Power Sellers Unite

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

Okay this promo is insane, but eBay wants traffic. :wink:

One day only! On November 29, list up to 1,000 items Auction-style for free. Add Buy It Now for free, too!
http://announcements.ebay.com/2011/11/one-day-only-on-november-29-list-up-to-1000-items-auction-style-for-free-add-buy-it-now-for-free-too/

Digmen1 · Joined: 12 Feb 2010 Posts: 1007

They have 140 million listings, and they still need traffic ! ?

What happens after the week ends and their number goes back to what it was?

Are they really worried about their Alexa rating falling one or two points ?

Or do they need the traffic to justify their policies to their shareholders ? or the big box retailers ?

How come they can add 5 million listings in one day ?
Yes that is all that sites like ecrater, ebid.net and bonanza have got after 5 years in total ?

There are lots of questions

thegolfingdolphin · Joined: 13 Jan 2009 Posts: 695

We use the auctions for promotion. The last special we listed about 90 items and sold 12 listings, for about a $1000.00. Although we started our auctions out at about 10% below our everyday price it does draw lookers to your store and they eventually become buyers. On top of that we also redirect the buyers to our web-site with specials and a larger inventory than we have on ebay. Once you get the listing started you can save them as use them for the next promotion, which I am sure will be next week.

This week I will do about 100 items again, but now I will add a buy it now with my regular price, as I have done in past years. You will sell a lot of items this time of year by using this approach, as buyers do not want to wai to see if they won the item or not, and will pay the Buy it now price to get it quickly.

luckyalive · Joined: 27 Apr 2008 Posts: 589

Why bother listing anything. Last lot of items had 25% sale through rate - certainly not the 70% 1st time run we got several years ago.

I just spent 1 hour printing off 7 labels form PayPal. All that money and they can't add more band width so that someone even on high speed cable gets server errors, server resets, slow loading pages. sh*t, the little logo in the label print window from Bowes took 1 second to load.

"On top of that we also redirect the buyers to our web-site with specials and a larger inventory than we have on ebay."

Will not eBay simply cancel your account as soon as they see this promotion since this is not allowed on eBay. all it takes is one promotional email from a customer relayed to eBay and your're done.

I certainly would not want eBay knowing about my 3rd party site because they have ways of punishing you on your 3rd party site.

portocall · Joined: 05 Jun 2009 Posts: 157

Trying to figure out why ebay has all these promotions and free listings makes me head hurt!

Like so many have said over the past four years or so - I can't tell if they've screwed up big-time with all their changes and are trying to recover OR if they're doing exactly what they planned all along.

I've always thought it was to get their visitor numbers up without really attracting customers or new buyers, just relying on the seller's visits to pad the numbers. If they get 1000 sellers to list 1000 items and then return a few times to check on the listings and take care of shipping etc, the number of "clicks" on the sight probably goes way up. ebay can then claim more visits, sell more advertising, and charge more for it. While more visits to the site is technically true, the visits aren't followed by many sales these days, at least not form e. just my honking op-ed

You're lucky you get a 25% sell through rate. Mine is usually about 5% on these promotions. I get WAY more views on etsy, blujay, ecrater than on ebay now.

Five years ago I used to get concerned if my sell through rate went below 50% on any given week.

8) :( :) 8)

cohibastore.com · Joined: 14 Sep 2006 Posts: 4908

It just floods the site with more of the same stuff making it all harder to find. Waste of time and effort for buyers and makes it harder to find stuff for sellers. And really the only people who can take advantage of free 5k and 1k listings are the mega sellers.

CS

Digmen1 · Joined: 12 Feb 2010 Posts: 1007

Of the 140million core listings ebay has I'd like to know what are the percentages.

Big Box retailers
Chinese sellers
Small and medium sellers

Any guesses ?

cohibastore.com · Joined: 14 Sep 2006 Posts: 4908

under tobacciana there 204k listings
north american listings total is 154k
us listing is only us 145k
meaning 50k are non-us non-north America sellers
thats 25% of the listings

there are 56,000 lighters on ebay, but only 36,000 are in the us, meaning 35% are outside the US.

theres your china quotient

thegolfingdolphin · Joined: 13 Jan 2009 Posts: 695

luckyalive wrote (View Post): › docWrite("quote")Why bother listing anything. Last lot of items had 25% sale through rate - certainly not the 70% 1st time run we got several years ago.

I just spent 1 hour printing off 7 labels form PayPal. All that money and they can't add more band width so that someone even on high speed cable gets server errors, server resets, slow loading pages. sh*t, the little logo in the label print window from Bowes took 1 second to load.

"On top of that we also redirect the buyers to our web-site with specials and a larger inventory than we have on ebay."

Will not eBay simply cancel your account as soon as they see this promotion since this is not allowed on eBay. all it takes is one promotional email from a customer relayed to eBay and your're done.

What I mentioned I did is not against any TOU agreement with Ebay or any other E-Commerce venue. Youe agreement with eBay is an item by item agreement, as long as I follow there rules as it pertains to any one listings, I have not broken anything. Once the listing is sold or unsold the agreement for that item is finished. I have just as much right to market that buyer of mine as Ebay does at that moment. eBay does not own all it's members.

I certainly would not want eBay knowing about my 3rd party site because they have ways of punishing you on your 3rd party site.

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

portocall, you are right the sell through rate in eBay are low. I have a 2% - 10% sell through rate. For that reason I'm just using the free and penny promos. The other promos and normal posting only mean losses for me.

About the views is true. I'm getting more views in a week for the same item in eCrater, eBid or Blujay.

About the promos my opinion:

1) Getting traffic.
2) Stopping any big movement or boycotts of small sellers to other sites. In other words stopping potential sites to grow like Etsy.
3) Testing to add some new crazy stuff or new fee structure.

Digmen1 · Joined: 12 Feb 2010 Posts: 1007

@Elpereles

Good points as usual.

I think the key thing ebay did was to introduce the 50 free auction style listings.

Most small sellers use this as its free and if their items don't sell it does not cost them like normal listings do.
This is the way ebay has kept their small sellers, otherwise many more would list on the alt sites.

And yes sell through rates are dropping. Due to
The economy
More listings on ebay
More competition from alts
More stand alone websites.