Want to expand my selling and need some advice.

[musicyouneed]

I currently sell CD's under the name of musicyouneed, I also attempt to sell CD's under another ID of musictimestar and sell patterns and books under pattern-bookstar.  I am now wanting to sell other things mostly jewelry and a few other things ie clothing (I don't know what yet).  I have developed a good reputation under musicyouneed but find it is difficult to get the others off the ground.  

Would you set up another account just for jewelry, clothing and what ever?  I am also expanding to other venues and wondered if there was much success with et?  musicyouneed (name was different) was originally set up in 2002 to sell clothing, which I did very well with until 2008.  I stopped for a few years and came back selling CD's.

[reallynicestamps]

I opened a new account earlier this year to sell a new line of products and it has been sloooooow.

I believe the biggest problem has been low feedback, because although I've made a couple of dozen sales, I have only one FB as a seller.

I really don't think that names mean much to buyers, many seem to think they are buying from eBay rather than from private sellers.

I'm using the new account to learn a bit about how new sellers are treated and how much is hyperbole on the part of newbies who have not read any guidelines (But but but but.... the listing was FREE! How dare eBay charge me fees for selling!!) and have no experience with retail.

If I fold the ID, I'll just move those listings to one of my older, high feedback accounts.

What are your demographics?  I notice on this account most of my buyers are men, and on the other, which sells books and patterns, the patterns are almost exclusively selling to women.  Books swing both ways.

Which would tend to indicate that patterns and jewelry would make a logical mix.

[esclyons]

if you have room in your listing allotments, i would just add another category in your existing store, and run a trial of different items,  i agree most people search for items, not sellers and your existing feedback will go along way, as opposed to starting over. 

[kawartha-ephemera]

I agree, just add any new categories to your well established account. If over time new categories make up the majority of sales one can always just change/update their ebay username to align with what's being sold. 

Usernames might be more important for social media. If one has any thought at all that they may one day use them to direct traffic to their marketplace presence or own website I'd recommend using one of the username availability sites to check if the desired username is available. This is something I've done and not used much …  but the social media accounts are there and available if I decide to make use them.

[kawartha-ephemera]

About the et site … listed there for a while and was surprised to make a few sales without much effort, that was last fall and winter. Then early this year they decided to run a trial with their Canadian sellers where you were pretty well forced to offer free shipping to the U.S.

Sellers who did not comply were buried 50 pages deep in search. The policy is now in force for everyone so if you cannot offer free shipping listing there is a waste of time imo. Perhaps a social media campaign would be helpful there.

As far as I know they still offer 50 free listings to new sellers.