Question
I have been working on analysis and planning, and with the fee increases in mind, I guess I am reluctantly going to have to move away from 10-day sales, which is what I have been using for 3 years now with excellent results.
Now of course comes the question - which 7 days? In order to keep the numbers up, I need to list about 250 items per week. Up to now I did batches, ending 2 days in a row (Sunday-Monday or Wednesday-Thursday), but that's going to change.
What are you planning? What do you suggest?
Keep them in batches?
Spread them out over the week?
Keep the 2-consecutive day endings?
End on Sundays? Thursdays? other day?
Arghhh! It's bad enough I have so many other things to think about and plan, with our business changes coming. Now this!
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Answer
Mimi,
Back in the good ole days when 10 days did not incur a extra charge, I used it alot. It worked with my schedule, plus I feel it does give you the "potential" for a little more exposure. However you do risk the customer finding a similar item that ends sooner.
When the price went to .10, I drastically cut back. I used it for high dollar items, where .10 was nothing for a little exposure, or if my schedule demanded it.
Now with it costing .20, I probably will only use it on high dollar items, and then only selectivly. I would guess on less than 1% of my auctions will now see it.
As for days to list, I believe about any day has potential for a good ending except Friday, Saturday. I usually do Sunday or Monday, but more for my schedule, than the bidders.
I have all of mine end the same evening most of the time. You know when it will happen, and you plan for it. With auction management software it is not such a big blow. But having them end a couple days apart has its merits also.
Good luck with the changes. http://community.here.com/infopop/em.../icon_cool.gif
Answer
G'day Mimi & DW,
I have always preferred 7 day auctions (and find 10 day auctions very boring both as a buyer and a seller), but have used 10 day auctions to either stagger holidays or to get over a period when I will be away in a weeks time and want to keep my listing active. For the holiday purposes I have always listed lower value items, which, except for the Christmas/New Year just gone have always sold okay, but reduced the risk of having nice items missed while people were away.
This increase in the 10 day fee, probably makes that unviable, representing a 5% fee on an $8 item that targets two market (ie: two categories) or 10% if only 50% clearance is achieved. It is easier to list those items when people are about and forget about holiday listing.
As for the times that I know I will be away on a buying trip in 7 days time, I will just list better items, where the exposure won't hurt, and the extra fee is still nominal.
Ebay already has a slump in listings coming into Christmas, I assume that this will only increase that slump and make the free listing day even more popular. I may start taking holidays over Christmas and start listing again in the first week of January.
Kind Regards, Kevin
Answer
Sure wish I knew.
I list most of my stuff at high opening bids with a BIN for a little bit more.
I like 10 day auctions starting Thurs or Fri to get exposure over 2 weekends.
Darned if I know what I'll do.
Bill
Answer
I LOVED 10 day auctions...they worked very, very well for me...but I already pay enough in eBay and Pay Pal fees as it is. I don't make enough more to warrant using the 10 auctions once the fee increase takes effect.
My best auction days for sales are Sunday, Thursday and Wednesday. Try to check tv schedules in advance however...if something really good is on television you might have a rotten closing night. I can't remember what was on one Sunday night in December but I had the WORST closing night of my career that night...I think it was some holiday special!!!! (Oh...it was the Survivor finale!!!!) So from now on...I pay attention to television schedules too.
Sincerely,
Ardee-ann
SageMoon-Cottage
http://www.sagemoon-cottage.com
Answer
I used to close in the evenings. Now I purposely close when my buyers are at the office. Thursdays are an excellent day because everyone is getting fired up for Friday. http://community.here.com/infopop/em...icon_smile.gif
With this 10 day increase, I'm just going to save it for higher end items that need more exposure so that I can hit two weekends.
My 7 day auctions end Tues, Wed & Thurs.
The smallest good deed is better than the grandest good intention.
Answer
More and more of my listings are Fixed Price offerings for new items which I can restock.
If a listings costs $1.00 to $3.00 and could be extended 3 days for a dime, it seemed a good value. This does not take into consideration closing times which is less important with Fixed Price offerings but still impacts the number of views as last day, last hour viewing is still how many listings are seen.
I also liked the fact that ten day listings allowed overlap where 7 day listings required both posting and closing at the approx. same time if you wanted to maintain listings ending on the same day/evening of the week.
The old concept of auctions started on Thurs. for 10 days, with two weekends of viewing and closing during the Sunday night high buying period was a great idea.
Now that Sunday night is often a difficult time for the eBay site, more emphasis is being placed, by eBay, on immediate retail Fixed Price sales and the cost is increased, I have no idea what is valid.
Even when I seem to envision and implement a "better plan" for a listing schedule, event in my own life not to mention national holidays, special events, eBay FLD, eBay revisions and/or site problems etc. seem to make a mockery of my efforts.
I like the something up, something closing all the time approach for Fixed price but I've lost sight of what might be best for auctions.
I'm in the middle of a good run using the US, UK, Singapore site's FLD but I don't have any idea what I will do when I have to pay full fees for listings.
Maybe the people who have given up trying to figure it all out, list when the description is finished and retain their sanity have as good a solution as is available.
eBay Items
Yahoo Items
Answer
I guess I'm very unorganized... I do the 7 day lisitng and relist them when they run out. You all have me thinking that maybe I should put more thought in my auctions ending times...Most of our sales are buy-it-now, since we offer that on everything we list and then of course with our store items.
We did the ebay adwords with a little success, so I might throw a few bucks their way and renew that. Also, I am going to use the mandatory paypal thing with my high-priced items. I've just had some bad luck recently with the few items that I've listed, UGH!
Mimi, what changes are coming for your business?
We're going to be starting our website in the spring. We just bought our domain name babysoup.com last week. We're thrilled since it was taken until just a little while ago.
Bye,
Kallie
My number is 3876!
Baby Soup Ribbons and More
Answer
I guess I'm not the only one thinking about all kinds of stuff right now, judging by the different threads. Everything seems to be in a flux and the new year is a good time to implement changes.
Linens seems to be doing less well than non-linens, so I am thinking of spending more time and money and efforts on those. On the other hand, linens through the website are doing great, so I can do a cool mix by putting more emphasis on the website - I want to get at least 2,000 items in our web store asap. That's a big bite to take, but then we can go into a more cruise-like mode and add 20-30 each week or more depending on sales of course.
I don't think Adwords of any of the web promotions will work well unless there is enough in numbers to get a good ranking.
I also want to add more store items and linen-related items, so I can boost numbers there.
Basically I am re-thinking everything, and trying to see what areas to diversify in. Been doing lots of research into what to buy when I go back to Europe for a couple of months in May.
Thanks for the thoughts, keep 'em coming. And if you know of a cool item from Europe you'd love to buy here, let me know!
Mimi
____________________________
Visit my website http://www.touchofeurope.net
For more cool stuff visit my eBay sales at
http://stores.ebay.com/id=47315150&ssPageName=L2
or
http://stores.ebay.com/id=6693775&ssPageName=L2
or even
http://stores.ebay.com/id=100202938&ssPageName=L2
Answer
From a purely $ standpoint, if it was something you kept up all the time, the 10-day listing was cheaper than the 7-day listing IF you kept it up continually... I USED to do that when running auctions to promote my store.
When the new fees kick in, I'll no longer use 10-day auctions, it'll all drop back down to 7...
I still wanna know why they don't discount the 3-5 dayers if they feel the need to surcharge the 10-days because of "use of resources".. ah well, what do I know, I'm using logic. http://community.here.com/3/ws/emoticons/nono.gif
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