Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper discuss 7 tips to help pick up your eBay sales.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - Rob & Melissa How To Pick Up Your Ebay Sales
Rob: All right, guys. Are your eBay sales stagnant?
Melissa: Have you tried everything to get those sales moving?
Rob: Well, we're going to jump into seven tips that'll help you get those sales moving quicker.
Rob: All right guys. So this happens to a lot of eBay sellers from time to time, you have some items.
Melissa: It's gonna happen no matter what.
Rob: That's right and you have some items listed and they are not moving. What do you do? Well, we're going to jump into that.
We're going to give you seven tips that have helped us in the past, make those sales coming quicker and consistently come in. So let's get into it.
Melissa: And as a reseller, you know, that there will be times where it ebbs and flows. There's going to be highs and lows and you plan for them. But if you do find yourself being more stagnant, you know, maybe there's something that you can do.
And one of these things might be able to help you to get those sales moving again. All right. So the first one we'll jump right in.
Rob: Numero uno.
Melissa: The first one is check your titles and your pictures.
Rob: Very, very important, guys. You have to remember that their titles are the only way that those items are going to come up in searches.
You have 80, I think it's 88 characters, 80 characters or 88?
Melissa: I don't remember.
Rob: It's one or the other 80 or 88 characters, whatever you have try to use all those characters in your title and description. It doesn't always have to make sense. Use those buzzwords. Like if you're listing a refrigerator, maybe put the name of the refrigerator.
It's a Kenmore, it's a Frigidaire.
Melissa: The model number.
Rob: Exactly. Stainless steel, all that kind of stuff. Double door, French door, whatever.
Melissa: It doesn't have to be a pretty title. You just want as many words in it as you can fit.
Rob: So maybe somebody is looking for a French door refrigerator, and they're not looking for the exact name brand.
You want to make sure any, and every word you can think of that you would look for that item. If you were searching on a search engine, you want to make sure those, words are in the title. So when they are searching, your listing will come up.
Melissa: It will come up in all their searches.
Rob: And the same for the description. Try to give the best description you can. Make sure you, point out any, even if you have pictures of them, make sure you, you point out any imperfections on the item.
And as far as pictures, you want to make sure that your pictures are clear, so you don't have to have an amazing camera.
Melissa: You don't have to have an amazing, you know, light set up. A lot of people, that holds them up like, oh, I don't have a setup that I can take good pictures at it. It doesn't matter. You can just use we've used our phones still. Like we only use our phones. Find a blank wall, no clutter and clear, and as bright as you can.
And you can use even a phone editor to brighten them up. Don't brighten them up too much to where you change the color, but just clear and clutter-free and you show the items. So we see so many pictures that are just dark and clutter and that won't sell your item very well.
Rob: Absolutely. And make sure you're using all the pictures.
eBay allows you to put 12 pictures in there. I think on some things like, automotives or eBay motors, I think they'll allow you to put more than that, but for the normal stuff, just regular stuff that we're selling items, merchandise. Yeah. It's 12 pictures. Try to use every single one of those.
So your buyer can see have a good idea of what they are buying. Typically, I don't remember guys, they're just looking at these pictures, looking at your title and your description. That's all they have. So you want to make sure that they're happy with the listing. I mean, the item when they receive it, the best way to do that is accurately describing, and getting good pictures in there of the item.
So make sure you're doing all that. Reassess that if your items aren't moving, that's the first place to stop or to start is reassess the title description and the pictures. And just, just go in and maybe look at those things again.
Melissa: The second one. Send offers to your watchers.
Rob: This is cool. So if you have an item that is listed for awhile, eBay rolled this out a couple of years ago.
You can actually go in on the phone it's really, really user-friendly. You can go in and you can send offers to those watchers who have seen your item, and then they clicked watch on it. So they were interested in your item for whatever reason. Typically our rule of thumb, if you get to seven to 10 watchers, if that item is priced right, it should sell. Maybe you're at 10 or 15, you guys can go in and click send offer, and maybe take, you know, $20 off of it, whatever it is, depending on the price range of it, but just drop it down $20, $50 on some of our bigger items. We do that. And sometimes I'll even knock off $100 if it's like $1,000 or $2,000, just to see if I can get the sucker moving.
And then eBay emails that buyer, that potential buyer with that offer. So great, great tool that they came out with recently. If you have some good profits,
Melissa: Not that recently.
Rob: Well yeah. Couple years ago. But we didn't use it a lot until more recently. So it's a cool tool for sure. I would definitely, I suggest you try to use it if you have not done that.
Melissa: It's helped us get sales.
Rob: Absolutely. I just sold something this morning because I sent an offer out two days ago. When you send an offer, they have 48 hours to respond to that offer. When you do do that, if you send the offer out, you cannot alter that item. So you can't go in and edit the description, revise the item at all. Once an offer is out on the listing.
