Question
Ok, everyone has ideas of how they are going to combat the fee increase
please share your ideas here so we can all formulate a plan.
if people quit listing 99 cent items and 1.99 items, what is ebay going to do for a home page lead in like the "look what you can buy for under a buck" type logo's
they have been touting...GET IT CHEAP on EBAY then make it impossible for us to "sell cheap"
If they were a real store this is how the marketting consultant would report to them. ...........
You have an image problem with your present marketting plan. You advertise buy it cheap yet technically your inventory is not cheap. Before we can design a marketting plan we need to decide which avenue you want to persue:
#1]the "cheaper" avenue, if so you need to change you inventory to match you campaign.
#2] the unique and "quality for you money", then you need to work on that.
maybe this is what the real problem is with the fee increase......it is confusing our psyche, ebay advertises to the customers, we sell cheap, ebay even encourages it on the listing page itself, it now has little spots on the relist page where with a click of a mouse you can cut your opening price by 50% or lower it to .99 without typing a number........then they jack the he!! out of the listing fees so we can't "sell cheap"
ebay's marketting department needs to buy a clue.
Answer
And before anyone wanders in here to complain aobut us complaing, get a life
by complaining here, we stop a lot of spousal and staff abuse, so type away any complaints you want.
We need to gather ideas to streamline and fine tune listings. ....we gotta stcik together.
i am keeping my store for a few more months, unless I come up with a better idea, but they WILL get faded out this year. i will probably keep one of them.
this is the straw that is breaking the proverbial camels back in some departments, and is the boot in the buttocks some need to move on, so that is a good thing.
Answer
Does what you sell lend itself to a website? Can you budget some "advertising dollars" over the next few months and use ebay to entice people to your website? Can you afford to offer some items for ridiculously low prices AND pay for featured auctions on the low-priced stuff, in order to attract people to YOU and YOUR PRODUCT? And just consider whatever "bath" you take financially to be an investment in your indepent-of-ebay future?
If I was a full-time seller on ebay, that's what I'd be doing. Spending BIG money RIGHT NOW and AFTER the fee increases in order to wean myself off ebay. Y'know, that whole "short term pain for long-term gain" thing. Every e-mail would have a "click here for a coupon" link to MY website, and once you are ready to leave ebay, I'd invite EVERYONE who e-mailed you over the past few months to visit the new website and enter a contest/print a coupon/read your newsletter/share a story.
Sadly, the buyers are still on ebay. So USE that to your long-term advantage with a strategy that gets them to YOU, independent of ebay.
I'd even start leaving out vital information in listiings, just so people WOULD e-mail you (unless of course ebay is blanking out return email addys now, which wouldn't surprise me, either)
My personal strategy? List like a fiend over the next couple of weeks, and clear out everything I want GONE! (Thank goodness ebay is not how I make my living) If I continue to list after the price increases, my S&H is going up. A LOT!
Answer
Personally, I think we should all boycott GALLERY . If we all pulled together it would get their attention. I intend to use Gallery very sparingly except for my paintings (no choice here). Whatcha think....could we pull it off?
Answer
Our strategy will be to eliminate our store listings and double our auction/fixed price listings, which will reduce our total listings by 75%. This is more to eliminate our exposure to revisions due to future eBay whims than any financial considerations. More selective listing is also intended to improve our auction/fixed price sellthrough rates to offset the lost store sales.
We do need to verify pricing differences between auction listings with BIN and fixed price listings and that fixed price listings would still be picked up in Froogle before deciding on our auction to fixed price ratio among remaining listings.
We will park extra listings in Turbo Lister to begin with and then on our own website rather than in the eBay store.
Answer
Ebay stores are easier than a website...admit it
it is alot easier to flip it inot the sotre
than to load it to a website
that is the rut we have to get out of......
Answer
flip it inot the sotre
The T comes before the O, Gabsy.....
I thought you were speaking Canuckian French there for a little while. The fingers need to travel at the right speeds.
Cheers, Kevin
Answer
I listed about 200 items for the "not free, but a dime" free listing day.
Of those, between the first round and the relist, all but 50 or 60 sold.
Of those, I relisted half, and put the other half into my store. When those items sell, I will replace them, if a store item sells, I will move an older auction item to my store, and start a new auction item. If an auction ityem sells I will replace it with a new auction item.
This will keep my ebay insertion fees the same every month. It means I have store items to show to auction lookers.
As to the fee increase, I changed the "buy it now" prices on about 60 of my regular items that I sell and relist all the time. Most were raised, some were lowered.