Sales have hit bottom

[musicyouneed]

I sell CD's and yes I know that they are a dying breed, however, they are still selling, I can see by my competition.  Pre 2020, I was doing OK, a couple of sales a day, during covid, I was selling 5 to 8 CD's a day but now it for the past 2 months it is down to a trickle.  I must be doing something wrong.

[marnotom!]

Do you list on other sites in addition to eBay? Apologies if this has been discussed before in relation to your sales.

[ericsells75]

Not trying to sneak into your market but in general what kind of CD’s are still selling? I have about 500 or so and a 100 disc changer/player that finally died. Was thinking about replacing or selling the cds so just curious

[brettjet38]

Unfortunately, we are heading into a global recession and to purchase a CD requires "Disposable Income" how many people actually have any of that nowadays, how many people use a credit card to purchase food?!

You can basically listen to any music for free online.

And, this applies to many different kinds of things and categories also...

[femmefan1946]

There are many recordings that are not streamed.  Or the streamer drops the recording because it is just taking up band width. And with a CD you don't have to go online to hear your tunes.

@musicyouneed 

Are you back to 2019 sales now that pandemic buying is over?

Are you selling on both dotCOM and dotCA, because US site sales don't show on your dotCA selling page and vice versa.? I find this confusing.

[recped]

I'm not looking at your listings so this comment might not be accurate.......

In similar situations it's often that you a have run out of desirable cd's and all that is left is the "junk" few have any interest in.

This id I'm posting with is a repository for leftovers, I'm lucky to get one sale per month. On my main id (same number of listings) it's more like 100+ per month.

Of course if you are always listings new stuff of reasonable quality then maybe this is NOT your issue.

In your Traffic Report I see one big issue and that is your conversion rate....it's pitiful! Your click-thru is actually very slightly higher than mine but my conversion rate is more than 10 times yours.

[musicyouneed]

Yes, on Bonanza.

[musicyouneed]

I sell all types of CD's, everything from classical to rock, to new age.  I bought out 2 CD stores when they closed.  

[musicyouneed]

No not back to 2019 sales.  2019 was a good year, 2020 and 2021 were a little better but 2022, at least the last 3 months have been terrible. 

[musicyouneed]

What is the conversion rate?  How is it determined?  How to get a better conversion rate? 

For Canada, the shipping is brutal unless it is for just one CD, maybe 2.  To the US, I send media mail so that is so much better for multiple quanities.

On my other ID, I sell CD's that are run of the mill.  I am thinking of lumping them together, does any one know if this works or how? 

[dinomitesales]

Are you promoting?

You could also consider cross-listing to Amazon and Discogs.

[recped]

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@musicyouneed wrote:

What is the conversion rate?  How is it determined?  How to get a better conversion rate? 

Conversion rate is the percentage of page views that result in  a sale.

A low conversion rate means that people who view your listings pages find something that discourages them from buying. It could be the description, could be the condition , could be the shipping time or could be other reasons. My conversion rate ranges from 5.9 - 7.5% most of the time, rarely lower,  occasionally higher. Conversion rate is the key metric for any merchant, a low rate indicates that buyers are interested enough to view the listing page but they rarely click the buy button.

"I bought out 2 CD stores when they closed"

That's what I thought by looking at your listings in the past and confirms what I was thinking before, the good titles have sold and now only the less interesting stuff is left.

Another thing I noticed is that your impressions are quite low given the number of listings you have, you have over 2000 listings with and 70,000 impressions, I have twice the impressions (no PL) from less than 200 listings. this indicates people are not searching for your titles and/or they are searching but there is a ton of competition.

How are your Impressions By Placement numbers? about 3/4 of my impressions are non-search which means people see them when eBay places them in non-search locations, mine probably appear there more often because of my high conversion rate which eBay sees as more worthwhile to include on other sellers listings pages and other locations, you have a low conversion rate which tells eBay they are wasting space by placing them in non-search locations.

[musicyouneed]

Thanks everyone for your responses. 

I am only promoting when there are lots of the particular CD listed.  If there are only a few listed then no. 

In 2016, I did list on Amazon and  I also listed on Discogs and didn't have much luck as it takes a while to build up a following.  

While I did buy out a couple of CD stores, 70% of what I sell, are not common CD's, so unless a buyer knows what they are looking for, buyers would probably will miss it as they would say I have never heard of them.  The common CD's I sell and have sold on Facebook marketplace.  

