how are sales now as really dont list much anywhere

[theElench]

Hi, you say you "duplicated" your listings from another site. IMO one important source of buyers here is google shopping, they are said to dislike duplicate listings and when they find them will give preference the one from the larger site, ignoring the one from the smaller.

I looked for your patches on GS and found 3.

I think a good many of my buyers come from GS as I don't do social media and now sell little on obay so they don't come from there and flyers I put in with the items I do manage to sell.

Since the Covid lockdowns in 2020 my sales here have become more frequent and gone from a handful a year to 24 in 2021: 17 in '22: to 24 in'23, with 4 so far this year I'm expecting another increase this year. Most of my buyers are making their first purchase on ebid, I think that with obays terrible search and having time on their hands during the lockdowns, buyers have become more inclined to use other sites and make more use of sites like google images / shopping when searching. So getting your items shown on them has increased in importance.

I check GS at least once a week and do my best to make my listings fit the parameters for uploading. I click on a couple of my listings and have been able to see some of them on P1 of their search results every week for several years plus seeing "Ebid - theelench" on their filter bar for over a year. Admittedly I sell in a niche area but that certainly seems to have helped my sales.

Another thing that might have helped is I list something new every week and show-case it on the "Plug Your Auction" (PYA) Forum for a week. When I started doing that I thought it was good to get over 20 views for an item. Now I'm disappointed if I don't get 45 - 50.

One last thing that possibly helps as we don't have a transaction counter and less than half my buyers leave FB is to always leave FB for my buyers. For one thing I know that I've sold 129 items so far on ebid (over 50 of them since 2020) and if new-to-ebid buyers are looking at my FB they might see that I've sold more than my 73 FBs imply.

Most of the above is quick and easy to do and if nothing else, gives you some food for thought on how to start getting sales here again. Good luck.

[Angelicas_Aromatics]

Hi, you say you "duplicated" your listings from another site. IMO one important source of buyers here is google shopping, they are said to dislike duplicate listings and when they find them will give preference the one from the larger site, ignoring the one from the smaller.

I looked for your patches on GS and found 3.

I think a good many of my buyers come from GS as I don't do social media and now sell little on obay so they don't come from there and flyers I put in with the items I do manage to sell.

Another thing that might have helped is I list something new every week and show-case it on the "Plug Your Auction" (PYA) Forum for a week. When I started doing that I thought it was good to get over 20 views for an item. Now I'm disappointed if I don't get 45 - 50.

One last thing that possibly helps as we don't have a transaction counter and less than half my buyers leave FB is to always leave FB for my buyers. For one thing I know that I've sold 129 items so far on ebid (over 50 of them since 2020) and if new-to-ebid buyers are looking at my FB they might see that I've sold more than my 73 FBs imply.

Most of the above is quick and easy to do and if nothing else, gives you some food for thought on how to start getting sales here again. Good luck.

Thanks, appreciate the response.

I have moved everything from the other site, but as mentioned, i have started listing exclusively here too. Truth be told, it wouldn't currently make sense for me to de-list on the other side as the sales are still flowing there, so i will just have to take the hit on the duplicates for now.

I have been monitoring my stuff on google and most seem to have been picked up, so that is always a nice boost.

I am not a volume seller anyway, i usually do around 6-10 sales a month and i have been making sure that i am listing items regularly, usually a couple of times a week when i can and price accordingly as i won't have the same commitment to fees as other sites.

I think my only point from my post is that everything we do needs an audience to be successful and i know it isn't exactly apples for apples, but ebid vs the other one on facebook is 15k followers vs 2M followers on tik tok, 0 vs 167k and on instagram 0 vs 150k its a ready made audience, it would just seem to make sense to tap that audience if possible.

[Esswad]

Hi, you say you "duplicated" your listings from another site. IMO one important source of buyers here is google shopping, they are said to dislike duplicate listings and when they find them will give preference the one from the larger site, ignoring the one from the smaller.

I'm not sure that that's accurate. I had a book listed as a 7 day auction on Ebay. It didn't sell, so yesterday I relisted it as a BIN on Ebay, Ebid and Etsy. I just did a search for it on Google Shopping, and it's the Ebid listing that's showing, top of Page 1. So I don't know how Google Shopping works out priority, but I don't think it's automatically the size of the marketplace.

I did promote the Ebid listing in more places - my Facebook business page, a Facebook "group" that only exists to promote my listings, a couple of public Facebook groups and also in a thread in the "Plug Your Auctions" section here. Whereas I only posted the Ebay and Etsy listings to a couple of groups on Facebook. Maybe the number of backlinks is a factor?

[theElench]

I don't think anyone except google knows for sure how google prioritises listings, they do try to keep it secret to prevent 'gaming'. But it's something someone posted here years ago that I picked-up on so during lock-down I went through all my listings on obay and edited the titles so they weren't the same as on ebid. It seemed to work for me and I started taking more interest in GS, how it worked and how to make it work better for me. Perhaps you might like to add what you've seen to the "Google Shopping" thread?

All I can really say is that doing what I've done seems to have paid-off. In 2019 I made 6 sales here, about average for pre-Covid years. With lock-down I sold more than in any other year so I take that as an extraordinary blip. 2021 I sold 24 items. '22, 17 sales. '23, 24 sales again and this year got off to a good start with 4 in January and I'm hoping to exceed that this year by continuing to get some of my ads. shown on GS every day of the year on pages 1, 2 and 3 of their results. Taking the time to use GS for a few minutes a week, click on a couple my ads. seems to have increased my sales by 3 or 4 times since 2020. It might all just be coincidence but until others try it, who knows...

Going off-topic for a moment, I've viewed your PYA thread but traditionally replies are discouraged, so I'll ask you here instead. Do you have any Catalogues from the 1930s /40s / 50s? Glass makers, wholesalers and large departmental stores all used to print them and they are a 'go to' source when it comes to identifying pieces of glass whose origins are now lost. There are plenty of gaps in our knowledge and even newspaper or magazine ads. sometimes turn-up with a missing piece of the puzzle. If you have anything like that, I might be interested, especially if they have good clear pictures of something 'unknown'.

[Esswad]

No, sorry. I don't hae any old catalogues. Sounds like something to be on the lookout for. There's no telling how many times I've overlooked potentially profitable items at antique fairs or auctions because I didn't have the necessary knowledge.

[theElench]

I don't think they're easy to find these days. I've found a site called Pressglas-Pavillon.de is helpful when I'm trying to I.D glass, especially as the "Glas Musterbook" section has quite a few catalogues to look at....but many more gaps where none are known to exist. I'm sure there must be a market for anything that fills in some of them. One company I would be particularly interested in is "Ernst Buder", who produced some 'retro' Art Deco in the 50s, there seems to be only one catalogue which is obviously a combination of at least two previous editions. It's a bit of a mess and has caused more confusion than it's settled. But the odds of finding one are probably 1 / 1,000,000.

[merlin]

back again wish i was 20 years younger lol seem to spend more time at hospital or doctors these days , but i got a bonus won a buddy points auction then won £150 in a charity lottery , picked me up a bit going to try listing more now

[mark4740]

Sold another 3 items yesterday, always a pleasant surprise to see the Ebid icon pop up in notifications on my phone ,Sold more on here than ebay this year which is nice considering there is less traffic, sold to Germany, Hawaii, America, Netherlands, Just a nice positive instead of my usual gripes lol

[Policequilts]

@mark4740

CONGRATULATIONS on the sales.


This year, my sales have picked up, too.
A few unpaid, but more paid sales.