Slow Sales?

Have you done all the work to get things listed, but now your inventory just keeps sitting there? You’re frustrated you’re not making much money? Well, I’ve got your solution: 5 Ways To Increase Your eBay Sales!

These are the exact methods I use everyday to get the results I do!

Just last year alone, I sold over 2,000 items. I had over $40,000 in gross sales and net almost $20,000 (after all expenses shipping, sales tax, cost of goods, fees, etc).

And this was just from working a few hours during naptime! How crazy is that!

If you’re new to the idea of reselling, I’m offering a FREE 5-Day Reseller Bootcamp sent straight to your inbox. You can sign up here:

So How Can You Increase Your eBay Sales?

I’ve got 5 ways for you to get your items moving so you can start turning them into cash today. We will walk through them item by item.

1) Use Promoted Listings To Double Your Exposure

Promoted listings are an easy way to DOUBLE the exposure of your listings! Not sure what promoted listings are? I’ve written a whole article here called “What Are Promoted Listings?”. In it, I show you what a promoted listing looks like, how they work, and how much I pay in a month for 500 promoted listings (hint: it’s less than you think!).

With setting an ad rate of just 1%, you can double your exposure! Don’t believe it? Here’s the data to prove it. You can see my impressions were more than doubled (the green portion) with an ad rate of just 1%!

If you’re worried about the cost, I’ve written an article title “Why Promoted Listings Don’t Cost As Much As You Think.” In it, I show you how little I pay for doubling my impressions, and how promoted listings have increased my page views as well as my sales.

And if you haven’t promoted listings before, I’ve got you covered! I’ve written step-by-step instructions on how to promote listings in bulk. In just minutes you can start doubling your impressions too!

So if you haven’t used promoted listings, get out there and start promoting them! You will see a difference.

 

2) Promotions (a.k.a Sales)

Promotions (also known as sales) are a great way to get product moving! I run an (almost) continuous sale in my store. The only items not on sale, are the newest listed items.

Promotions are only available to store subscribers. I guess that is one more reason you should get a store if you are serious about selling to make money!

I have directions here on how to put items on sale in your store.

I’ve also written a complete guide about sales here: Running Sales For Your eBay Store: Everything You Wanted To Know

Here are my top 3 reasons for running sales and why you may want to give it a try.

1) Starting a sale will send a notification to watchers!

Did you know, when you create a sale, all watchers will get a notification that pops up on their phone (assuming they have notifications turned on) that alerts them the item was put on sale?

I think this is so cool! It’s like a personal message to watchers. Sometimes just a small discount is enough to remind them of your item.

2) It’s easy to clearance items out by how long they’ve been on the site.

If you’re wanting to get rid of older inventory, this is the way to do it! Setting up a sale event + markdown is an easy way to give a bigger discount the longer you’ve had the item. (If you’re wondering the different types of sales available, go here.)

You can easily filter items by how long they’ve been on the site. You could give 10% off for items that you’ve had listed for between 15-30 days, 20% for items listed 31-60 days, and so forth.

3) Save time pricing items.

The last reason I love using sales, is because it saves me a ton of time when I’m pricing items. And time saved is money! It means you can get more items listed in less time. Using sales, I don’t feel like I have to get the price “perfect.” If it’s listed a bit high, it will take care of its self when I discount it.

Interested in learning how to make money from home through reselling? Join my FREE Reseller Bootcamp now!

3) Send Offers To Buyers

This is probably my number one tip on how to keep money rolling in every single day! Use the “Send Offers To Buyers” feature! It is a relatively new feature, but it has been a total game changer!

Oh, and don’t rely on the number of listings available to send offers to that is shown in the eBay app. It is never right. Never even close. For me, it might show only 2 or 3, but I really have more like 20 I can send offers on. You will need to go to the desktop version of eBay in order to see the correct amount.

Once you are there, it’s very simple to send offers in bulk and shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes.

If you’re not sure how to send offers in bulk, you can check out my how-to to do just that!

How To Bulk Send Offers To Watchers

I have four recommendations for you:

  1. Send offers regularly. At least once a day. There is only a small window of time to capture buyers before they move on to another item.
  2. Include a personal message with the offer.
  3. If you’re wanting great results, you have to send great offers.
  4. Price your items to give yourself room to make offers as well as having sales.
 

