JWPC
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posted on December 8, 2002 03:22:26 PM new
I haven't posted on Yahoo for months, as it seemed to be an act in futility....but wondered at this time of year if anything was yet selling?
I used to post on Yahoo (BEFORE) the changes 2 years ago, and sold like crazy at this time of year, but haven't really done anything since the Major change 2 years ago, my sales dropped to almost nothing, and I returned to eBay.....
Is anyone selling much during this season?
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justmypostingid
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posted on December 8, 2002 05:25:03 PM new
I listed a some and sold a few, nothing to get worked up about.
It will never be the way it use to be.
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tooltimes
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posted on December 8, 2002 07:41:23 PM new
I know that books are VERY difficult to sell on Yahoo. They don't even get many pagehits.
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JWPC
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posted on December 9, 2002 08:33:56 AM new
Thanks! Although we merchandize a WIDE variety of items from European Crystal to Knives - it sounds like altering my auctions to fit the weird format Yahoo has always had, isn't worth the effort....guess I'll pass...
Thanks!
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blairwitch
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posted on December 10, 2002 05:22:32 PM new
I am having a 27% sell rate so far this month which I am very happy with. My sales are best starting next month. My best items go to ebay, yahoo gets the seconds.
For all you whiners who miss the old yahoo it can be easily found here www.bidville.com
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kozersky
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posted on December 10, 2002 05:32:50 PM new
What about Bidville? Why doesn't AW include services to other sites?
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tooltimes
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posted on December 10, 2002 08:50:03 PM new
The sell through rates at the other sites are far to low for AW or Andales or Spare Dollar or any third party service to spend any effort on.
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stonecold613
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posted on December 11, 2002 09:41:37 PM new
Sales at Yahoo have been great. Probably my record december so far. Glad there is a very good second fiddle to the big E. And cheap to use.
JWPC, you finally came out and admitted that you haven't listed there in two years. Or is it a few months? Funny how your posts in the past have lambasted Yahoo for your lack of sales and now you are stating you haven't listed for some time now.
[ edited by stonecold613 on Jan 5, 2003 08:16 AM ]
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katiyana
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posted on December 12, 2002 12:08:49 PM new
I've done OK - had someone come in and snatch up 10 items just before the closed just this week.
I'm still having issues of NPBs - many more problems collecting from Yahoo buyers than any other venue I list at.
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JWPC
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posted on December 14, 2002 12:11:15 AM new
Stonecold, you didn't understand what I said; I said that I hadn't posted on Yahoo in the last few months - Regarding 2 years ago, what I said was: I used to post on Yahoo (BEFORE) the changes 2 years ago, and sold like crazy at this time of year, but haven't really done anything since the Major change 2 years ago, my sales dropped to almost nothing, and I returned to eBay.....
I go to Yahoo every few months and run some test auctions to see if Yahoo has come back to life....haven't found it has yet, and then I wait a while, and test it again.
I post regularly on eBay and one great niche auction for specialty items – which is enough with our 5 web sites.
Blairwitch Bidville isn't the old Yahoo.....we were selling like crazy all the time on the OLD Yahoo - before the change 2 years ago -
I tried Bidville with lots of auctions, for a good while, and sold nothing, and haven't gone back.
We have been selling fantastically on eBay since Thanksgiving weekend - probably our best December on eBay since we started in 1996.
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nanntique
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posted on December 30, 2002 11:59:56 PM new
Not so's I can find..........
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justmypostingid
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posted on December 31, 2002 08:27:58 AM new
Blairwitch barfed "I am having a 27% sell rate so far this month"
And you think that's good? 2 years ago I was doing about 80 to 90% sell through.
Some of us sell full time online and 27% is flea market stats and that don't pay the bills.
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lanefamily
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posted on December 31, 2002 09:53:18 AM new
If I got 27% on yahoo I would be there in full force. I get about 5% now and they are chump change stuff. I make enough on the one item to pay the listing fees.
