The new decade is here. We’re celebrating the beginning of not just a new year, but a new decade! As a seller, what are your top resolutions for eBay 2020? Reorganize your office/workspace or inventory? Finally get those death piles listed? Attend eBay Open in July?
Those worthwhile goals for eBay 2020 are all fine and dandy, but without consistent sales, you won’t have a business to organize. Healthy cash flow is the lifeblood of any commercial enterprise, especially your business on eBay.
In the hit reality series Shark Tank, what’s one of the first questions the sharks ask each would-be entrepreneur?
They ask the business owner,” What are your sales?” Now I’m asking you the same question, and you’d better know the answer. If you don’t, you’ve got some homework to do. Because as a seller, it’s essential that you know your numbers — including not only how much you’re selling, but also how fast you’re selling it (sales velocity). In other words, how long are items listed before they sell?
The answer to this question will vary by category and even by item.
For example, cell phone accessories have a different sell-through rate than Mid-Century Modern candleholders. Furthermore, MCM candleholders may have a different sell-through rate than Art Deco candlesticks.
Once you have some idea of your sales history, consider this: If a certain type of product typically takes four months to sell, what would it mean for your bottom line if it sold in three months? Or two? It could mean the difference between a business that stagnates (or even fails) and a business that flourishes.
Here’s why.
“Sell-through rate” (how fast your items sell) is also known as “conversion rate”, because it represents the process of turning an item into cash — i.e., converting it to dollars and cents. The faster you can recoup your initial investment, reap your profit, and get that money into your bank account, the better. Many sellers get into trouble because they have too much cash tied up in inventory that isn’t selling.
Don’t be that seller in eBay 2020!
I can help you to get cash flowing (and/or flowing faster). What you need — what every eBay seller needs — is to accelerate sales. And I’ve got some proven tips for doing that. You can grab them right here. eBay Sales Accelerator tips are my gift to you when you add yourself to the wait list for my exclusive membership group Social Media Insider.
Now, when evaluating your business look at what IS selling. It’s important to note your best selling products and categories. While doing this be sure to do the following.
First, check prices! The value of an item will fluctuate over time. You may be asking too much, or you may be leaving cash on the table by asking too little. Use Advanced Search to check sold prices on eBay. My YouTube Watch This Before You List On eBay!, will show you how to use eBay’s Advanced search feature.
If you have an eBay Store subscription, check Terapeak as well (under the Research Tab in Seller Hub).
Second, include 4 or more pictures in each listing. You can have up to 12, so take photos of all the sides of each item as well as closeups of details and/or any flaws. Showcase each item to its best advantage, because shoppers make their purchase decision based on your photos and description. Show them what they’re getting, preferably on a plain white background! More pictures can add up to more as well as faster sales plus a boost in eBay search.
Third, offer a robust return policy. Most customers want what they’re buying. But they’ll feel a lot more comfortable about buying from you if they know they can return an item that doesn’t work out.
Think like a buyer in eBay 2020!
It pays to think like your buyer!
Let’s say a buyer needs a widget. Two identical sellers have widgets listed at the same price with free shipping. One seller offers no returns, while the other offers 30-day returns. Which widget would you buy?
Look at your competitors’ return policies. How can you make yours better than theirs? If they offer 30-day returns, maybe you could offer 60-day returns. Or free returns. Or both! Check the number of returns you get in any given category to know what’s best for your business.
eBay sellers Christmas is less than 90 days away. That is less than 12 weeks. That may seem like a long time to you. It is not. So, eBay sellers that means it’s time to start preparing for a profitable Q4 right now.
Not sure exactly where to begin for a successful eBay sellers Christmas selling season?
Relax, because I’m here to help you have your best Holiday selling season ever! The first thing to remember is that there’s really no wrong way to tackle Q4, as long as you tackle it. It’s your business; you get to be in charge of how you run it.
So don’t waste time and energy comparing yourself to others.
What works best for another eBay seller may not work for you — and vice-versa. Make the best decisions for your business and your life. It’s your eBay business.
If you’re like most eBay sellers, there are probably 3 things on your eBay sellers Christmas Q4 wish list:
More sales than last year
Get more done in less time
Enjoy the holidays with family and friends
My proven Q4 success strategies can help you achieve all 3 of those goals to have a great eBay sellers Christmas!.