4) Allow Best Offers

Yes, this sounds similar to sending best offers. But with this strategy, you can set up your listings to allow buyers to make offers to you! And actually, you can use both strategies in tandem to increase your sales.

Allowing best offers is easy to set up. If you use templates to list, you can have the box checked to allow best offers so you don’t even have to think about it when you list.

If you currently don’t have your listings set up to allow best offer, it’s easy to add. (If you need help with this, see my post “How To Add Best Offer To Current Listings.”) This is also where you can see how to auto accept/decline by percentage!

The facts…

Before you write this tip off, let me tell you….this will increase your sales! Worried about getting less money for items? Here’s some facts to help ease your mind:

Levi’s Men’s Jeans:
Average Selling Price (all listings): $17.99
Average Selling Price (Best Offer Accepted): $17.71

Lululemon Tank Top:
Average Selling Price (all listings): $17.80
Average Selling Price (Best Offer Accepted): $17.78

Free People Jeans:
Average Selling Price (all listings): $23.86
Average Selling Price (Best Offer Accepted): $22.48

*All numbers from Terapeak for sales in the last year. Best Offer Accepted is only the listings where a best offer was accepted.

What This Means For You!

In looking at the Terapeak numbers above, you can see the selling price where a best offer was accepted was just slightly less. The Terapeak numbers do not take into account listings that allowed best offer, but sold for full price. (Yes, this happens a lot!) I can’t find a way to check on those actual numbers, but I would venture to guess once you add those sales in, the average selling price is as much as the average selling price for all listings.

If You’re Still On The Fence About Best Offers

If you are still hesitant to add best offers to your listings, I’ve written an article called “5 Reasons Why I Allow Best Offer On Almost All My Listings.” In it you will learn:

– Why your item will stand out.
– How to price your items.
– What to do when you get an offer.
– How best offers can save you time.

Give it a try!

If you don’t use best offers yet, just give it a try! There is literally no risk in giving it a shot. If you don’t like an offer, just decline or counter it.

But seriously, the best offer setting on my listings (and being willing to accept offers) is the ONE thing that has increased my sales the most.

If all this has picqued your interest and you’re ready to jump in and start reselling, again, you can sign up for my FREE course here:


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5) Auctions

To finish off this massive list of 5 Ways To Increase Your eBay Sales, I’d like to cover what I do as a last resort when it comes to increasing sales – auctions!

Auctions are a great way to drive traffic to your store. Auctions can also get items to sell that have been sitting for a while. Often times, I have listings with several watchers (sometimes as many as 20!) but no one will make offers or just buy the thing! So off to auction it goes.

My feeling with auctions is it forces buyers to make a decision about purchasing prior to the auction ending. Buyers do not feel the same sense of urgency with fixed-price listings.

 

Three Simple Strategies for Auctions

I have three simple strategies I’d like to share with you regarding auctions.

1. Start bids at the price you’d like. Don’t feel like you have to start bids super low. Sometimes just that sense of urgency is enough to make one buyer bid. I’ve successfully sold some items by starting bids at $19.99 or more depending on the item.

2. If the item ends with no bids, drop the starting bid by a dollar or two. Often it will end up getting bid up higher than the first time on auction. Repeat if necessary. Even after dropping several dollars, items will sell for more than the original auction price.

3. Don’t be afraid to check the box to allow offers! Yes, there will be a lot of offers below the starting bid, but I always have a few items that get offers at or above the starting bid.

My personal policy is to decline all offers below the starting bid. (Unfortunately there is no way to automatically do this). Send a nice message to the potential buyer thanking them for the bid and explaining that you do not accept offers below the starting bid.

As a very, very last resort, if I need to get rid of something I start bids at the lowest price I can go.

 
 
 

Think You’ll Give It A Shot?

Whew! That was a lot! To summarize:

1) Promote your listings.

2) Run promotions (a.k.a. sales).

3) Send offers to watchers (potential buyers).

4) Allow best offers on your listings.

5) Run auctions.

 

You can put all 5 strategies together to increase your eBay sales! Let me know how it goes!

Don’t forget, if you’re wondering how you can make money from home reselling thrift items, join me here:


Hope these strategies will get you amazing results! Happy sales!

 
 

-Lee

 

 

P.S. Here’s some other things you can check out: