In her most recent Lynn Dralle wrote about having $719.55 in eBay store sales in approximately a seventeen hour period earlier this month. While I haven’t seen that amount in sales, over the last one to two weeks I have seen more than a 600% increase in the number of sales made through my eBay stores.
Prior to July my eBay store regularly generated 2 to 3 sales per week. Over the last twelve days that number has jumped to 2 to three items a day. Sometimes more.
The only change I’ve made is adding a “Make An Offer” button to some of the items that have been in the store for a long period of time. But, those aren’t the items that are generating most of the sales. Only about 20% of the increase is sales that I’ve accepted offers on. The vast majority of buyers are paying full price.
Has eBay recently made a change in the way store items are shown in searches and I missed the announcement of it? Are any readers seeing a marked increase in their store sales since the first of the month?
Photograph by Kevin Dooley.
Popularity: 26% [?]
July 15th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
I’m not seeing a dramatic increase, but steady sales continue. We have roughly 1000 items in our store and sell on average about 10-15 items per week.
We’re going to reduce prices on the items we have watchers on and see if that spurs some sales.
John Wenck
July 15th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
John,
I’d be interested in knowing if reducing prices drew some of the watchers back to your store and induced them to buy.
Many of the items I placed “Make An Offer” buttons on were ones that had watchers. That doesn’t appear to be what has caused the increase in sales though because nearly all of them are for full price.
Gary H.
July 16th, 2008 at 10:32 am
My store sales have been suprisingly good too. I only have about 180 listings in my store but have been selling 2-5 items a day pretty consistantly.
I price my stuff high enough that I can use Markdown Manager at 10 or 20% if I decide to. Probably 99% of my listings have “Make an Offer”.
Some of the stuff I’ve sold have been on offers, others at full price, so I can’t really tell if that’s made much of a difference.
When I use Markdown Manager I generally only run it for 24 to 48 hours. I figure if someone sees an item that has 20 days to go there’s no urgancy in buying it. If they see a sale that’s ending in a few hours maybe they’ll go ahead and pull the trigger.
One other thing I’ve noticed is that my international sales have seen a huge increase. I don’t pay the extra nickle or dime (or whatever it is) to list internationally but they seen to find me just fine without it.
Who knows???
July 16th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Steve,
My international sales have always been good within certain collectible areas. However, I too have seen an increase in international sales of more generic items.
I’m guessing one reason for this is that with the health of the American dollar recently, the exchange rate for buyers in many countries is better right now than it has been in quite a few years.
Gary H.
July 16th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
You don’t think the recent increases in the cost of fuel has anything to do with it? I know lately we’ve been doing more online shopping because of this, plus why get caught in gridlock on a hot summer day to get something that can be delivered right to my door. Forget it - I’d rather play with my children in the garden
Shari
July 16th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Shari,
Increases seen by some sellers may well be at least partially due to increased fuel prices. However, I don’t think that applies with items in the antique/collectibles genre. Most of these aren’t things a buyer could drive down to the local shop or flea market and find.
Gary H.
July 17th, 2008 at 11:40 am
i have seen a increase this month, after a dry 3 months. i have over 1000 items in my store, and was thinking of canceling most items if sales did not increase.
me thinks, they fixed something in there ‘best matched’ search algo to include stores now???
sut
July 17th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Suttree,
Some change, or fix, to the search algorithm would be my guess.
One of the items I sold this week was a book that has been in one of my stores for more than a year. The fella who bought it wrote telling me how excited he was to have found it. He’s been looking for it for some time and said he regularly searched eBay for it.
Gary H.
July 18th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Man! Just a followup. I’ve sold 15 items, all from my store in the last two days!
I don’t know what’s going on (and I’m not sure we should even keep discussin’ it) but I’m liking it!
Again, I had less than 200 listings in my store, about 180 I think. That’s nearly 10% of my stuff that’s sold in two days!
July 18th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Steve,
Congratulation on all the sales.
From what others have said, at least I know this isn’t just my imagination. Let’s hope it keeps up.
Gary H.
July 25th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
MY store has been/was doing good ALSO! And I have prices all OVER the place inthere; some more EXPENSIVE ones sold also! Just an aside, Gary — I must be ‘tracking’ with you pretty close, because aside from THIS blog/site, ‘The Queen of Auctions’ is the ONLY other one I even DEAL with !!! Hahaaaa!!!