Go to your Active Listings page in Seller Hub, and click on Current Price to sort items by what’s most expensive. Which of your items are new with tags?
You may think an item is not a gift. Remember not everyone has your lifestyle. Your family may not gift power tools, but for someone else, it’s the perfect Chrostmas gift. Think outside the box when it comes to what you think is just right for a gift. Many, many items are giftable! Christmas present are not just dolls, teddy bears and video games!
The perfect Christmas gift is more than toys!
Don’t forget that used items also sell as gifts, especially if they’re vintage and/or collectible.
Next, check your unlisted inventory, and get gift-worthy items listed ASAP.
Make a list or spreadsheet, so you can easily keep track of your Holiday listings. Then cast a critical eye at your active listings. Do any of them need their photos redone? Or maybe put into a different order? Make sure your listings are still optimized for search, too, as item specifics may have changed. This recent video Lost In eBay Search shows you how invaluable correct item specifics are.
By now you should be pretty well organized. Check your holiday inventory at the beginning or end of each week, whichever works best for you:
What’s selling or sold?
Do you need to run a sale?
What needs tweaking?
Create promotional campaigns, and make a note of what works — then do more of it!
Finally, to have the ultimate eBay sellers Christmas, plan to enjoy yourself
In between all of the above tasks, take time to bask in the company of family and friends and participate in holiday events.
Build that time and those events into your Holiday plan. You’ll be making memories while your business is making money!
Break out the wassail, and let’s share a toast: Here’s to your best eBay Christmas Holiday selling season ever!
It may feel as if Summer will never end, but it’s already time for eBay’s Back to School (BTS) retail moment. That’s right: The eBay Back to School selling season is NOW. And it’s going to be HUGE on eBay.
Just how big is eBay Back To School you ask?
So, how big is eBay Back To School Shopping?
For starters, the National Retail Federation (NRF) predicts record spending this year: Families with children in elementary through high school will shell out an average of $697 (up from $685 in 2018), while families with college students are expected to ante up an average of $977 (up from 2018’s $942).
Best of all, those families plan to do roughly half of their shopping online. That includes eBay Back To School shoppers!
Furthermore, 85%-90% of those planning to shop online intend to take advantage of free shipping. (There’s a word to the wise!)
But the potential for profit doesn’t stop there.
Back to School encompasses everything from pre-kindergarten to graduate school. It includes children, teenagers, and adults. It’s kids and teachers, but it’s also parents, who shop for themselves while shopping for their offspring.
How can you attract these eager eBay Back To School customers?
If you think you have nothing to offer Back to School buyers, think again! BTS items go way beyond school supplies like pencils, notebooks, and backpacks. They run the gamut from electronics to apparel to accessories.
My complimentary downloadable Ultimate Guide to Back to School Products will help you discover coveted BTS goodies that you already have on hand — and maybe even already have listed!
You’ll be surprised to find out how much of your available inventory is popular with Back to School shoppers.
Once you’ve got a handle on your best BTS items, if you have an eBay store, now is the time to promote those items.
This is one retail moment during which every major retailer offers deals and savings. You can, too! So get smart, seller: Google some of those major retailers for inspiration. Then use eBay’s Promotions Managerto create deals of your own.
For example, you might offer a percentage or dollar-amount discount for buyers who spend more than $X with you.
Create a Promotion with Promotions Manager. Group you Back To School items together. That way, when your shopper lands on one of your products, they’ll be encouraged to buy more from you. Here are more possibilities that might pay off.
Put certain Back To School items on sale, and make a sale event for them.
Consider bundling products together to attract even more shoppers. Feature those special bundles on your social media. You might even want to make a dedicated store category for Back to School Deals and use eBay’s bulk-editing tool to stock it with selected items from your current listings.
In short, offer savings to get sales!
The Back to School selling season runs through mid-September, but the time to take advantage of this retail moment is NOW. Download your free copy of my Ultimate Guide to Back to School Productstoday to jump-start your BTS selling and cash in on Back to School!
Here’s How To Attract eBay Back To School Shoppers!
Ever wonder whether you’re the only seller experiencing a drop in eBay sales? Well, wonder no longer…because ShelfTrend’s new Recent Sales Report can help you get to the bottom of why your sales seem to be bottoming out!