So, but I sold them this morning. I sold a what is it called? An electrical box. We have, I think I bought like 30 or 40 of these suckers.
Melissa: I remember when you bought those.
Rob: I bought a lot of these jokers and I sent out an offer a day and a half ago. Just this morning, he clicked buy it now. I gave him $50 off.
It was a $700 listing. He wanted to get shipping for free, which I charge $100 for shipping. I said, I'll split it with you. So I knocked $50 off the price, and then he jumped on it this morning and bought it. So I sold it for $650. He paid $750, with shipping. So killer killer deal.
But, that just goes to show, I sent an offer.
Melissa: We paid like $10 for it.
Rob: Yeah, we only paid $10 or $20. I don't remember exactly. I bought a whole bunch of them. Got a great deal on them. So yeah, we'll make really good profit on that. Knocking $50 off, did not kill me. That's what I did. I sent the guy an offer.
Melissa: And he jumped on it.
And how long do they have for offers?
Rob: One other thing that I do want to note on this, you can send offers that way through just going into the listing and send it to your watchers. Ebay will allow you to send one offer to somebody who sends you a message. This is definitely more recent. They put underneath the message if somebody reaches out, and this is how I sent the offer to this guy.
He reached out and said, hey, can you knock off the shipping since it's expensive? I reached out back and said, no shipping is going to be pretty expensive for me on this item. It's going to go freight. But I will knock $50 off. Hopefully that helps. The way I did it is right underneath the message that you go into your eBay box.
It shows you the message, it'll show a respond button. And then right underneath that it says, submit offer or send one time offer or something like that. You click on that button and it'll allow you to send him an offer. He's already interested already asking you a question. And a lot of times I don't even respond back to the question.
I'll send the offer in and in the notes of the offer, I'll write, yeah, sorry. This is all I can do. I can knock $50 off. And you can do that. And like I said, I just I've done that many, many, many times and it has worked. So that is a great way to pull in a buyer, just by giving them a little bit of a discount and $50 is not that much.
Melissa: Did you say how long they have to respond?
Rob: They have 48 hours. So when you send somebody an offer, they have 48 hours to respond back to that. Once it expires, if they don't decline it right away, it expires in 48 hours. And then your listing goes back to where you can actually edit, revise it if you have to, but you can't do that once you send out offers. You cannot revise it or edit it. So I recommend you doing that ahead of time. If you are going to revise it or anything like that, revise it before you send the offer and then send the offer out.
Melissa: The next one is promoted listings.
Rob: Three! This is number three, guys. This is one of the ways that we recently started, you know, getting some more sales in is by doing promotions.
Melissa: And there's a couple of ways you can do promotions. So the traditional way that, I mean, this is also a new thing for the last couple of years, promoted listings. So, how do you do promoted listings?
Rob: The way that we've done it the most recently, the most user-friendly way to do it is actually going into your listing and eBay will give you options to promote it.
When you click on that, they're going to give you the recommended percentage that they want to you to pay them if it sells. Typically, that's going to be anywhere from 3% all the way up. I've seen it up to 10%. They want to pay you to pay them that extra fee. If they promote that listing, they're going to show it to more buyers hopefully and sell it.
That's the easiest way to do it. Now you do not have to do their recommend fee. You can drop it down. We've had great luck with only doing 1%. 1% more, we'll pay them if it sells through the promotion. Some people in Flipper University have also got really, really great results just by doing 1%.
Now, if I want to move the item, I probably will do it exactly what they're offering me to do. If that's 7.5%, if it's 5%, is if it's 3%, if I want to move the item and I have good profit on the item, I'm just ready to move it, I'll do whatever they're recommending it and then put it in the ball in their court so they can try to get it sold.
So that's the first way that you can do a promoted listing just by clicking on your listing, promoting it to what they recommend. And then you have to pick the percent that you're going to pay them if they do sell it through the promoted listing.
Melissa: And then there's promoted listings, advanced beta.
They just rolled out with, and that is more of a cost per click. So you're basically running an ad campaign. Very similar to Facebook. We have not tried these yet. We've had our fair share of not fun times with Facebook ads. So, and we don't want to pay eBay more than we need to. And that's also, you're paying and you don't know it's going to sell. So promoted listings, traditionally, you're paying now, after it sells you don't pay unless it sells. Whereas these you're going to pay whether or not it sells. So we haven't done them yet.
Rob: Devil's advocate and this is kind of cool if you think of it this way as well. When platforms roll out new features typically, they throw them out and they want to promote them themselves.
If you do play this way right now, we have not done it. Like we said, we don't want to pay extra money ahead of time and then hope that it sells. That's kind of what you're doing with this. You're paying, ahead of time. Hey, you know, I'm going to give you 20 extra dollars to try and get this thing sold.