27% is not that bad actually. That is about our current on eBay. It is all in the markup. 27% would suck if you only had a 20% margin.
Jim
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tooltimes
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posted on December 31, 2002 10:01:58 AM new
I quit using Yahoo after the last FLD. Just enough sales to pay for fees and there are many more deadbeats than ebay in my case.
I went back to ebay and found that all ebay fees can be absorbed by the buyers by charging a little extra on the shipping. If you constantly can not sell stuff on ebay then you're either too highly priced on your stuff or selling stuff that needs to sit and wait for the right buyer. Ebay is not the place for those items as the fees will eat you up while waiting and waiting for the right buyer.
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blairwitch
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posted on December 31, 2002 01:23:55 PM new
justmypostingid take the time and read my complete message. My SECONDS go to yahoo. Instead of whining I did research on yahoo and now I am reaping the rewards. I have listened to whiners say the site would die since the insertion fees, but the listings remain steady.
Lanefamily all my items start on yahoo for $4.95-$9.95. One sale out of 100 auctions usually pays the insertion fees for the other 99. I cant complain at all. Me and several friends list our items together and over time we have built a huge customer base. Our eBay customers are told about our yahoo auctions in the EOA email we send. Many of our buyers already have yahoo acoounts. We will be listing 1,000 items on yahoo sunday night. We listed 1,000 on the bay during FLD and currently have a 24% bid rate on items ending tonight.
Tooltimes I dont enjoy FLD's at yahoo. They cut into my sales. I have very little deadbeats on yahoo, but most of my sales are from ebay customers. 
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justmypostingid
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posted on December 31, 2002 07:02:12 PM new
Well BW it sounds like your doing things much the same way as I but not with Yahoo anymore. Yahoo destroyed my sales on thier site completely when they removed my category. There is no category you can now click to find my items. We use to have 15 sellers that sold there, ZERO remain (Full time). My sales were around $500 to $600 a WEEK and we didn't have to use ebay to bring in new blood, they found us.
Emails, get the canned reply that has nothing to do with the email sent.
Phone calls: Get the "I'll tell my producer".
I would gladly pay thier listing fees if they were to bring back our category.
Nope, no loved lost between me and Yahoo.
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replaymedia
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posted on December 31, 2002 10:13:28 PM new
justmypostingid - What's the big deal with categories anyway? When I'm shopping I use keywords or text searches. I don't believe I've *EVER* simply browsed through all the category menus.
Wouldn't listing under some version of "OTHER" work out for you? Especially since it sounds like you would have &NO* competition?
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tooltimes
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posted on December 31, 2002 10:54:28 PM new
I've never searched by category either. Seems like a weak or lame excuse for not selling to me.
On ebay it would be foolish to limit your looking for items by categories and buyers get into not using a limiting category search at all.
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blairwitch
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posted on January 1, 2003 10:44:24 AM new
Categories mean little to me as a buyer. No way am I going to take hours looking when I can type in keywords, and text. This is just another seller who is upset over the listing fees. It has nothing to do with categories. Look at his sentence:
And you think that's good? 2 years ago I was doing about 80 to 90% sell through.
The day of free lunch at yahoo is over. Sites had a choice to either charge fees, or close up shop.
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justmypostingid
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posted on January 1, 2003 03:20:40 PM new
So when all you list on ebay and your listing a camcorder I guess you list it in Ebay motors or maybe under baby toys.
Categories do matter and when the category you sell in goes from the second click from the front page to gone together it makes a big difference.
Some might not use the category tree but it would seem that my customers did.
As you listing fees blairwitch a nickel is nothing, after they started the fees I had over $1000 in ebay feedback credits to use to find out if yahoo was still worth using for selling.
I guess I could use Yahoo as advertisement to my website and ebay auctions like I see so many others doing.
If you can use them to sell then I say more power to you, I'm done with them personally.