There are lots of reasons for a slowdown in eBay sales.
It’s important to dive in and find out what is going on. Maybe there are just less buyers on eBay for your product right now. Maybe there was a change to eBay’s Best Match algorithm, so not as many buyers are finding your listing. Perhaps your price is too high. Or (worse yet), perhaps your product is losing its appeal.
It all adds up to lots of lost sleep while you fret and fume over the question of what’s causing eBay sales to drop.
But ShelfTrend subtracts those worries from the equation. All you have to do is search by keyword, category, competitor, or product identifier. Then ShelfTrend’s Recent Sales Report will show you the Last 7 Days, Last 30 days, and Month to Date sales for the Top 100 Listings as ranked by Best Match: number of items sold, revenue, and pricing.
ShelfTrend‘s eBay sales data is super-easy to use and understand, too.
Using ShelfTrend’s eBay data is super easy and helps you know why your eBay sales have slowed down!
ShelfTrend boils down the complexities first, doing the analysis for you and presenting you with the results. You don’t even need a spreadsheet!
The information in this report is extremely revealing. ShelfTrend’s Recent Sales Report makes it as easy as 1-2-3 for you to:
Compare your own eBay sales to those of your competitors.
Learn how you could improve your listing, pricing, or even your product to regain lost sales.
Identify who and what is dominating search results and sales. Detailed sales analytics for brands, products, and competitors give you an idea of emerging trends and what’s hot on eBay right now.
Evaluate the overall market.
Use the interactive chart — which charts sales volume, sales revenue, and median price — to understand whether the market is experiencing growth, or if everyone is in the same boat with having a drop in sales.
You can search, sort, and filter — e.g., by listing format or condition — to drill down further.
This enables you to uncover critical insights that could change the way you source, price, and sell.
You can also download Recent Sales data as an Excel spreadsheet to glean even more detailed metrics, including item specifics, buyer location, and — soon — product variant. It’s an invaluable tool for assessing the performance of your products and your competitors.
But wait, there’s more! When you sign up for ShelfTrend and run the Recent Sales Report, you also get ShelfTrend’s other reports:
Top 500 Live Listings Report
New Listings Report
Supply Demand Report
When you run these reports together for the same keyword search, category, or competitor, you get a wonderfully well-rounded, real-time perspective on what’s really happening on eBay — not what you guess or hear rumors is happening.
The story behind this ecommerce market data company is both interesting and inspiring.
ShelfTrend was founded by former eBay executives Anojan Abel and Lisa Wong, who worked closely with sellers. Between the 2 of them, they had nearly 20 years of experience with the platform. Their epiphany came when they were asked to figure out why one seller had seen a recent decline in sales over recent weeks, despite not changing anything about their listings.
The seller suspected that the drop in sales might be due to a change in eBay’s Best Match search algorithm.
If your eBay sales have slowed, do you know why?
But a closer analysis of sales data revealed that in fact, a competitor had snuck in and begun listing similar products at lower prices. Because the seller had no easy way to spot this change in the marketplace, they missed critical activity within their category. The result? A huge disruption of their business!
Realizing that even the most seasoned sellers could be caught off-guard when they’re flying blind, Anojan and Lisa created ShelfTrend to help sellers stay on top of their sales.
They’ve got live marketplace data for more than a billion listings in thousands of categories from over 20 eBay countries. Their goal is to arm sellers with the analytics they need to make data-driven decisions about listing and selling on eBay — and to help them stay ahead of their competition.
Now, thanks to ShelfTrend’s suite of marketplace reports, you can identify, research, and monitor your competitors and their selling activity.
You can also analyze market movements to uncover emerging new products and competitors or gauge shifts in demand.
In addition, ShelfTrend lets you benchmark your business. You’ll know where you stand among sellers of similar products, and you can look for opportunities to improve your search ranking, drops in listings, or price changes.
Furthermore, ShelfTrend helps you find profitable niches by highlighting supply gaps vs. buyer demand.
ShelfTrend quickly identifies what IS selling on eBay!
Look at it this way: You can spend hours on eBay marketplace research and not be able to see the forest for the trees. Or you can let ShelfTrend do the work for you and get actionable results, including their new Recent Sales Report. Try ShelfTrend’s Basic Plan for free at ShelfTrend.com.