If it doesn't sell, you just spent $20 and they didn't sell it. So, but like I said, devil's advocate you can, it might work well because most platforms that roll out new features are going to push it as hard as they can to get that feature to work. So, like I said, we haven't done it and we will do it.
Melissa: But what if nobody uses it and then it flops and then we don't have to do the cost per click.
It's true. Maybe that's what we should all as resellers decide to do. Nobody uses it. Nobody wants to do cost per click.
Rob: But I guarantee some people are using it. Our items are not really, like they don't go to the bottom of searches because we sell unique items. If somebody is looking for one of our items, there's not a lot of items listed like ours.
Melissa: But if your item has a lot of competition, it might be worth looking into.
Rob: Absolutely. So, but that is the way that is a second way that promoted listings work. Third way that you can promote your listing is by running a sale. You can actually go in and do a weekend. We've done this. We've done this before and had well, good responses with it as well. And that's where you can pick some items out in your eBay store.
Melissa: And you don't have to do all of them, right?
Rob: You can pick whatever you want and you can do a discount. Hey, I'm going to take 10% off of these items. I have good profit on these items. I'm going to take 10% off. I'm going to send a like a weekend sale from Friday. You can pick however long you wanna do it for a month.
If you want to do it for three days, if you want to do it for two days, whatever you want to do, you can pick that. And this one takes a little bit more effort, more time to do. You got to go in your back office, fill out all the right stuff in, in the sale and labeling all that kind of stuff. So it's a little bit more work, but we have had great luck as well, running sales and getting stuff sold as well.
Melissa: The next one.
Rob: Four! This is the fourth tip that we can give you guys on maybe getting your items, moving quicker.
Melissa: Re-examine your price.
Rob: This is important too. So if you have an item that has been listed for a while, chances are, maybe some other items have come in and sold cheaper and your item is priced too high.
It's always good to go back and check that if it's been listed for a month, two months, three months, it's one of those things you do want to examine what it is at, if it is too high compared to those other listings. So it's always a good thing to go in and do that.
Melissa: Yeah. And you could also check your, if you have very minimal feedback, you might need to be on the lower end of those comps.
Versus if you have really good feedback and a lot of it, you can be at the higher end and more people trust you, and it you're more likely to get the sale, but in the beginning, starting out, you do have to be at the lower end of those comps.
Rob: And a great example of this. We actually went to a Goodwill today and we bought a combo, a DVD VCR combo.
These jokers are selling, I'm sure it's from the nineties. These jokers are selling from anywhere from $500, $600. Yeah, it's insane. Because when these came out originally from the store $100, I would even say $200 was way, way more. I would, I would probably venture to say about a $100, $120 is what they are.
Well, they're hot now because we can't get them. They don't manufacture anymore. So they're selling between $500 and $600 if they're new in the sealed box. And some people have these for the last 20, 25 years, whether they're sitting in their, on their attic or whatever it is, they have these, we bought one of these today.
No box, anything like that. The cheapest one that I found or sorry, the most expensive one that I found it had a box, this is used. So it would be pre-owned is what it was on. The most expensive one that I found that was pre-owned it had sold, and it did have a box, which we don't have a box.
It sold for $200 or $210. So I'm going to list ours for $200. But the reason I am doing that is because we do have a hundred percent feedback and people do not question if our items are worth it. We will take great pictures. We will get great description of the item. And that's how we should be able to sell towards the higher end of comps.
I really, you know, we probably should be more towards $100 to 150, but I'm going to reach in the beginning of this. I'm going to try to get $200 for this. If the right person sees it, they should snag it because of our feedback. We have a hundred percent feedback, and we've worked hard to do that.
Melissa: Number five. End and re-list.
Rob: This is something that has worked for us in the past as well when we have not had sales coming in. Now you guys, if you don't know us, we don't sell a lot of sales. We don't do a lot of sales. We help sell higher ticket items. Last year I think we did 56, 58 items somewhere right under 60 items.
That's what we did. That's all we did for the whole year. So, yeah, if you average that out, you were a little over an item and item and a quarter, you know, a week, something like that.
If stuff gets stagnant, then you guys want to, maybe pull it off and then re-list it. It comes up as a fresh listing. So, one tip that I will give you, if you do do this, don't pull it off and re-list this it immediately. Maybe wait a couple days before. Let it sit off the market for a little while. I'd say three to five days, if you can, and then put it back on as a new listing, you'll get all fresh new, watchers, on that listing and fresh views.
So that's one of the ways that you can do it is by ending the listing and then restartint it.
Melissa: Now you will lose your watchers.
Rob: You will. Absolutely.
Melissa: But if they haven't pulled the trigger in that amount of time, and you already sent them an offer.
