Power Sellers Unite

elpereles · Joined: 15 Dec 2006 Posts: 1478 Location: Puerto Rico

I'm a little seller. In this moment I have 6 sales, 2 in May and 4 June (1 multiple). If this continue this way I will broke my average of one sale by month. :lol:

So for the fellow eCraters. How are your sales this Summer?

RatherRuss · Joined: 05 Mar 2008 Posts: 135

What summer sales...since the inception of the load up core, kill the stores move in April, sales, visits and percentages have gone straight downward each month...til this Month of June 2010, visits are currently averaging about 20% less, sales closer to 30%....now we can blame oil in NO, Seniors graduating to no jobs, proms and the like, but the visits are what is perplexing me....even those who don't buy, are not dropping by to look? Anyone else with similar results.
I was willing to see if the higher fees, core listings etc would work, and so far the trend is decidedly downhill....like the ability to find unusual items of ebay.... Looking to see if this is just me ( I sell CDS & Vinyl, so I know the market is less), but each month??? RatherRuss at www.dedicatedfool.com.

Soon the downward trend will meet the upward fees and equal a total waste of time. Is that ebay's ultimate aim....no small sellers at all?

watnext · Joined: 13 Sep 2008 Posts: 954

Russ...

Same here!!

Think the ultimate goal is for feebay big wigs to just cash out, leaving thousands unemployed & the site in shambles.

When you finally realize you can't cut it as CEO...what other choice do you have...play it out for all you can get & then maybe you can go to work for BP...think there will be an opening there soon...no experience required!

Or better yet...get into politics...Low intelligence / high profit career!

What gets me is the obvious intentional moves to destroy the business.

Approaching absolute zero!

RatherRuss · Joined: 05 Mar 2008 Posts: 135

I think you have desccribed Meg Whitman's career thus far to a T, incompetence just keeps moving from corporation to corporation in this country & obviously Britain.....I blame the shoddy business school education at our institutes of higher pilfering for this....a little class warfare...scions of execs vs. the small people and as you said, approaching absolute zero....problem is you can fool most of the people most of the time in the US of A these days.

quicksrt · Joined: 26 Oct 2009 Posts: 401

RatherRuss wrote (View Post): › docWrite("quote")What summer sales...since the inception of the load up core, kill the stores move in April, sales, visits and percentages have gone straight downward each month...til this Month of June 2010, visits are currently averaging about 20% less, sales closer to 30%....now we can blame oil in NO, Seniors graduating to no jobs, proms and the like, but the visits are what is perplexing me....even those who don't buy, are not dropping by to look? Anyone else with similar results.
I was willing to see if the higher fees, core listings etc would work, and so far the trend is decidedly downhill....like the ability to find unusual items of ebay.... Looking to see if this is just me ( I sell CDS & Vinyl, so I know the market is less), but each month??? RatherRuss at www.dedicatedfool.com.

Soon the downward trend will meet the upward fees and equal a total waste of time. Is that ebay's ultimate aim....no small sellers at all?

I also do vinyl and CDs. And I have noticed the downward trend, but not just recently. I have noticed that hits and high bids are both lower and this has been going on since the peak 2004/2005/2006 era. Each year was a little worse.

There are many reasons, some of the reasons are simply the folks who wanted certain items have now all found good copies. There are more copies of certain LPs out there than the number of people who still want them.

Then folks making copies of their CD collections and then selling the originals, this = lower demand, and more copies out there for sale.

Ebay is just one of the issues, there are so many others.

But here is what I did, I made an Ecrater store, and I load up all unsold ebay LPs into it. So each description is copied and pasted into a new store listing. Plus I put some fresh stuff in the store so not all of it is ebay rejects.

Then I moved all my CDs to Amazon, there you can see exactly what a CD is going for and how many are offering it. The fees are not high on CD provided the buyers buys more than one at a time. 1/3 of my buyers at Amazon are buying more than one at a time, so I can scale the fees while double shipping fees.

Finally, I printed up coupons at Kinkos that are included in my ebay and amazon packages, and the coupon should drive buyers to my Eracter store. The coupon is for free shipping in US, and another which is $15 off first order for International. I made two different ones.

