Hi, guys, this is not a topic regarding GS, but rather Ebay. We are sellers of pre-owned clothing for 6 years now, and since this Spring we are seriously going down. Is it just us, or you also saw a change in selling? What strategy should we follow to survive with unique items and GTC? I am seriously worried, because all we ever learned and did, it’s not working anymore, listing 100 items a week used to pay for the hard work, now I feel like Ebay is punishing us for listing more on the website. I feel the more we try, the worst it gets. We promoted tons of listings (even that will lower even more of our low income), nothing changed. We have offices to pay for, salaries too and sales are so slow, that we can’t survive for long like this. I know a lot of you are having good knowledge of Ebay, so I hope there is a solution we could try. Thank you so much and sorry if I am messing up the feed.
@margoritka88 unfortunately this is nothing new and surprising, eBay is no longer profitable as it was before. Just discussed in another thread New GarageSale 8 Pricing . From my point of view, there are just a few solutions within eBay:
- promoted sales (which does not work as you/me/us expected)
- auctions instead of GTC (but they cost, not always give you good results and do not fit with some kind of goods like yours)
- listing a lot of items (at least 3-400/week) and having a huge stock (not easy to reach…)
Situation is extremely different between categories, I heard that clothes ones are not going good… my idea? Starting looking somewhere else…
Oh, I see … It’s just so unexpected and inconvenient.
I cannot tell for pre-owned clothes, but in my country (in Europe), I see many people buying (new) clothes on Internet coming in parcels that are Zalando branded.
The post offices are saturated from those parcels and I constantly see people sending pacels back because they have a “free return” policy. It appears that about 60% percent of the parcels are being shipped back, which has strong environmental impacts (CO2 emissions and others)
People shopping for new clothes would not consider eBay as the first marketplace for this ; most probably they first look at Zalando, then maybe Amazon and Aliexpress.
I’m in a city where there are lot of local shops for second-hand clothes. I assume the situation is different in rural areas and depending on every country.
Were your customers in a specific country?
IMO Amazon has impacted Ebay sales. That doesn’t quite make sense for your clothes. But also as time goes by more and more people are selling on the major platforms. So in order to compete you better make sure your margins are bigger or look for other selling methods. Maybe check the latest apps such as posh and mercari which are made for your type of item.
I had trouble with the same thing, but apparently eBay heard from many of us and will be changing their GTC policy as of July 1:
Starting July 1, 2019, we will change the Good 'Til Cancelled renewal schedule from every 30 days to once per calendar month. The new monthly renewal date for a Good ‘Til Cancelled listing will be based on the listing start date. The updated renewal schedule should make it easier for you to manage your business by aligning with monthly billing cycles and promotions.
I’m in a similar situation, selling pre-owned shoes, jeans & shirts mainly. My previous annual turnover dropped by 20% & this year so far is no better. eBay have changed methods of search algorithms & much of what used to work now seems useless. Try using eBay’s bulk editing tool, select everything in your inventory & then submit, don’t need to edit anything but the system thinks you’ve revised listings & it seems to like that so bungs you further up the search pages.
Unless you’re selling niche, extremely hard to find vintage clothing, you’re just adding junk to the biggest junk pile in the world, ebay.
If you’ve been selling for 6 years on the platform, you must not visit the Ebay seller forums. This has been a steady , predictable decline for 10 years now. I stress, if you’re not selling TRULY unique items, you will fail.
You also have to keep in mind, a social/economic collapse is building, so that will impact your sales as well, all over North America. You didn’t really tell us if they are desireable ‘vintage’ pre owned clothes, so one is to assume you are just selling thrift store finds, that have already been determined to not be profitable by some thrift store to sell online. Maybe a bit about what you sell and where you find your clothing would help with some insight on the direction you have gone.
When was running a business ‘convenient’? Can you share your ebay seller name please?
Sorry, but the updates do not change anything about the problems with getting your used one-off items seen on eBay.
eBay is killing my sales of used one-off items too with GTC. I have tried auctions. Unless I want to give away stuff for 1 bid at 0.99, that is not working. Promotions are a scam. When everybody else is promoting, how will you get noticed? I have had some luck sending offers to watchers, but only 3% to 5% sell. eBay is dying for me.
As you sell pre-owned clothes, you will want to look at putting your listings elsewhere as I do not see the situation with eBay improving. With Cassini’s search algorithms for GTC, you are only likely to see your sales continue to go down. Try putting your listings on PoshMark and Mercari as they are much better platforms for clothes than eBay is right now. Good luck.
One thing that has to some extent worked for me is to end GTC listings regularly (preferrably just before they are renewed) and then list them as new items. That way, they at least show up high in the results when people search for newly listed items. And for those who have searches saved with email notifications.
It’s probably a pain to do that if you have hundreds of active listings.
Maybe it’s something that GS could offer as a feature: end GTC listings at a predefined time and then relist them as a new and separate listing.
GS8 is supposed to allow you to automate ending GTC listings and resisting them, but that will not bring back “Ending Soon” elevation to your listings. You also have to decide if the new GS8 pricing iw worth it for you. Especially as sales for one-off items keeps declining on eBay.
Thanks for sharing this, I had not seen this feature mentioned anywhere for GS8. Will not change my attitude towards the pricing, though.
Yes, it does not bring back ‘ending soon’ visibility, I know (and feel the effect of it).
Hmmm. Your reply made me look at this again. I guess that I may be wrong about GS8 allowing you to automate ending GTC and resisting. I was going by an Ina Steiner article in ecommercebytes.com https://www.ecommercebytes.com/2019/04/13/tools-help-ebay-sellers-adapt-to-gtc-mandate/ that said that GS8 would have a “GTC auto cancel” feature, but I am not seeing that feature in the GS8 descriptions. They should offer it especially for the price.
That would be very interesting to hear directly @ilja where this info comes from, since I am not aware of such a useful feature in the current version… that would be a godsend…
Hello,
Can someone please share your experience about selling rare and unique vintage foreigner (Not from the US) toys in eBay?
Is this category also affected as the others?
if yes, can someone please provide me with some suggestion to sell?
Thanks
If it is something very rare or really unique, it will probably sell reasonably quickly on eBay. However, it you are in Europe, you may want to also look at Catawiki as an auction site for those items.
A very good article. I would also be interested to know haw progress is going Ilya, although I can easily work around it.
Just an approximate implementation date would be useful.
David
I am selling from Mexico City and not that very rare o really unique just “Rare” and I have some “Unique Mexican toys” Catawiki is only for Europe? Any other suggestion?
Thanks