It’s been a few months since I’ve given an update but I’m excited to announce that I’m now up to just over 800 listings in my eBay store. My goal was to get to around 1,000, see what sales would be like and then go from there.
I’ll admit that I am disappointed with the amount of sales I’m getting for having over 800 listings. I thought it would be more. However, I’m still profitable just not as profitable as I’d hoped to be.
There are a few reasons why I think sales might not be as good as I’d hope they’d be.
The first is my pricing strategy. I intentionally price items on the higher side to leave room to run sales and offer discounts. eBay has a few features now that you can use to increase sales but they all take a percentage of the sale as a fee. So if I priced the items on the lower side I wouldn’t have any margin left to be able to use any of those features.
I have yet to be very aggressive with the marketing and paid advertising features they offer because I wanted to see what sales would be like without me using them even with higher prices. I may have to change up my strategy here soon.
Another reason is I purchased a lot of inventory that just doesn’t sell well. I notice whenever I put up new listings there is usually a few items that sell fast and there is a pattern where similar items sell fast every time. I usually buy my items to resell in large lots so a lot of times there may be a few good items in the lots that make them worthwhile to buy and the rest aren’t worth much.
I may have to start selling off large lots of items that I know won’t sell well individually for low prices to recoup my money faster. I always knew that I may have to do this but have just been lazy about it. This would also significantly decrease my total listings and require me to spend more time sourcing new items but it may be what I have to do.
A third reason, which is one I was aware of from the start, may just be timing since I sell holiday decorations. I always knew that my sales would be the best leading up to Christmas. One of the reasons I got into selling holiday decorations was I was surprised that people do buy them year around. However, it seems to be certain items sell better than others.
For example, Department 56 and Lemax Christmas villages sell fast no matter what time of the year. On the other hand, Hallmark ornaments can be hit or miss. I’m sitting on a lot of Hallmark ornaments right now that I may have to liquidate in bulk if they don’t sell by the end of the year.
At the end of the day I’m happy with the progress I’ve made over this year with my eBay store. I only started in March of this past year so it hasn’t even been a full 6 months since I’ve been working on it. I’m confident I’ll figure out a way to make it more profitable over time. I’m enjoying the process which is the most important part to me.