Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about what to do when you have an item on eBay that isn't selling.
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I Listed 1 Item On eBay And It’s Not Selling, Is It Time To Throw In The Towel?
Rob: What's up, pro flippers? On today's episode we are talking about hey, I just listed one item on eBay and it's not selling. Should I throw in the towel?
Rob: Alright guys, so today we are talking about you just got one item listed on eBay and it did not sell. It is not selling. Is it time to throw in the towel and call eBay a no go for you?
What should you do if you're in this situation?
Melissa: So we're talking about, like, you mentioned one item. So this is something that we see a lot or we hear about in our community and just we get asked the questions so like people get excited to do this reselling thing and do this flipping thing. And then they go, and list maybe one or two items and those things don't sell.
And so then you get frustrated and then you wanna quit 'cause it's not working. So yeah, we're kind of, kind of unpack that and dive into, and dive into why, why that happens and what you can do to fix it.
Rob: Absolutely. So first, set your expectations the right way. You, if you get one item listed and then you're expecting it to sell the next day, it doesn't always happen that way.
Now, I'm not gonna tell you that it will never happen. We've had items sell in a couple hours. We've had items selling 12 hours and 24 hours, but that's not the norm. So I want to set you up for success. I want to set your expectations the right way when you actually are listing on eBay, when you get one thing listed, not always will it fly off the shelf.
It might sit on the shelf. It might sit on listed on eBay for a week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks. You never know how quick that will actually sell.
Melissa: And I will also add, most people don't just list one thing. And this happens. Most people are, I feel like when you're starting out, you might list maybe 10 things, but still you don't want to go list those 10 things and then stop.
Because if you do, like the algorithm really likes the daily listing, the, you know, they want you on their platform. So if you can get something listed every day, make that a goal, then your other stuff will start selling.
Rob: So, absolutely, and that is the best thing. One thing that eBay loves, the algorithms love will favor, is getting one thing listed.
So as you guys know, we don't do a lot of small, low profit or even low priced items. We do high profit. But one thing that you can do when you're starting out with these high dollar listings, if this is where you're going, you can list smaller, low profit items or low value items to get the algorithms moving in your favor.
So maybe in a week if I get a slow week where, or you know, two weeks, whatever it is, this stuff is not moving. I can start listing daily and maybe I'll list a couple items that might be a hundred dollars, $150. In your case, maybe it's $20 or $10, and you list day day every single day. You do this every single day.
Then you throw in some more expensive items in there, $500, $300, something like that that you're constantly listing. The algorithms will totally favor that. And then you will start to see sales coming in more and more as you are more active on the platform.
Melissa: Yeah, and that's something too like, 'cause you know, we obviously do promote, like you said, the higher value items and we personally love this business model because it lets us not spend as much time listing.
But to get to that point, you will have to list a little bit more in the beginning. So it's maybe me, a couple more smaller items, which is not a bad thing too 'cause you're gonna get, you're gonna build the feedback, which is another huge thing to do. Get your feedback up. Because if you don't have the better feedback, somebody might not wanna go spend $500 with you if your feedback's not very high.
So that's a huge thing to get that feedback. That's probably one of the biggest things. If you're just starting and you wanna start seeing more sales, get that feedback up there, like make it, if you're just starting, make that. Hit 50, get to 50 and then keep growing from there. So, 'cause that, I would say feedback is probably one of the most important things on eBay.
Rob: Absolutely not a lot, not a lot of platforms matter, but eBay does.
Melissa: And you wanna make sure you also keep your account in good standing. So if you say you're gonna ship in two days, ship in two days, you'll get dinged if you like are constantly like shipping late or you are having to pull items like say you, you sold something and then you can't find it or whatever.
If that happens multiple times, you won't be able to be a top rated seller and they won't show your listings as much. So.