[ edited by justmypostingid on Jan 1, 2003 04:26 PM ]
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tooltimes
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posted on January 1, 2003 07:35:29 PM new
Ebay has something hundreds of categories and most items can easily fit in several different categories. When I want to find the best category to list an item on ebay I search both current and closed auctions to see how the item is doing or did and in which category. To not use a method similar to that is pure folly.
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replaymedia
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posted on January 2, 2003 05:01:08 AM new
'So when all you list on ebay and your listing a camcorder I guess you list it in Ebay motors or maybe under baby toys.'
Of course not. But if there weren't a specific category for camcorders, the 'Electronics/Other' or 'Video Equipment/Misc' would probably be close enough.
It's not perfect, but if *I* had a product with zero competition(as you claim), you can be darned sure I'd be trying SOMETHING to take advantage of a wide open market.
PS- Even if you *DID* put it all under baby toys, most people would STILL find it with a simple text search.
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scottyaloha
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posted on January 3, 2003 12:38:45 PM new
Out of curiosity..can anyone tell me what changes Yahoo made 2 years ago?? Thanks..
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blairwitch
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posted on January 3, 2003 02:37:19 PM new
They kicked the freeloaders from the site by charging insertion fees. That was a sad day for the sellers of ads, recipes, coupons, and other junk. They also banned porn and nazi items from the auction site. You can find many of the items on auto relist at bidville and other 3rd tier sites.
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tooltimes
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posted on January 3, 2003 02:42:17 PM new
Yahoo killed 2 million listings with a hefty 20 cent listing fee. There was some junk auctions but there were also many more quality auctions that needed to sit for a while to find the buyers they needed. Books and postcards are a prime example.
Now the Google search engine is burying the Yahoo search engine in popularity. Yahoo does far too many things wrong.
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scottyaloha
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posted on January 3, 2003 04:02:07 PM new
Thanks!
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stonecold613
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posted on January 5, 2003 08:28:40 AM new
Yahoo installing listing fees was the best thing that ever happened at Yahoo. It just took some time for the quality sellers to figure it out. What happened is it drove all of the crap auctions, mainly commons sports cards and recipes and sent them to that sespool we call bidville. Justmyposting id falls into that catagory. He is just upset because his crap isn't feasible to list on Yahoo anymore because of it's worthlessness and is finding out that bidville is a completely dead site to do anything on. Now he whines because he can't sucker anymore people in purchasing crap.
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justmypostingid
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posted on January 5, 2003 09:50:23 AM new
stonecold613 do you practice being a #*!@ or does it come naturally?
I have never said a word about the listing fees hurting my sales. I have never said anything about the listing fees. I said that when they killed the category I sold in cut my sales.
As for my products being worthless, the year 2002 was a record year with net sales approaching 50k.
Yes I am upset because my products are no longer feasible to list on Yahoo anymore not because of a $.05 listing fee but because the vast majority of my customers don't use the search function but the category tree to find my items.
If your going to whine about whiners you need to make sure your whine is correct first.
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justmypostingid
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posted on January 5, 2003 10:32:37 AM new
replaymedia I never said the was zero competition I said there use to be 15 Full Time sellers. There are what I call part time sellers still selling but very few are indeed selling anything. I have even bought from them and turned around and resold elsewhere and made money.
"Wouldn't listing under some version of "OTHER" work out for you"?
I would say a good 85% of my customers are NEW to the auction scene and they just don't understand the search.
I burned up about $900 Ebay feedback credits tiring that but it didn't work, the sales numbers were not there anymore, I still have about $140 and some change left in my account so fees are not the issue!
Every general auction site with a million+ members has our category, but not Yahoo.
Yahoo needs to redo it's category tree and remove stuff like Furby with 38 items listed with zero bids, Tamagotchi & Giga Pet with 4 items listed and on and on. Go check out the Yahoo Auction chat boards and see that I'm not the only one "Whining" about the lack of categories.
Nothing would make my happier than to return to Yahoo and make the money I was making, I would have no problem giving Yahoo a cut in my sales.
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