A number of readers have spotted that eBay have changed the automatic relist option from auto-relist 3 times down to auto-relist 1 time.
eBay have confirmed that this is a change which went into effect on the 6th of October.
The reasoning behind this change is that if the product hasn’t sold after being listed twice, there’s a likelihood that it could quite well not sell a third or fourth time. eBay suggest you revisit the listing and check things like price (are you competitive), title and description (have you got the right keywords), pictures, could you add more pictures (up to 12) or is your original picture clear in focus and large enough, are you using the right selling format and is your postage cost reasonable?
Of course if you do want your products to be auto-relisted there’s nothing at all to stop you using multi-channel software to do just that. However it does make sense to give your listings a sanity check at least once a month, especially those listings which have had zero sales.
Whilst there are some products which are simply rare and it might take six months for a buyers to come looking for them, the vast majority of products should be selling on a much more frequent basis. Otherwise it might be time to liquidate the stock, free up some warehouse space and some cash and restock with more attractive merchandise which will sell. Ultimately retail is all about churning your money over as many times as possible and the more slow selling stock you hold the less profits you’ll make by the end of the year.
eBay will also be testing some layout changes over the next couple of weeks. If you’re in a test group you may notice changes to headers, menus and links.
6 Responses
Is this Auction listings or BUY IT NOW’s?
I like private sellers who list high £££. It makes my offer look a bargain! Not happy that ebay are going to auto remove these listings that don’t sell as it could bring average sale prices down of those listings that do.
I assume this doesn’t include Good Til Cancelled listings? I know that probably seems quite obvious, but I just want to make sure.
With Christmas rapidly approaching there must be the chance that there are ebay buyers who will be looking for the very unusual and rare items that ebay is about to remove from the listings. As an example I sell Books and we are always hearing that a significant proportion of our Annual Sales are done in the 8 weeks or so before Christmas(there are various versions of the statistics).
So people will be looking for the Book on Ancient Egypt or Alexander the Great or the Battle of the Atlantic or whatever as a present for Uncle Charlie or other relation. These Books probably do not sell in large enough quantities over the year to qualify as regular sellers. But in the run up to Christmas they could appear on shopping lists. Yet on October 6th ebay changed to rules so instead of being relisted 3 times they are now relisted just once and then dumped in ‘Unsold’ and so out of the view of potential customers.
It is certainly wise to check listings reasonably often. After all we have all seen listings for one item but with a photo of a completely different item. But no matter how often you review a listing for a Book on Alexander the Great it will always be a Book on Alexander the Great and unlikely to appeal to somebody who is only interested in Cooking and Gardening.
There is a saying in the Book Trade that the Average Bookshop sells of the Average Book 3 copies. This is certainly true of such as Books on Alexander the Great and Ancient Egypt(I wish it were different as I have books on both subjects in stock).
I agree with some of the above but to be honest I’ve changed listing titles as per ebay’s recommendation, added all kinds of words they’ve recommended, changed pics etc and still sales don’t improve greatly, a few good days and then all on a sudden nothing for hours on end. I still have problems with what were my most popular listings, so much so that I’m separating by variation listings again as they seem to be the worst.
I just think I’ve got this search thing sorted and then a listing stops selling, no matter what price, even 99p items with free postage just sometimes will not sell when I’m in that period of ’12 – 18 hours of no sales’. Until this year, this is something I have never experienced on ebay. Getting more and more confused on how to list on ebay and whether to use their recommended words or my own.