Rob: Absolutely. So one thing with the feedback that comes with the feedback, when you're starting off, when you're trying to build that feedback, you are doing comps on your items before you're selling them to figure out what they should sell for, what price you should get them listed for. In the beginning when you don't have a lot of feedback, you have to sell your items more towards the lower end or even at the lowest end of what the comps are for that item. You don't have to do that always, but you have to start doing that to start off, to build your feedback, to get it higher and higher and higher.
The better ratings you get, the better feedback that you start to get, the more you can go on the comps and go towards the middle, towards the higher section of the comps, to be able to make more money in this business. But starting off, you definitely want to list it towards the lower end of the comps so you can get the items moving.
Make it very appealing for buyers to see your items and buy them.
Melissa: Yeah, so just trying to trying to set the expectation of, you know, we, like we said, do love those higher items, but don't try to go in and just list one item for $300 and then that's it. Like, you know, you gotta keep going and keep plugging in with those littler items too.
And also, if you are trying to grow your business, you want, if you're just starting out, you wanna make those mistakes on those lower items anyway. You wanna make them on the smaller, less valuable items than, than on the bigger items. So those are where you can make mistakes and it doesn't cost you a lot of money.
Yeah. A $10 mistake is a lot better than a thousand dollars mistake. So, absolutely. And, and we've done them both.
Rob: Absolutely. And you definitely, like Melissa said, you wanna make those mistakes at the lower end versus the upper end because it is a lot harder to give a thousand dollar return versus a $10 return while you're actually learning.
So, one of the, one of our recent one-on-one coaching students that we have, Jackie, she comes to mind why we're talking about this. And she was listing and she wasn't seeing sales, but she got into, I think it was 14 days straight of listing. And then the sales started coming in and she's brand new to eBay.
So she's still building her feedback on eBay still, building her business. But 14 days in and she started selling and now I think she is at either $4,500 or $5,500. Yeah, in the last couple months off of just listing those items consistently and keep doing it and doing it. And now she's building her feedback up and yeah, it's just amazing to be able to watch people do this and know that this is just how eBay works.
You have to get in the algorithms, you have to be favored by the algorithms and you have to be active on platform. And you can do that by listing consistently and buying consistently. So some things that you can change over that you might be buying on Amazon right now for parts or for home goods, whatever it is, try to switch over and buy some stuff on eBay to build that feedback as well.
Because one thing that we didn't talk about was feedback comes in on two different ways as a buyer and a seller, and they add together and they, they put those two ratings together for one total of feedback. So you might have 10 buying feedback and you might have 10 selling feedback, but the buyer doesn't see that when they're looking at your items to, to look at your feedback.
They're seeing 20 total feedback on there. Now they can go in and distinguish once they click on feedback, it'll tell you. They'll look at it exactly. They'll tell how many selling feedback and how many buy you have. But the number right next to your name is gonna show the total amount of feedback, buying and selling feedback.
And you wanna build that up as quick as you possibly can.
Melissa: Yeah. So, and Jackie, she shipped some bigger stuff too. She's been starting to sell some stuff. It's so cool to see that. Like, and I, do you know what her biggest sale was so far?
Rob: I don't, but I know she's already up to four pallets. She's already shipped out four pallets.
Okay. And watching her growth from the first pallet to the fourth palette has just been insane. It's really, really cool. She's getting comfortable. She's getting, uh, the, what's it called? Experience. Experience. But she's the confidence, the confidence, thank you. The confidence of working through this and working on, these sales and shipping and all this kind of stuff.
It's so, so cool and rewarding for us to be able to help and see our students go through stuff like that.
Melissa: But she also had to, she was starting from no, like nowhere really, scratch, scratch. And so we had to get her to do those smaller things in there too. So like list those smaller things. Yep. While you also, that's something you said before in one of our trainings too, is like get those smaller things listed and then list one or two of the larger value items because then they will move.
But you just need to keep going with the other ones too.
Rob: And it happens, like we were talking about, if you're only listing high value items, you're listing two and three and four and $5,000 items and you're consistently doing that. You will definitely start selling them. The only problem is if you make a mistake when you're starting out.