Take action with ShelfTrend to reignite your eBay sales!
Here are some of the benefits in eBay’s Spring Seller Update:
Expanded seller protections
Continued expansion and rollout of Managed Payments
Enhancements to marketing tools
Marketplace improvements
Updates to inventory optimization
However, let’s take a closer look at eBay’s Spring Seller Update. We’ll start with eBay’s promise regarding added seller protections.
In this seller update, eBay speaks to implementing stronger measures against abusive buyers (such as those who claim an item is not as described in order to score a free return). However, they don’t explain how they plan to do so. More clarity on this would be appreciated.
Also eBay now makes it easier to report buyers for specific offenses. Furthermore, eBay will reduce search visibility for sellers who violate eBay’s drop-shipping policy by using another retailer to ship purchased items directly to buyers.
These are welcome improvements, but again, sellers need to know how they’ll translate into safeguards for good sellers. It will be nice to see how eBay adds to these somewhat vague promises of standing behind its sellers. Sellers will continue to look for strong, clear and effective Seller Protections in future site updates.
Now, let’s move on to the continued roll out of Managed Payments.
Managed Payments adds revenue to eBay. This is cited in eBay’s 2019 1st quarter earnings report. Understandably, eBay is offering Managed Payments to more sellers as quickly as it can. Google Pay is available to shoppers through Managed Payments as of April 2019. Also Paypal is now launching on a test basis through Managed Payments. You can express your interest in Managed Payments here. Most sellers should be opted in by 2021.
In addition, new user-friendly order numbers will be introduced this summer to help you track and manage orders more efficiently.
Last but not least, starting this July, you’ll be able to refund a percentage of the order amount — up to 100% — from Seller Hub.
Now for some really good news.
For starters, Promoted Listings, eBay’s paid search, is now available to sellers whether you have an eBay store or not. Promoted Listings increases your listings visibility in eBay search results. You pay your chosen rate (percentage of the sale price) whenever a buyer clicks on your Promoted listing, then purchases that item within 30 days.
eBay provides guidance for choosing ad rates as well as detailed sales metrics. Sellers create a campaign from your Active Listings page in Seller Hub. Sales are monitored on your Manage Orders page. Learn all about Promoted Listings here.
More goodness for sellers. It’s all about Seller Hub. Starting May 2019, you can bulk-edit and filter Active Listings by Best Offer. Ditto for “Offer to Buyers”, which sends offers to watchers.
Furthermore, you can also edit Volume Pricing into or out of listings from a handy drop-down menu. Now available to all sellers, Volume Pricing lets you set discounts for multiple purchases of multi-quantity items. As of this update, it works with multi-variation listings, too.
Sellers score with more options to the successful tool Volume Pricing!
This will have you doing the Happy Dance sellers.
Starting in July of 2019, Good ‘Til Cancelled (GTC) listing fees will be billed by the calendar month instead of every 30 days!
In addition, in your eBay Seller Hub, you can customize your Active Listings page to add the “Start date” column. This will show you how long each GTC product listing has been active on the site. To see your GTC listings’ auto-renewal dates, add the “End date” column. Now, that’s easey peasey. Thanks eBay! While short term listings are not available in the fixed price format, you can create shorter duration listings for auction listings.
There is news for eBay inventory optimization standards.
Category and item specific updates will affect key categories. All the categories are listed here.Be sure to list your items in “best fit” categories as mandated by eBay.
All in all, the Spring Seller Update of 2019 has good news for sellers.
Seller tools continue to evolve with welcome additions to Best Offer and Volume Pricing. More sellers are being opted into eBay’s Managed Payments. Managed Payments offers more attractive check out choices to shoppers. Note Managed Payments for now does not include International Transactions.
The one disappointment is the “new” Seller Protections. It’s great hearing how eBay stands by its sellers. But there is no new program, or step by consequences laid out for bad buyers. eBay promises more consequences to bad buyers. Sellers will watch eBay, to see if they follow through with substance for these “promised” seller protections.
eBay sellers are looking for promised seller protections.
Meanwhile, read eBay’s 2019 Spring Seller Update here, then decide how to make these new initiatives work for your business.
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