sold in Australian $ and 15 listings were in Canadian $, so that means 312 of the 350 were sold in US $ on .com.

reallynicestamps · ‎10-05-2018

Yep, if it's flat and light, use Flat Rate (or Free /shipping included) pricing and sell on dotCOM.

You will get the payment in loonies on your PP account. They do charge a fee, of course.

pjcdn2005 · ‎10-08-2018

@reallynicestamps wrote:
Yep, if it's flat and light, use Flat Rate (or Free /shipping included) pricing and sell on dotCOM.

You will get the payment in loonies on your PP account. They do charge a fee, of course.

If a seller often buys items from the US it may be better for them to set up their PayPal ‘wallet’ to accept both Canadian and US dollars . Then if they list on.com they will paid in US$, not loonies so if they make a purchase in $US, they can pay in that currency without paying an exchange rate. Of course if that money is transferred to their Canadian bank account, a currency conversion fee will be charged then.

reallynicestamps · ‎10-08-2018

If enough sales are being done in US dollars, it may be worthwhile to set up an American bank account.

Both the Royal Bank and TDCanadaTrust own/run American banks.

Note that this is NOT the same thing as a bank account in US dollars. This is a US-based and US licensed bank.

The names are RBCBank and TDNorth. There may be advertisements in local branches around now, since they do a lot of business with snowbirds.

There are drawbacks, US taxes and high service charges, but it can be worthwhile if your USD business income is over $250,000 annually, and possibly if it is less.

oocypeanut · ‎10-12-2018

Thank you for your reply. 🙂 So if I were to sell on .com, would I have to close my store on .ca & start over on .com? Sorry if this sounds stupid but I have always sold on .com.

ricarmic · ‎10-12-2018

You can list items on either site from your .CA store.

My store is actually registered on .COM and I have both .COM and .CA items for sale.

You just have to make sure (or remember if you're me!!) which site you are on when you are listing new items to make sure you're listing on the correct one.

You can't move an item between sites. You have to be on .CA to list an item there and on .COM to list an item there, but it matters not where your store is located.

musicyouneed · ‎10-12-2018

My store is on .ca and I list on both .ca and .com.

kawartha-ephemera · ‎10-12-2018

@oocypeanut wrote:
Thank you for your reply. 🙂 So if I were to sell on .com, would I have to close my store on .ca & start over on .com? Sorry if this sounds stupid but I have always sold on .com.

If for example you're paying for a Basic Sore subscription you are purchasing each month 250 so called "free" listings on .ca as well as 250 "free" listings on .com = 500 listings total.

In fact any experienced user in good standing can also list on other ebay sites around the world, many of them offer free listings each month, some like ebay.com.uk offrer 20 free each month, last I checked ebay.fr offered something like 800 free listings monthly, The point is the free listings allotment varies greatly from country to country.

All a user needs to do is make a simple edit to their Canadian or U.S. Seller Hub url to activate additional Seller Hubs on ebay sites around the world.

For instance the ebay.ca Hub address is "https://www.ebay.ca/sh/ovw". In oder to activate my ebay.com.uk Seller Hub all that I need to do is replace "ebay.ca" found in the url with "ebay.com.uk" like this, "https://www.ebay.com.uk/sh/ovw". Pop the edited address in any browser to be invited to activate the ebay.com.uk Seller Hub, all that is required is that the user be signed in to their ebay seller account.

Once foreign Seller Hubs are activated list as normal keeping in mind that ebay sites around the world do not all have identical rules and regs as ebay.ca or ebay.com. It would be a good idea to add some common currencies to your PayPal currency list, such as the British Pound and the Euro if listing on the continent.

Point being that it is actually quite simple to make use of free listings around the world to increase sales, sewing patterns would be well suited to ship overseas and also a low risk category for fraud, returns etc. The biggest hurdle would be language translation whenever a problem does occur.

kawartha-ephemera · ‎10-12-2018

@oocypeanut wrote:
Thank you for your reply. 🙂 So if I were to sell on .com, would I have to close my store on .ca & start over on .com? Sorry if this sounds stupid but I have always sold on .com.

No, your ebay.ca store subscription allows you to list an identical number of listing on both ebay.ca in CDN and ebay.com in USD. You even have the ability to setup a store on ebay.com if desired.

Your ebay.ca store subscription carries no store listing benefits outside of Canada and the U.S. On ebay International sites free listing allottments can be used but there are no store benefits associated with listing there. It's strictly use up whatever free listings are given and pay for listings above and beyond the free threshold.

oocypeanut · ‎10-14-2018

Forgive me for sounding like such an idiot. I have always sold on .ca ( I did say .com earlier but that's wrong). A bunch of my listings need to be relisted. Should I just open up a store on .com & list them there or should I list on .com & relist on .ca? Sorry but I am really confused.

musicyouneed · ‎10-14-2018

My store is on .ca. I list on .ca and I list on .com. You cannot relist your .ca items on .com, you can however, make a new listing of the same item on .com. Just do copy and past. You will not be able to have the item listed on both sites though.

Don't change your store, you don't need to. Just list an item on .com, remember to adjust your shipping for US $ and your prices. I also would raise my prices, you are selling too cheap. I just sold 2 patterns on another ID for 5.99 US and 7.99 US plus shipping.

Try listing 15 items on .com and see how you do.

sow-gin · ‎05-29-2019

Hello, I operate an ebay store on ebay.ca and always list on .ca and

I wanted to list an auction item on .com but immediately noticed that the

template is different in certain fields. I am very confused about the

shipping section where it only has USPS, FedEx and UPS. I always

use Canada Post but there is no selection for that service, what

shipping service would I have to select. Sorry for all the questions.

ricarmic · ‎05-29-2019

If you're going to list on .COM you have to use flat rate shipping.
(suggest using standard shipping outside the us)

This sounds scary and many seem not to like it, but I ship stuff up to bankers boxes using flat rate shipping and have been doing this for 20 years now.......

reallynicestamps · ‎05-29-2019

Scroll down a bit in the Shipping Services and you will see "Shipping from an international location" or something similar.

You should also notice that Domestic Shipping on dotCOM means to the USA.

There is a separate section for Canada, under International -> Choose Destinations.

(The names are not quite right, but they are obvious once you look.)

You can ship to USA and Canada and still Block the rest of the world, however if you are comfortable shipping overseas, use -> Choose Custom Location again and it will allow you to charge a different amount for that than you are for Canadian shipping.

I hope you already have this:

https://www.canadapost.ca/cpotools/apps/far/business/findARate?execution=e1s1

It will help you work out the best Flat Rate to charge.