Sales Are Low Everywhere

[DougsVinyl]

I've just joined after leaving eBay in disgust of their treatment of private account holders with increased back door charges. So far,I like what I see on here. But despite posting a number of items (various collectable vinyl records) in two weeks I've not had a sale despite a lot of views.
EBay was the same even before the present debacle. Sales down in the last year by about 40%. It has to be the dreadful state of the nation - heating and eating (essentials) over luxury goods and hobbies? Like to know your views.

[Mandart]

Hi, welcome to eBid, I run my own website as well as on eBid and yes, sales are very difficult everywhere - on eBid it's ages since I sold anything. With eBid, you have to drive your own traffic to your listings, there's very little passing traffic like on eBay, you have to treat eBid as if it was your own individual website and get your own traffic, there are very few customers who get here by chance. Good luck

[DougsVinyl]

Ok thanks. I'm going to open a shop shortly and post a link on Facebook.

[johnwash1]

Ok thanks. I'm going to open a shop shortly and post a link on Facebook.

I think by all accounts doing that on FB is a good idea, though I've no personal experience (I've yet to come to terms with my loathing of intrusive social media). And I'm sure there are lots of other sites, e.g. I notice my wife often looks at Pinterest, though I don't know if that's useful for vinyl. You could post in specialist forums, I'm sure there would be some for vinyl collectors. But don't spam them. Just make sure a useful link is in your signature and find something useful to say or help someone.

And pay attention to getting your items uploaded to Google. I can't tell you how, but I'm sure there are some here who can.

[DougsVinyl]

Thanks for your insights. Discogs is a specialist USA vinyl outlet but it's a nightmare to get an account open and items listed. You can read my review on Trustpilot if you like. Plenty of shops and small outlets, but the advantage of eBay was it's huge customer base. But if you sell items under a tenner, with all the new fees, it's not worth doing, as they are beginning to find out. I'll persevere here!

[theElench]

Hi and welcome to Ebid.

A few things that I think have helped me get some of my listings visible on Google Shopping (GS).

First read the ebid Help Pages to ensure you ads. fulfil all the conditions for getting uploaded.

Ebid's search is Key Word oriented so get as many words that buyers might search for in your title, the most likely near the beginning. Check what words are shown for the same discs on GS and try to use them too.

If selling the same item elsewhere make sure the titles are different and re-arrange the description if possible. GS doesn't allow duplicate listings and if they find two identical, they will show the one from the larger site.

List regularly. I've been listing one new item a week for several years. If GS uses the date of the listing as one of its criteria for uploading a spread of dates gives them more that they may hit on.

GS does seem to like showing my older listings. I've often seen my ads. that are over a year old and sometimes quite a few years old on GS, but only rarely seen one of my ads. that's been recently listed, say in the last month or so.

Looking at the Sold Items on Ebid's Home Page there are plenty that are RUS listings although the standard advice here is that RUS will always be at the bottom of the pile and will struggle to sell. Perhaps so in crowded categories, but in sparsely populated categories I'm beginning to think that being seen on GS is more important than being on P.1 of the ebay search results. Perhaps hedge your bets and leave some items as RUS for months but continuously re-list others?

Don't expect quick results from GS, they have billions of items to index (perhaps that's why I never see my newly listed items there?) but the queue must be long. So perhaps items on continuous re-list are putting themselves at the back of the queue with every re-list?

I also think/ guess that just using GS when researching prices and browsing in my area of interest might bring my address to GS's attention?

All the above is guesswork or at best 'back of an envelope' research but might help get some visibility on GS. I started looking at GS during the Covid lock-downs and for the past few years have always been able to find a few of my ads. on the first couple of pages. Sometimes I've even managed to get "Ebid - theElench" shown on their "Sellers" side-bar. To do that it seems you would have be the seller with the greatest number of ads. in that category on Ebid.

It might just be coincidence or changing shopping habits (declining loyalty to obay?) but before the lockdowns my sales here were often in single figures every year. Since then they are in the twenty's every year, which in a niche glass area is about as good as I ever achieved on obay. I've recently stopped even trying to sell over there for the same reasons that you have and because without promoting I managed to sell 4 items last year. So in the last 4/5 years my selling on both sites has completely reversed.

I hope the above is of some help to you. Good luck!!

[DougsVinyl]

Thanks for that. Do you know how to import your listings into a Store? I have one ready in draft but can't see how this is done or how your store actually gets online.
Thanks.

[johnwash1]

You can go to your store, which initially is 'offline' and click the radio button to set it online.

I haven't experienced moving already listed items in bulk into a store, but I've successfully moved a single item into my store, just by using 'edit listing' and selecting the store.

[kodakfish]

hi welcome, sales here I'm getting 2-10 a month - much more than I got on the darkside before I dumped them for selling a couple of years ago.
To list in store you first need to configure your store - go to my store>select store to configure. then at section 3, you can set up different catagories.

IF the items are already listed you can go to the item > click edit/close > top right you'll see ebay store catagory > here you just use the drop down menues to select store +/- catagories.
If you have multiples to put in the same catagory > bulk edit on left of page> this takes you to a page to select specific item. If you had 30 Beatles records to move to the Beatles catagory > click the box next to description and type beatles> select all that you want to add to store> add to basket > click edit basket > scroll down to store catagory > select your store, then catagory > click submit for review.

This may take a while if there's lots

[kodakfish]

note if using Ninja lister [or spread sheet] you need to use the store & category codes rather than a drop down.
To find this go to my stores button [left side] > select store from top drop down [ each store will be identified with a number]
Then lower doen will be an area to set up parent & sub catagoeries. Once you set these up a list appears below with the catagories. For example some of mine in my store no 1 are
5 Postcards
5a Celebrity
5b Castles
5c transport
5d animals
5e seasonal
5f birthday
On the item page on the left is a store catagory id box in this you put your store number : followed by category code.
So to put an item in the castles group I'd use 1:5b . If just putting in the store without a catagory I'd just put 1.
I'm lazy so I just screen grabbed my lists for quick reference. Hope this help - even if my wording is a bit convoluted