My eBay Shop Is Getting Views

in Rant, Complain, Talk5 months ago (edited)

With the addition of the new stock entering my shop, there has been a lot of people checking out my store.

The games have a good few views, some in particular are very high, and there have been a bunch of watchers coming along to keep an eye on them.

The Halo stuff though, has blown up, since I started listing them.


Here's one of todays listings, Spartan Soldier - GCM28

He has been up for about 2 hours, and has already had 5 views.


Postage for these figures works out at €9.70, worldwide.

An A5 padded envelope weighing up to 100g, is that much, regardless of where it is being shipped, and the figures weigh around 6g each, so I could actually fill one of those envelopes, and have encouraged people to buy multiple items in one go, in my description, as it works out as a much better deal.

I don't like the fact that shipping costs so much, but it's just the way it is.

I'm going to lower the shipping costs by a few Euro, which will eat into my profit, but will hopefully encourage people to take the plunge and buy some stuff, everyone wants a deal, after all, and the best way I can do that is by pricing fairly, and lowering the postage.


Here's one of the first figures I listed, Decimus - HDP51

He has had 11 views in the last 4 days, and has 1 watcher.

Watchers, and views don't mean much, but the way I see it, traffic coming to my account is a good thing, because there are more eyes on the other listings I have.


The Message

Yesterday I received a message on eBay from a potential buyer, asking if I had Whatsapp, or Instagram. They find it easier to talk on those platforms, and they told me that they have a photography account centred around Halo Mega Bloks/ Construx. They also said that they'd be interested in purchasing a bunch of stuff in one go, which would cut down on the costs.

I don't want to conduct business outside of eBay for two reasons:

  1. My main goal is building up my account, and gaining feedback and a good reputation, which would in turn make it easier for people to buy off me in the future.
  2. I don't want to fall victim to scams, which are out there, and which I've been aware of since before joining eBay.

I replied, telling them that I don't feel comfortable sharing personal information with people. But, I'm more than happy to combine a bunch of items in one package.

They were understanding of this, and asked for a list of what else I have.

I replied with a few items which I'm going to upload next, namely the bigger sets, and ships.

Some are not ready for photographing yet, and I don't want to talk about them until they are. I did say to follow me, as they'll get notified each time I upload something, which currently is twice a day, from 7 - 8 AM.

I'm not really interested in doing some bulk, Mega deal, because I want to build up my account and reputation with feedback, so if I sell everything to one person, that means I only get one feedback note, or I get a bunch from the same account, which doesn't really suit me at this stage.


Here's one of the figures I'm saving for a few days, Master Chief.

My idea is, I want to upload a bunch of stuff each day, and save more sought after items like this, and a few other figures, until I have a lot of stuff up there.

I figure it's better to let people come to my account for something they really want, to then discover a plethora of other items for sale, which they might be interested in too.

It's kind of gaming it, a bit, but it's common to do things like this, especially at Car Boot sales. Nobody puts all their best items out on display first thing in the morning, because by time the afternoon comes they'll all be gone, and you won't have a draw factor anymore, and so I'm using that same logic for my eBay store.

List 2 - 3 items a day, with more sought after pieces sprinkled in.

Currently I have 4 days worth of stuff photographed and ready to go up, which is going to give me 4 days to prepare the next batch of stuff.


I'm only listing this stuff at the moment, but I'm going to clean, and photograph a batch of games over the weekend, to give me at least a week or two of uploads once I run out of Halo stuff to list, so I can buy some time to clean and prepare even more stuff.

Once the figures are gone, I'll only have sets and vehicles to upload which are a bit more time-consuming to get ready.

All in all though, it's going well and I'm enjoying the routine.

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Great strategy on listing your Halo figures brother. Spacing out the uploads with sought after items is a smart way to keep people coming back to your shop. Wishing you more success brother

Thanks man, it's a real learning curve, but I think I'm getting the hang of it, and I like checking in on how things are looking each morning before listing new items. It's good to get a good idea of what seems to be garnering the most interest.

Nicely done! I'm glad to hear it's going well and you're getting a bunch of traffic, hopefully some sales start coming in soon!

Too right man, I actually went and lowered my shipping by about €4 which is a hell of a lot cheaper than most other people. I think living in Ireland, means that I have to entice people a bit more with shipping options that are cheaper than the average person.

Shipping from here seems to be expensive, even domestically, compared to most other countries.

Canada too is pretty bad. If I buy a $30 Kickstarter ttrpg book, it costs me at least $25 to ship that like 1-3 lbs book from the US to my place. There are some things I buy where shipping and VAT charges are literally more than the item itself.

That's crazy man, I thought it was bad just sending stuff from Ireland, but there you go, it just seems to be across the board.

I've been able to lower the price a bit, and not let it eat too much into profit, and that's essentially to encourage some sales, especially now as I'm trying to build up my reputation, but once some more feedback comes in, I'll bring it back up a bit, but maybe not to the full amount.

You could increment up a few percent each year over the course of 5 years, with the goal being no shipping loss by the end of that timeframe, and I bet it would work pretty well!

That's great to hear! hope you're going to make more sales.😊

Thank you, I'm hoping I will because it would be nice to start getting some money back, which I've put in.

So far, I've made €60 which is fairly decent, and at least I'm starting out slowly, so I can get used to a larger volume of sales.

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You've got to be careful out there as there are a few dodgy operators around ebay. They take their cut, but then you have some guarantees about getting paid. I hope it all goes well.

!BEER

Exactly man, I really don't want to conduct any private deals, where I have no fallback if anything were to happen.

Since talking with the person, they haven't replied, so maybe they were just looking to pull a fast one, and aren't actually interested in what I'm selling. They linked me to their Instagram, but there's no guarantee that it's even their account.

It’s pretty similar to hive - don’t post 5 per day and your best content all at once. Sprinkle it consistently throughout the week and you’ll get better results!

Definitely important and good for you to stop that person from taking it off platform to scam you. I have taken things off platform myself but that was mainly to give someone a much longer list of the wares and I wasn’t exactly interested in reputation at the time. We did make a few hundred off the online sales though which is nice!

That's a good method man, I like to spread my stuff out a bit into different communities, and that's good as well to keep it entertaining to write. Although, sometimes I get fixated on one, or two things and stick with that for a while.

Yeah man, I didn't feel comfortable with it, and just want to stay on eBay for a while, just until I build my feedback up a bit. I know I could potentially make more money by doing private deals, but for the time being, staying on the platform is good.