Those are hard mistakes to make when you're selling items for that much money. Now, once you grow, you get the experience, you know what you're doing. Those items are amazing. We love that. You can confidently sell something and know that you're not gonna get something coming back for a return or something like that.
That's exactly what we want. But you have to start, you gotta walk before you can run. And that's what we tell everybody when you're starting off. You have to learn to walk, really build the experience of this business before you jump into these high profit items.
Melissa: And you're almost to the point now where you almost don't even wanna list anything that's not gonna bring in at least a thousand dollars.
Yeah, it is. Like we were at like a hundred dollars and now it's kind of gravitated. Like, is it worth our time to list? Unless it's gonna sell for, or we're gonna make it, you know, at least, you know, $800 to a thousand dollars.
Rob: So the cool is, but it's. Yeah, our kids are involved too, so it's fun to see them and we're helping them now with the smaller items.
So, and that's it. So we're selling some smaller stuff to where it, it is, but it's fun to watch them build their feedback and build their eBay store by selling the, the lower profit items or the lower value value items just to get experience. Exactly. Get the experience so they learn. It's fun to do that with them, but yeah, definitely you have to start, you have to start somewhere and don't get frustrated if you list 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 10 things.
Don't get frustrated if they're not moving yet.
Melissa: And that it doesn't work. No, because it does work. Keep at it.
Rob: Absolutely works. We're living proof that it works, and we have tons and tons of students that have done the same exact thing, but the biggest secret is consistency. Yeah. Be consistent with your listings, with your business.
And I told Melissa, even when I, we were thinking about doing this podcast, I thought, think about your job right now. If you have a nine to five job and you go to your job and you're working, nine to five, five days a week, and you decide that you wanna get paid your full-time salary or for that job, but you only wanna go in and work one day a week and get that, that's not how it works.
You have to have the consistency of your working routine. And it's the same thing for the side hustle. If you treat it like it's a side hustle and you're only gonna do a little bit and you're only gonna work for maybe one day and, and you wanna see the results, you wanna reap the benefits of high profit, good money coming in.
You have to build that foundation. You have to work with that business, to really, really get it to grow.
Melissa: I like what Stacy says, is my payday today or what I'm listing this month is gonna be my payday next month. So it's kind of a cool way to look at it. And then it, and then sales will come in and you don't even, like, I don't know, it's, they're, they're just start rolling in, which is pretty cool to see.
Rob: No, this business, that's the other cool thing is once you start working and you think about those items that you list, say you list 14 days straight and then you take a hiatus and you stop listing for a couple days. You might be sleeping the next night and you get a sale for a hundred dollars, a thousand dollars, whatever it is.
That's the really cool part about the business is once you put the front end work in, it's almost like it's residual. It's not really residual, but at the same time, you're gonna get sales when you're not really doing anything. And that's the really, really cool part about the business is you have the potential to be on vacation and all of a sudden, I mean, we just came back from a vacation and.
Melissa: And you had like $2,000 or $3,000 in sales.
Rob: Exactly. I didn't list anything for a month and a half.
Melissa: You haven't listed anything since like May, you just started again. It's been a while. I mean, no, maybe even like April. It's been a long time.
Rob: But while we were on vacation, we sold $2,000 to $3,000 worth of items. That is really, really cool to be able to do that, be out having fun with your family, doing stuff, and still bring those sales in that, you know, I've listed, you know, months prior.
So that's really, really cool to be able to do stuff like that. So, yeah.
Melissa: And we also wanna let you guys know that we just opened up applications for, we do work with people one-on-one. Woo-hoo. We started doing this about a year ago and it is a blast to really get to know people on a much deeper level.
And so we just opened up applications. If that's something that you're interested in, you can go to fleamarketflipper.com/workwithus and we'll, I will put the link in the show notes as well. Just to let you know that that's there.
That's it. You guys rock. We're so excited. If you do want to see if we're a good fit, definitely we would love you to fill out the application and see if we can help you guys out.
So you guys rock. Have an amazing day and we will see you on the next episode.