BillsHobbyEmporium
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posted on February 26, 2006 08:56:27 AM new
Was going through my sales reports on eBay. It was very interesting. That last reported week (2-12 to 2-18) the store sales 3 to 2 over auction sales. Usually the last week of the month the store sales are near or sometimes a little higher than auctions but this is the middle of the month. Will be interesting to see what this next 2 weekly reports have to say.
Bill
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bluroks
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posted on February 26, 2006 09:53:21 AM new
Yes we noticed this too. However what is worrying us is our auctions are dead.
Certain catagories we sell in are fine for stores. But our vintage clothing line just tanked and stopped selling as auctions are the main for this group of vintage clothing we sell.
Anything we have otherwise we are selling really well through the Ebay store.
Only thing now is the vintage clothing catagory. Just died since Ebay rolled out the search changes. Thats the one catagory that never does well in our store but that is our main money maker on auctions and now dead.
Have to keep playing around. But very happy with our other catagories selling in the store.
Just worried what new fees they are going to charge later on this year for stores!
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annekila
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posted on February 26, 2006 10:20:47 AM new
I know this is not a popular point of view, but I don't think ebay should mix stores with auctions. If anything, ebay could open up a new EBAY STORES....totally separate from auctions. Store owners don't pay the high listing fees, but have the benefits of auction listings. Gosh...could ebay be trying to phase out auctions?
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cblev65252
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posted on February 26, 2006 10:54:28 AM new
The insertion fees may not be as high as with auctions, but the FVF is much higher. 8%, I believe. So, as store owners we pay the monthly fee, the listing fees and 8% FVF. We pay our share. Also, most of us have auctions running as well.
Cheryl
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
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annekila
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posted on February 26, 2006 11:25:46 AM new
I'm sorry. I had no idea the fees were so high. I still think that stores and auctions should be separate, though.
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BillsHobbyEmporium
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posted on February 26, 2006 11:32:11 AM new
Yes I do auctions and store. I use the auctions to get rid of surplus on deals I buy. My auctions have not lost anything this month as far as volume or dollars but my sales are up over 50% from last month and that is obviously coming from the stores. The people with stores get cheap listings but eBay gets a much higher FVF from us. We also get a much better price in the store so it all works out. eBay will still have auctions but they realize that they make more money off of stores.
If they raise the fees on stores I am already setting up my own website and just use eBay as a tease to get people to come to me and buy more.
There is also other ways though to get your FVF down. It is called store referals it helps but most of the searches that lead to my store is from eBay.
Bill
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vintagepostcardsdotorg
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posted on February 26, 2006 05:36:16 PM new
"Gosh...could ebay be trying to phase out auctions?"
in an interview earlier this year, Meg said eBay's going increasingly towards stores/buy-it-now aspects of the business as opposed to auctions. Many buyers don't want to hang around for the end of an auction. they just want their stuff, now. So this emphasis on making eBay a convenient online store shopping experience has led to eBay's impending roll-out of eBay Express, for example.
http://stores.ebay.com/postcards-postcards
http://www.vintagepostcards.org
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ebayvet
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posted on February 26, 2006 06:00:39 PM new
I agree Mike, that is the direction they have been heading for a long time - away from auctions, more toward buy it now. The new ebay express is just that. It makes sense, sell 1 item in 7 days, or sell 3 items in 7 days via buy it now which keeps getting relisted, or multiples listed. I've moved items from auction to store, put them there higher, and they sell in the store while they did not in auction. I think some people just want to buy something, and don't want to play the auction game, sniping, etc. Then again, others like that.
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BillsHobbyEmporium
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posted on February 26, 2006 06:51:06 PM new
Yes you can see that they have been heading towards that. I still do not think the auctions will go away but the emphasis will definately drop to where it is just a sideline. I know I have been keying on building my store for a little over a year. What was a part time thing to keep me occupied when I did not have work to do is turning into a full time operation. I went from being a regular seller to a silver and soon to be gold power seller in about a year.
Bill
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bluroks
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posted on February 27, 2006 04:17:08 AM new
As we mentioned in our earlier post, the auctions for us have been tanking. But this weekend, we sold a ton of stuff from the store.
And these were constant reposts of failed auctions so we just put them in the store and within the three days we put them in the store we sold over half of them!
So it is truly looking like the customers are moving also to buy it nows and store items.
Example from this week, our auctions are now only getting a 12% to 16% sellthru since Monday night. Usually high 30's and up sell thru.
We reposted some of them on Friday (put them in our store) and half of them already sold and most were paid for at the sale.
So that does tell us it is moving away and now we have to change our selling tactics and move to store.
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classicimagestudios
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posted on February 27, 2006 07:49:55 PM new
I offer a discount for purchases from my storefront. I am also getting a store referral credit if they use the link I have put in my ad to get to my storefront. The final fee for those sales are 13 cents compared to 72 cents if they don't follow that link. I am going to reword my ad yet again to try and entice more customers to use the link. May be worth trying to save on EBay fees.
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classicimagestudios
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posted on February 27, 2006 07:54:13 PM new
I offer a discount for purchases from my storefront. I am also getting a store referral credit if they use the link I have put in my ad to get to my storefront. The final fee for those sales are 13 cents compared to 72 cents if they don't follow that link. I am going to reword my ad yet again to try and entice more customers to use the link. May be worth trying to save on EBay fees.