Rob: That's it. Chances are, they might not be good watchers anyway. So you've already given the opportunity to buy with the offer.
Yeah, that's where you can clear, you know, clean house, get them out of there, get it relisted look like it's a fresh listing on there. And eBay's algorithms do like this sometimes. So that's one of the ways that we have, got items to move as well.
Melissa: Yeah. And a big reason why that works is because, they, well, one reason is it's the algorithm likes you on platform and that kind of get leads into the next one is buying your items on eBay.
Rob: Absolutely. So if you have items that you buy normally on Amazon, Amazon has changed the game for a lot of people because they get stuff to you super quick. If you have done that and you can switch on some of the items that you are normally buying on Amazon, go buy them on eBay. You have to wait a couple more days to get them delivered.
Melissa: Usually they're cheaper on eBay. They just take a couple extra days.
Rob: That's why they are cheaper. So if you can do that, Try to switch some of your buying over to eBay and eBay will love the algorithms will love.
Melissa: This was number six, by the way.
Rob: Number six, sorry. Ebay will love the algorithms will love, your time on platform.
So the more stuff you're, you're buying on there. YEah, which leads into the next one, but the more stuff that you're buying on there, eBay sees it, and they will show your items to more people. So don't ask me how this works. I don't know, but I do know we've done this. We've tested this. Between this and number seven.
Melissa: Number seven.
Rob: Number seven is do a listing challenge.
Melissa: Do your own personal listing challenge.
Rob: That's it. And that means you decide, hey I'm going to go for the next 15 days or I'm going to go for the next 30 days. And I'm going to list at least
Melissa: X amount of items.
Rob: At least one item a day. You have to start with one, but you could do three. If you list exactly you can list five items. Do that listing challenge of being on the platform once a day, at least once a day, get those items listed.
And when eBay sees that, I guarantee you, guys, we have done this many, many times, we've done this with our private Facebook group that have Flipper University alumni. We've done this many times as a group and we always see results. So this one is definitely important if you guys can do it. They want to see that time on platform.
They want to see you there buying. They want to see you there listing and the more you do that, the algorithms are going to love it. And they're going to start showing your items more people and you will get them sold. So like I said, it might sound crazy, but we've done it. We've tested it for many years now.
And it always works when we do it.
Melissa: And it's time on platform one, and then two, you're listing, and you're getting more items on there, so more chances of things to sell. So you're just adding more items. You're adding more inventory and you're adding consistency to your business. So all those things come together to work for more sales.
Rob: All around it, will help you guys out. So if you can commit to doing a listing challenge, yeah, it will, guarantee it will help you out in your sales.
Melissa: And a bonus. So I just thought of a bonus that we didn't write down. But you can also cross post. So I know we're talking all about eBay sales, but if your stuff's not selling, you can cross post your items and cross list on what a couple of platforms. You don't have to cross on all of them. We typically do eBay, Facebook Marketplace. We're trying to break into Mercari more. And you can use a cross posting tool if you want. You can copy and paste. Vendoo makes it pretty easy to do a cross post among like you put in your stuff one time, and then you can put it out on multiple platforms.
I think they work with nine different platforms. So yeah, cross posting and try that. There might be other platforms that work for you better. Maybe you do a lot of vintage clothes or other kinds of clothes and maybe Poshmark is one that you want to be crossposting to.
Rob: Yeah, that's a great point. And definitely, you know, people, usually are loyal to a platform. Like people who buy on eBay typically go to eBay for everything they buy on eBay. People who buy on Mercari typically don't even look at eBay, but they buy on Mercari because they're loyal to it.
They know how it works. We are creatures of habit.
Melissa: Which is why we keep to eBay too.
Rob: EBay and Amazon. I mean, you go and buy stuff on Amazon. If you're getting your listing into different platforms where your buyers might be, there might be more of your buyers on those platforms. Yeah. That's going to help you guys.
It's going to help you to move these items. So definitely if you haven't thought about that. The number one thing that we do is a Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp and eBay. Those are the ones that we use the most for crossposting. But it just depends on what you're selling. Though OfferUp and Facebook Marketplace are both local for us.
Melissa: And we do a lot of larger items. We do ship, but we also cross-post them because sometimes we might get a local sale.
Rob: Absolutely. Great tips. So that's eight tips, guys. We'll give you that bonus. Melissa thought of it last minute, super excited about that. So hopefully these were helpful to you guys. Hopefully you can implement some of these, get some of those sales coming in again and get your eBay store up and running in and get that money coming in and get that money flowing.
That's our goal with this podcast is to help you guys, give you guys some tips and tricks to keep your sales and your, your eBay stuff going.
Melissa: Yeah. Thanks for spending some time with us. We really appreciate you guys.