But all this crass marketing will only work provided I have really cool stuff for sale, and that priced are the same or better than ebay/amazon. I do have several thousand items of very high quality, or rarities, enough for a few years of hot action.

It's too early yet to see how well the Ecrater store will work for me. But at least my stuff is out there Google searchable, and no fees being paid for that exposure.

I am selling an average of 7 CDs a day at amazon, all low tickets 1.99 to 8.99 except for one 24.99 title. I have 20 or 30 tiles that are 19.99 to 110.00, and those upper priced ones do not seen to be moving too fast yet. But I have only been on amazon for 2 weeks, so it's hard to ell if it will pick up for me, or die out after those low end ones are gone. There may only be a market for 1.99 to 5.99 CDs when it comes down to it. The gravy years might be over for CD sales.

Anyway, I am getting some money coming in for my work, and as long as it keeps up day after day, that will add up to a better venue than ebay or the deadsville half.

RatherRuss · Joined: 05 Mar 2008 Posts: 135

Good to see you have found an alternative way to sell CDS etc. Not a fan of Amazon's buyers, way too picky...CD cases have to be better than the CDS, and I really don't like Amazon's habit of underselling their own sellers (i.e. me)....as for downward trend over the last few years, I still attribute most of it to the mismanagement by Ebay, as foreign markets have opened up (not sure when or how Ebay reaches them these days, rather haphazardly it seems) and I am still moving album.....although I had to add DVDS and Vintage tees both of which are helping....CDS are dinosaurs with downloads, unless you happen to like all the frequencies with your music, rather than just the compressed sounds, but that's another story....I still feel Ebay's managment is the real problem....as Turquoise Shooting Star seems to have hit the nail on the head...Russ

elpereles · Joined: 15 Dec 2006 Posts: 1478 Location: Puerto Rico

Fees, core, eBay, Amazon!? :confused:

WTF!? Excuse me this a eCrater topic. :roll:

RatherRuss · Joined: 05 Mar 2008 Posts: 135

Hi, but the forum is listed under summer sales not eCrater....so sorry but boxes are boring, that's what all of the auction/internet sites specialize in boring box, eCrater, Ebay, no sales equals no sales...the one or two that come from Ecrater to you, Atomic Mall to Me etc...would be/and are a joke in the retail world...I hate working for ebay, and/or eCrater....if you are making a whole lotta money at eCrater great, if not you too are a victim of bad summer sales....Russ

elpereles · Joined: 15 Dec 2006 Posts: 1478 Location: Puerto Rico

RatherRuss, I just asking for other eCrater sellers to tell the experience this Summer.

I believe that you didn't read my first post. I specify that my average sale in eCrater is 1 by month. And I'm not a Power Seller because the average cost of my items is between $1 to $10.

Contrary to others I had always more sales in Summer than for Christmas. I don't work for eCrater. And eCrater isn't and auction site or like eBay. :wink:

RatherRuss · Joined: 05 Mar 2008 Posts: 135

Hi Elpereles, Sorry I missed first post, seems though to me that Ecrater is not doing much for you....one sale is rather small...unless you only have a small number of listing. The real problem for you at eCrater, me at Atomic Mall (I have 16,000 items listed & get maybe 8-10 sales a month) and the alt. sites is that there is no traffic beyond ebay and amazon, both of which are greedy corporate vultures that have cornered the market for auction/store/set price sales...by being lst when there was no competition. Americans are like cattle when it comes to retail, else explain Wal-Mart's cheap chinese goods overrunning of the retail world and ebay's corporate greed on the internet....I am not so much venting as trying to show the downward trend from Ebay.....which will probably change CEO's from Donahue to some other lowlife that is currently roaming the boardroom's of America....although after Ms. Whitman's leaving to try to con Calif., I will predict Donahue will try to con some city by touting his great tenure at Ebay.....but nuff said about incompetence at high levels. We are all searching for life beyond the greed before we sink into the oil morass of the Gulf of Mexico or is that just more of the same.....wish you luck and lots of growing sales...we all need it....RatherRuss at www.dedicatedfool.com

quicksrt · Joined: 26 Oct 2009 Posts: 401

There is life at Ecrater or so I am told. But you must do the promotion work to drive traffic. And you must sell stuff others are not selling, or be beating the prices found elsewhere. You must offer something worth offering.

I also am not getting many sales at EC, but I am getting hits just like I was getting at the bay. So my stuff is being seen, and if I can get enough of it up, in the long run it sould be ok.

I won't write off EC until I have been there a year or more and done the promotion I have planned to do.

RatherRuss · Joined: 05 Mar 2008 Posts: 135

Hi Quicksrt, this is actually one of my pet peeves (I can think of stronger words)....when I did mail order, my own catalogue to 20K every two months, I did 30-40K a month in sales. And, they were my customers....it was out of a warehouse and I did very very well, until I had a fire and the usual insurance company lies, crap and criminality put me out of business.

By the time I decided to return, the internet was busy sending out 20K stores to each buyer, that's a lovely ratio isn't it??? And the customers, according to Ebay, EC etc are theirs, so they make all the rules, Feedback crap, diamond sellers, looney CEO's. And then they con you into advertising for them??? Hmmm, what if you advertised yourself as hard as you are going to work for EC or EB or Bonanzle, Atomic Mall etc.

Unless a site, say Ebay can bring you a living amount of customers, they are useless, and despite the fact that they are the largest, it is all a con....now you don't even see your store name in their listings, best match crap or whatever....your store works for about $1.50 an hour, and you are supposed to follow their great business guidance while their visitors, their sales all tank, and their fees go up...it's a fantastic con job, Pierre may have had a cool idea, but when the suits showed up, it started the long slide to Wards, White Front, etc. and oblivion....it will be around but it won't be Ebay, Ecrater or any of them...the odds are stacked against anyone who doesn't sell Chinese goods cheap. I wish you luck on EC, but my experience with them was a dud, as was iOffer, Music Stack, GEMM, Bonanzle (who I love but?? no sales), Atomic Mall nice company and layout, very very few sales on 16,000 items...isn't that enough advertising, and where is their promotion. If you are going to promote, promote yourself, all others are a con...you don't own EC, you don't get the millions of small sold fees, they do...and what are they or EBay or Amazon or any of the internet dandies doing for anyone but themselves. The days of Pierre, Griff and the community??? at Ebay are long gone, now they are just the sled steerers in the downhill race to oblivion. There has to be a better way, and if there isn't who needs it.....$1.50 an hour is not a living wage.....not even in New Orleans....maybe Tony Heyward can take over ebay, his mouth spits out the same diarrhea as Donahue.

elpereles · Joined: 15 Dec 2006 Posts: 1478 Location: Puerto Rico

RatherRuss in this moment, I have more than 225 items.

quicksrt, it isn't needed to sell other items from the others to sell in eCrater. I sell trading cards and there is competition. But the difference from the others sellers and me is that I made a clear description of the items, condition, and shipping method. And contrary to some sellers my photos are from the actual items and not stole from other eCrater Sellers.

RatherRuss · Joined: 05 Mar 2008 Posts: 135

He Elpereles, I admire your verve and pluck, my friend and wish you well. Just keep in mind that you will need a lot of items to sell to make money if this is going to be your living, and yes, always make your items special, good pics, good info etc....but we will always come back to what are the sites EC, EB, Bonanzle doing to make money for you, not just them??? At this point in the ludicrous internet wars, there is only the cuthroat, the incompetent and those who were first whether by luck or skill, but who went to the corporate line at first chance, from Bozo to Donohue to Whitman to Overstock.com.....no one left with a vision for sales, except the small sellers, whether their own site or on one of the biggies...except the biggies don't want you, they want Chinese goods ala Wal-Mart and lowest possible value for the dollar...think I'm kidding, go walk into a walmart, there is the internet in person....yucchhh. Good luck, and while I am an old codger who has done this for near 40 years, I do know a thing or two on the way to here and I have seen Discount Records, Tower Records, White Front, Wards etc, all giant chains fold when as the suits slowly bled them dry with no new ideas, just copy cat copy cat copycat....RatherRuss at www.dedicatedfool.com

GreyJaguar · Joined: 12 Jul 2008 Posts: 316

I totally agree with you, RatherRuss. If I had to depend on sales on Ecrater, Bonanzle, Atomic Mall, Ebid, etc. I'd be living on the streets because I couldn't pay my bills.