Sales - or lack of.

rose_sparky

I'm joining the ranks of others on here who are feeling despondant regarding their ebay sales (or lack of).

Today I'm just about ready to load all of my gear into the car and go to the nearest high street and give it away.

I sell an eclectic mix of items and items that normally sell at a profit are going for peanuts and it's bringing tears to my eyes.

manhater

I always find this time of year slow for selling, i put it down to the fact that many people are simply off loading there hords of junk at bootsales.

Give it a few weeks when people miss seeing piles of junk about and they will start buying from ebay again.

tom_and_barbara_good

I've found recently that my auctions are now only selling at the opening bid so I'm very careful to start them off at the price I want rather than chancing my arm with a 99p start.

If they don't sell they get relisted after around a 2 week wait (to get a fresh set of interested buyers) and if they don't sell with the relist they go into my shop on best offer with a slightly inflated price to allow for the offers, suprisingly the majority of shop sales are at the full price with no haggling. This full price is around 20% - 30% higher than what they didn't sell for in the first 2 auctions! In an average week half of my sales are shop items that were once auction items.

It's just random stuff.

apprentice_tycoon

I think that the postal charges are making life very difficult, I sell china and moderately heavy items and the average price of actual postage for my stuff is £5 - that's a hefty amount to add to the price of the goods.

The buyers are making this point on my star ratings, I have the full 5 stars for everything except the p&p and although I only add a tiny amount for bubblewrap etc but I only have 4.5 stars - I feel that I'm being marked down because of the RM charges rather than anything I've added for my expenses.

AND the $$$$ exchange rate isn't doing me any favours either!

jasmineswhiskers

apprentice_tycoon wrote: »

I think that the postal charges are making life very difficult, I sell china and moderately heavy items and the average price of actual postage for my stuff is £5 - that's a hefty amount to add to the price of the goods.

The buyers are making this point on my star ratings, I have the full 5 stars for everything except the p&p and although I only add a tiny amount for bubblewrap etc but I only have 4.5 stars - I feel that I'm being marked down because of the RM charges rather than anything I've added for my expenses.

AND the $$$$ exchange rate isn't doing me any favours either!

As mentioned on a previous thread buyers don't give 5 stars even when the postage is FREE!

rose_sparky

Just to add insult to injury I charged £6.00 p&p for a parcel and it actually cost me £7.25 this morning. My fault I know, but I do have a problem accurately weighing larger boxes on my small digital scales.

(Don't tell me to weigh myself and then weigh myself again holding the parcel because I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW WHAT I WEIGH!!!!!!!!!).

At least I can find comfort that I'm not the only one finding life on ebay difficult at the moment.

jasmineswhiskers

I reckon the cheap listing this time last week probably doesn't help as there's generally more of everything.

soolin

It was a double whammy for me. The pricing in proportion meant that i can actually no longer sell some of my best selling lines as postage almost tripled as they were too big for a large letter, yet oh so light. Then of course I lost my overseas bidders, my stuff doesn't show up at all in the US so the ony US sales I am making are from previous customers who have bookmarked my items.

I made a decision after the PIP came in to stop selling so much as I was paying a lot of listing fees for a few sales. I sell less than 100 items a month now and am careful what I list to try and ensure that most of the stuff sells first time.

rose_sparky

I do wonder where Ebay will be in say, three or five years time and how many of us will still be struggling along!

soolin

Personally I think we will all have got bored of ebay and intenret auctions generally and will all be doing something completely different...just waiting for the next big thing.

Although having said that this ebay phase has lasted longer than just about anything else I can remember.

Contains_Mild_Peril

rose_sparky wrote: »

I'm joining the ranks of others on here who are feeling despondant regarding their ebay sales (or lack of).

Today I'm just about ready to load all of my gear into the car and go to the nearest high street and give it away.

You could try your nearest car boot sale instead...

rose_sparky wrote: »

Just to add insult to injury I charged £6.00 p&p for a parcel and it actually cost me £7.25 this morning. My fault I know, but I do have a problem accurately weighing larger boxes on my small digital scales.

I had that problem too and once actually spent more on postage than the total price paid when a large book turned out to be over 1kg although my scales thought it was well under. I now use fishing scales for larger items, which I can put in a carrier bag to hang on the hook.
I've been finding sales pretty rubbish lately too, with loads of stuff either unsold or selling for peanuts.