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pixiamom
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posted on February 27, 2006 07:57:59 PM new
A caution to everyone considering changing strategies. The stores' low listing fee vs. the high FVF fee favors some sellers while penalizing other, high-end item sellers. DO THE MATH before making a strategic change!
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BillsHobbyEmporium
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posted on February 27, 2006 08:58:17 PM new
Well considering that you pay 8% up to $25.00, 5% up to $1,000 and 3% after that it is very cheap since your markup on a majority of items is 50% or higher from what they go for at auction it is very very reasonable. Especially to be in a regular mall you have to pay rent and a percentage of the sales it is extremely reasonable. The key though as in any "store" is marketing and service. I save 75% on FVF on anyone that came in from an outside source.
As I said before I use the auction venue to get rid of surplus and items that I am not sure of the value. The store is open 24/7 and the buyers are very nice.
Bill
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bluroks
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posted on March 1, 2006 04:22:42 AM new
Just to update on this post, here are the stats we have been keeping since the stores come up better now in searches:
Our store sales are now avg. 5-10 or more per day. Great.
Now auctions are tanking big time.
This is since last week:
(Please keep in mind we avg a 40% sell thru or better every day we list)
Mon 20th- 22% Tue 21st- 12% Wed 17% Mon 27th 28% Tue 28th 12%.
So you can see, our averages really fell.
And this is the catagory that does not sell well in a ebay store format.
So just to list in this catagory, we are taking a big hit with non sales. (and this is our strongest catagory!)
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neglus
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posted on March 1, 2006 06:12:26 AM new
I think if this trend holds, it is time to rethink my business plan! I will list some of my statistics (without $ info) and maybe you can help brainstorm:
I have been listing my items TWICE at auction and then I move the unsolds to my store where they sit until sold. My plan has been to run about 300 items at auction to acheive my sales goal. I don't mess with the listings once I put the items in the store - don't adjust the price or tweak the listings. As a result there are some "steals" in my store (postcards that reflect my average selling price 4 years ago). My thought on leaving the lower prices is that they may entice people to shop (and I was too lazy to adjust them). I often reduced the price when I placed a postcard in the store.
My January sales report shows that I had about 50% auction sales and 50% store sales. My average auction sales price was $2.24 higher than my average store sales price. I sold about 7% of my store inventory (this was before store results showed in regular search)and had about 20% (GASP) sell through on my auctions. The results include the 500 auction items I ran on the listing sales day ending on January 3. My ebay fees (listing, sales subscription, FVF + PayPal fees) were about 25% of sales (ANOTHER GASP)
The results for the week Feb 19-feb25 (I am away from home and did not run as many auctions as normal - did have a some relists running)shows that I sold 34.5% auction and 65.5 store items. The auction items sold for $3.26 average sale price higher than my store sales. My auction sell through was 15% (GASP) and I sold about 2% of my store inventory. My fees ran 21% of sales.
It probably is too early to declare a trend but it looks like I have many things to ponder. 1) I don't have to run as many auctions to get store sales. 2) I need to look at the older store inventory and raise some prices 3) Running relists is pointless and a big fee burner. 4)Put my "bread and butter" postcards (the ones that consistently sell with one bid)in my store without running them at auction. 5) raise prices when placing items in store 6) run auctions on strategic items only.
Ideas?
I am going to be spending most of the day trying to get from Oregon to Minnesota via Chicago (frequent flier ticket lol)WIsh me luck!
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http://stores.ebay.com/Moody-Mommys-Marvelous-Postcards?refid=store
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bluroks
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posted on March 1, 2006 09:30:47 AM new
Very interesting! Like I mentioned before the auctions we list are tanking. But check out this.
In the catagory we list most of our store items in, this past week we did not run auctions for this catagory just left them in the store. Well we sold over 50 items in that catagory and this is without auctions running for this catagory.
We are doing this with all of our other selling catagories this week. But the bread and butter for us (vintage clothing) sales are tanking at auction. We cannot get anyone to even attempt to purchase through the Ebay store.
We did run a little test though and used some of the deader inventory we had in vintage and put $1.99 on them. Did sell a few out of the store. So still have to play around somewhat.
But it is interesting to see where the auction/store are heading.
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ebayvet
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posted on March 1, 2006 09:47:51 AM new
With February in the books, I looked at my numbers and see some interesting trends. I am comparing Feb 2005 with Feb 2006 - First, with ebay increases last year, I decided at that time that I need to vary my online sales income, which was almost completely dependent on ebay. In Feb 2005, 88.5% of my online sales derived from ebay. In 2006, that number is now 59.8% - That's a huge difference, and I feel a lot better about that. Overall, my sales are up over 12% this year over last year.
As far as ebay stores, I sold about 15% more items this Feb than Feb 2005. My gross is even higher as I have items in the store that sell for higher prices. Things are going well. Auctions used to be 60% of my business, now they are about 25% - I see those trends increasing in 2006, I hope by Feb 2007 to have less than 50% of my business on ebay, with more items in fixed price sales than the auction format. Oh, one more figure, my ebay fees this Feb is 1/3 less than Feb 2005.
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