[ricarmic]

In my (stamp) world, I am definitely back to "pre covid" sales volumes in terms of the physical number of sales. The difference now is that the average selling price is much lower than the pre covid days, much of the lowest price material is what is selling.

This I attribute, as others in other threads have pointed out, to the inflationery pressures, stock market instability, international conflicts etc. People don't have the discretionery $$ they had before, and if they do happen to have it they are more likely to be worried about spending it. I am definitely operating in the batten down the hatches mode.

Things I do when sales are slow, I compare myself to my "watchees" (aka competitors) to see if they are selling better than me (ie I'm trying to see if it is me or the market).

If I ascertain that it is a market situation then I just list more stuff with all the new spare time I have from not having to ship stuff. I easily have 1,000 lots that are all ready to be pictured and listed and much more that needs to be processed so I shouldn't be bored.

If I think it is "me" which most of us seem to like to do, then I really evaluate what my "watchees" are doing. What is making their stuff come up/sell better than mine? Do they have a better sell rate, cheaper shipping, better pictures, etc. One can check if they are using promoted listings more/better than me by searching the same item they and I have etc. The evaluation might turn out some ideas that might work for me.

After the above, I experiment with stuff that is newly available like promoted listings, or stuff that I used in the past and stopped using for whatever reason.

So far, my evaluations have identified IMO that the problem isn't me so I've stuck to my current "bag of tricks" and have been listing as much as I can. I believe this is working based on number of sales volume being consistent with pre-covid days.

As a note, my conversion rates are more like yours, which doesn't surprise me based on the type/style of stuff I sell. I did find the consistentcy of the difference between sites between us very interesting.

.COM  yours 0.6  mine 1.2

.CA yours 1.9 mine 2.2

Both our conversion rates on .CA are much better than .COM. My guess is that this is US folks bailing when they see it is in Canada, however I have seen an increase in US sales since our dollar has dropped, making things look cheaper to them all the sudden.

I also do not put a huge amount of faith in the numbers. Last week my conversion rate suddenly dropped to 0.02 or something horrific. A couple days later it jumped back up to normal. This week one of my auctions has one watcher and ZERO views for days now, so the viewing counts are suspect as well.

I'm also not sure that at least in the one of a kind collectibles world the conversion rate is as important as something selling consistent items like shoes, or phones etc when people have lots of consistent competition. That for certain isn't the case for me at least, and the "lots" kind of stuff I sell I would expect to have a low conversion rate for that.

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

Enable best offers on your listings is the first thing. 

You will get a lot of offers that are low balls, or you can't do. Don't reject these, just counter with a very small discount. Let's say you get $5 on a $15 item, just take 25 cents off. Either the person actually wants the item, and they will counter back. Or they will continue to send you low ball offers, WHICH IS GOOD, because it will boost the activity in your listings and eBay will give you better 'Best Match' rankings. Even know it's a hassle, someone lowballing you 5 times with counters is actually helping you promote your items. 

Second, run the steepest possible sale you can. You have 2000 listings, and by your own admission nothing is selling. In that scenario, whatever you paid for the inventory is a sunk cost. Unless this is a situation where this is more hobby, and you enjoy holding on to the inventory as your own collection while it is listed, there is no reason not to liquidate. Because what you paid for a CD is a sunk cost, anything above your input costs that come after a sale (fees, shipping, supplies, etc) is solid cash flow, even if you lose money on what you originally paid for the CD.

I am going to assume you have paid $2 per CD or less, most of your cheaper items are about $15. I would consider running a sale of 20 percent, and then using the send off to buyer feature to send out an additional percentage off. Your goal right now should just be to get inventory moving and build momentum. Even if you're clearing only a few bucks in positive cash flow per transaction (if we consider the initial $2 or whatever you paid for the CDs a sunk cost), if you can get back to 8-10 per day, that's a nice positive cash flow. The sales will also improve your spot in the best match rankings, and things will snowball a little bit. 

You could also consider looking into cross posting your inventory to a site like Discogs, which is specifically for music, and tends to attract a crowd looking for very niche releases that otherwise won't sell on eBay. 

[femmefan1946]

stock market instability,

While philatelists tend to be in the age/wealth demographic that owns stocks (as opposed to mutual funds or stock-based pensions) I'm not sure that most consumers follow the stock market much at all. Of course, I consider the stock market to be a fancy casino which has very little to do with the actual economy, as opposed to companies which base their business strategy on making goods they can turn into money.

BTW- we OAPs just got a pension increase - and our quarterly tax rebate cheque.

I also do not put a huge amount of faith in the numbers. ...the viewing counts are suspect as well.

