I’m going to throw in a new thread for all concernedE-Bay. Any one
ever use it to sell items from your bench?? How do you use it in
regards to a “Store”. I know its quite a great selling method and
idea, but I need some input for anyone around this common,
discussion table…
Gerry Lewy!
I have had very little luck selling my jewelry on Ebay. Seems like
everyone is looking for a bargain, nothing more, and I often cannot
even recover cost of materials. That, I suppose, is useful when one
is trying to unload overstock or old merchandise and take whatever
you can get. Not useful when trying to get some greater exposure for
unique, hand made pieces. I do fairly well in other categories on
Ebay, such as old model trains and miscellaneous items we are trying
to get rid of, but not jewelry items.
I have purchased tons of supplies on ebay and it works wonderfully.
But I have decided to stay away from sales of my items. I believe the
general attitude (at least mine is) is that you look for a bargain
when you shop on ebay. I don’t believe people are too willing to pay
retail for anything, let alone art pieces, on ebay. I know I look for
the best price and shop around before I purchase. I don’t think if I
were in a booth with several other booths around (at a show) and want
my customer to go from booth to booth specifically looking for the
best price. It feels too much like a meat market and diminishes the
intrinsic value of the art.
As far as opening a “store” on ebay, that might be more successful,
but I still think a website might be an overall better proposition;
although there are other issues as far as search engines and your
position on the list and the cost to be at the top of the list.
Ebay I know, search engines, I only have a general knowledge from
articles I’ve read. That’s just my opinion. Hope it helps.
Veronica
I never sold jewelry on E-bay, but was just wondering if posting
“loss leaders” would be a good marketing idea. I collect vintage
perfumes and I’ve noticed that a lot of e-bay sellers are doing just
that - they will post 5 pieces of the same item at the same time,
one would be 0.99 starting price, the rest would be $75. I wonder how
many people that go for .99 item would end up visiting the e-bay
store or following the link to a normal website?
Ruslana
http://www.atehmodus.com
We haven’t found eBay a very successful way of getting rid of our
old “dogs”. As others have said, everyone wants things at less than
cost… and if that is the case, I might as well wait to sell it to
someone at our store or scrap it out. One might argue that if we put
more effort into more sophisticated eBay presentations, we would be
more successful, but the few auctions we did do just drained more
energy away from our core business.
Anyway, that’s been our experience.
Jalia M. LaNoue
Goldsmith
Spinelle Fine Jewelers
Napa, California
I have found the same thing as Jalia, in that Ebay hasn’t been a very
successful venue for selling of my slow goods, in gold, silver
jewelry. If I place a reserve on the price to cover the scrap value,
I get no bids at all. If I can get scrap, which has mostly been
going up recently, then its crazy tospend the time in listing,
packaging, mailing, and babysitting people who dont seem to be able
to read an ad correctly. Mostly, people are looking for deals that
are an absolute steal. On the otherhand, it has been very good
recently for selling off old watch material, i.e. hands, stems,
gears, old watchmaking tools, etc,… in small lots at a time. Mostly
stuff thats not possible to order new anywhere. I no longer work on
mechanical watches, only quartz nowadays, and I have a huge
inventory of parts, crystals, etc,… that I used on my own, as well
as a couple truckloads of deceased watchmakers estate that I bought a
couple years ago Alot of the stuff came in little glass vials, also
mini envelopes, years ago, in multi drawer cabinets. I break them
down into 10 to 20 bottle/envelope assortments, each listing, and do
much better than if I sell entire cabinets in a single auction.
Also, its a good idea to mix high end brand parts like Le Coultre,
Omega, in with common brand goods like Elgin, Bulova, Gruen, etc. If
you put the good stuff all together in one lot, you’ll get bids on
that lot and none on the common grade lots. Bottom line, when it
comes to selling slow movers on Ebay, you also have to decide how
much is your time worth as compared to what you will make selling it
on that venue. Sometimes it is better to simply set and wait for a
better way to sell some items than to give it away on Ebay.
Ed in Kokomo
Hi Ruslana,
There are many different ways Ebay sellers are going about
attracting buyers while trying to keep their Ebay fees down.
It used to be that any store items didn’t automatically come up in
an Ebay search, which really killed the potential for any sale. Now
stores are searchable IF you click on the store links & search. So
what sellers might be doing is listing one item starting at.99 on a
normal auction (probably with a high shipping amount) and then the
rest of the items in their stores. This drives the “search” traffic
to their other items without getting nickel/dimed to death on regular
listing fees.
Any link in either a store, about me page or auctions to an
e-commerce web site is a strict no-no and can get sellers suspended
by Ebay. The only exception is putting a link to an l
page.
My personal belief is that Ebay stores are a waste of time for most
items… but when I’m planning on buying an item, I will search the
seller’s store or other auctions to see if there’s something I can
buy and get a deal on combined shipping.
Tracy,
Tracy’s Treasures