eBay Sell through rates decrease and listings increase

I recently read in one of the many newsletters that I subscribe to that eBay sell through rates have dropped due to the new fixed price listing specials and length. While the number do show a decline in sell through, you have to look at this realistically.

When eBay announced the addition of Fixed Price 30 day listings as well as the 35 cent listing fees, the total number of listings shot up. Everyone was taking advantage of it. So, yes, your sell through rate will more than likely descrease as the number of bad listings go up.

eBay probably more than cover their expenses on this marketing tactic as every seller switched to the FP30 format. Looking at the charts on MedVed you can see how the number of listings dramatically increased. The numbers of listings sold via BIN dropped because now most listings are selling through fixed price.

More Competition for Getting Noticed 

It stands to reason that the more listings, the more competition there will be to get noticed on eBay. You’ll definitely need to begin some off eBay Marketing as well as improving your listing titles and descriptions. I cover several off eBay marketing strategies in the Top Seller Coaching series that have helped my clients over the years. It’s interesting to see that many have been mostly unaffected by the increase in eBay listings. I have to assume that is due to the traffic they are receiving from outside of eBay.

Remember, eBay is more than just selling, it’s like any business. You must market yourself and your products if you wish to stay ahead of the competition and survive. You must set aside a marketing budget each year and that budget should be made up of pay per click ads and also include your time or your employees time for putting off eBay marketing in place. Many of those methods are free, but a person’s time still has a cost associated with it.

Good luck with your eBay selling.

Jeff

How to write a title for your eBay Listings

eBay Title Writing Tips

Trying to be help your buyers find your auctions can be a truly daunting task. Most people only search eBay by title, not by description, and that means that you only have those 55 characters of the title to cover all the possible search terms. That’s not easy. Here are a few pointers.

Don’t bother with eBay clichés: There are plenty of eBay auction titles that say things like “Super rare camera wow look low price”. Don’t waste the characters in your title, as no-one is going to search for them.

Think like a buyer: If you were looking for your item, then what exactly would you type into that box? If you think it’d help, try searching yourself to find someone else selling your item. What were the first things you thought of typing?

Think like other sellers: Keep an eye on which sellers are doing best with items like yours, and try to copy their title styles - if it works for them, it can work for you.

Be specific: You should be sure to write the item’s brand and specific model number in the title, as people will often search only for this information. Make sure that you also say exactly what the item is.

A Few Examples.

Here are a few examples of good titles. They’re real, and they’re on eBay right now, making their sellers money. So what makes them good?

“Dell Latitude Laptop Celeron Notebook PC Computer”

If you know about computers, you’ll know instantly what this auction is selling. It has manufacturer (Dell) and product line (Latitude), followed by a few technical specifications (Celeron is the processor speed). Notice also that the title includes the four words ‘laptop’, ‘notebook’, ‘PC’ and ‘computer’, as the seller wants people looking for any of those words to see his auction.

“OASIS Don’t Believe the Truth CD Album (New)”

This auction for a CD is well formatted: it gives the artist name in capital letters, followed by the album name. It then manages to include the two key words ‘CD’ and ‘album’, as well as the word ‘new’ - that means that anyone searching for ‘new oasis cd’, ‘oasis new album’ and so on will find this auction.

“1840 Penny Black stamp, certificate, four margins”

Here’s a slightly more obscure one, from the exciting world of stamp collecting. A penny black is one of the oldest and most famous stamps. It uses a few key words that collectors will consider important: ‘four margins’ indicates that the stamp has been cut out with some margins around it and so isn’t damaged, and ‘certificate’ tells you that the item has a certificate of authenticity - it’s a real penny black. Remember to use every bit of space to squeeze in as much important information as you can in the title.

So now that you’ve written a winning title, you need to start on a great description.

Use Free Shipping and Save

eBay has been offering some nice incentives for sellers. First and foremost is the 30 Day/Good Til Cancelled Fixed Priced listings, also called FP30. You can now list an item in Fixed price format for as little as $.35!. Nice bargain.

Now, PowerSellers can offer Free Shipping on items and get double their PowerSeller fee discounts, Free Subtitles and a boost in search results.

If you have room in your margin to offer free shipping, it is well worth it. In Fact, use this little trick to help out even more:

• Use a Fixed Price listing format and get your Free Upgrades(Subtitle) by offering free shipping.
• If you have multiple items (Quantities) , create a listing for a quantity greater than 1. This will help keep up your visibility as items sells, you stay at the top of the results.
• Create a post on your blog about your new listing, or put a link into Twitter. Be sure to use the ?REFID=STORE at the end of you link.

Using the steps above will get you listed in the search engines quickly (For blog posts with good keywords and unique content) Double your final value fees as a PowerSeller and save 75% on Final Value Fees using the REFID=STORE link.