I tend to agree. They also seem to trail behind any actual views because there have been several reports of sales where the stats show no Views whatsoever.

Enable best offers on your listings is the first thing...You will get a lot of offers that are low balls, or you can't do. Don't reject these, just counter with a very small discount.

I agree with the suggestion to add Best Offer.  Some sellers even inflate their asking price when they add BO.

More useful is to put parameters on your acceptable/not acceptable Offers. If you list something for $15 and would accept $12 but not $10, your BO listing can be set to do that. If someone offers $8 he gets an automatic polite refusal. If someone offers $12.99 he gets an automatic acceptance (and above what you would have accepted).

Or they will continue to send you low ball offers, WHICH IS GOOD, because it will boost the activity in your listings and eBay will give you better 'Best Match' rankings.

I did not know that. Interesting.  The polite automatic refusal looks even better-  better ranking with no hassles.

Personally, I don't like discount sales. You are saying that your products were not worth what you tried to sell them at. Many sellers disagree with me on that.

There is a point where you have to add up all the money you made selling a given purchase. Say you bought 10K CDS at 50c each. Once you have sold about 350 at $15 each, every sale becomes a profit. And when they stop selling, you can decide if it's time to donate the majority of the leftovers. 

Remember,  we are paying $25 or more every month for our Store subscriptions. TANSTAAFL.

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

I have no way of proving that engagement leads to a higher best match rating, but I suspect it based on anecdotal evidence. 

There aren't a lot of repeat buyers in media unless it is a very niche genre. So people aren't going to look at his items and go oh man they are on sale, they must not be worth buying. Generally, someone will say I want x CD by Y band, search it on eBay, and click on whichever item high in the 'best match' that seems to deliver the most value (price, condition, pictures, etc). Then either buy, or not buy it. 

The reason I suggest markdown sales is that with 2000 items, it saves the seller from going through their entire inventory and manually marking things down. If their sales dropped from 200-300 a month to a couple a month, their items are too expensive for where ever the market is at now. 

If they enable best offers, run markdown sales in the 20+ percent range, send another 5-10 percent off using the send offer to buyer feature, I think they will see their sales climb drastically. The CDs they are selling for $15 shipped to Canada, in this current climate, they might have to be willing to accept 8-12 shipped for if they want them to sell.

I didn't mention this in the other post, but with media where there are sometimes 100 options, they should consider promoted listings as well. 

I would suspect if they did the above, they would see a significant rise in sales. If they do not see a rise in sales by doing the above for 30-60 days, then there is a greater problem with their inventory. 

It comes down to whether they think it's worth it to make those sales, but do it with a slim margin that might represent a pretty low return on their time. 

[musicyouneed]

I like all the ideas and appreciate them.  I feel that sales generate more sales. 

I have done sales, 10% and 15%, I used to do them a couple of times a month, but the last 3 months things have pretty much died so I stopped them last month.  I have found success when someone watches my item, I send them usually a 12% discount and have had success with that.  I would say 30% buy.  In fact, I just sent out 14% discount to 5 watchers tonight.  I will also look at adding best offer.

Here are my promotional sales over the last few months.  I do them on .com and .ca.

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

I would suggest going with a higher markdown percentage, maybe 25 percent. Let it run for a month or two and see if your sales pick up. You can exempt newly listed items from the sale as well. In my experience, there is a drastic difference between the amount of sales with lower markdown sales and higher markdown sales. 

You will likely find a sweet point where more of your lower priced items start to move at a volume comparable to before. Of course, you have to weigh that against the trade off of lower margins. 

[ricarmic]

I'm just going to add a note about my own experience regarding "sales" and promoted listings.

I used to run sales of 10%, 20% and 30% off for the old, older, oldest stuff I had running. I had mixed success.

Then I realized, hey if I left the price the same and put the promoted percentage at the same rate, I am getting the same %%% in the end and I tried running high promoted rates for the items I was putting on sale*. I'm cheap so I didn't put them as high as 30% but most were in the 10% range.

I had WAYYYY better results putting the promoted % rate at what I would have put the sale rate, and non-promoted items sold faster as well because of activity due to the promoted listings.

It might be worth a try, especially if you are considering a 20% sale, a 20% promoted rate should put you at the top I would expect!

I don't use that promoted model now as I have other things on the go in my "bag of tricks" that are so far working....

*I've notice folks with selling prices much above retail but they're using a high promoted rate I assume and they are selling above retail, so visibility can at least in some circumstances trump price.....