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Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

Cyber monday....how was it for you guys last year? Any good advice or things to know for the week leading up to it and the week that follows?

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

For me it was a bust. Sunday night late before was better. That being said we sell a lot everyday, so a small spike is not noticeable along with we do not target Christmas buyers. We raise the prices and discourage many buyers.

One thing we sometimes do is offer a guaranteed delivery service with extremely high prices the two weeks before Christmas. Mostly to keep buyers away but when they do buy margin is very high. Example is Our price $399.99 plus $20.00 shipping. Many competitors are $379-400 free shipping. We raise the price to $500 with guaranteed delivery.
Keep in mind we don't want more buyers these days. This time of year we can not get enough inventory in our industry and closeouts don't come until after the ATA show early January.

Now on other businesses we run a ton of auctions. We keep visibility very high and we flood the market. We want every sale we can possibly get. But these are our own products. We own and control the market and exact ending price is not overly important. Not typical for most sellers.

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

Well I am venturing into selling my own products so that is interesting. I'm just a small time seller right now, so any "small spikes" to you would probably seem high for me. How can you guarantee shipping?? Other forum members have said its recommended to stop selling around 10-12 of December..do you disagree? How do you ship? I ship USPS priority or first class but I am skeptical to guarantee a delivery date around that time.

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

UPS(1,2,3 day air when they actualy guaranty it), FEDEX express and Express Mail and you take a risk the week before. Fedex is most reliable. Express mail for Hawaii and AK is pretty reliable.

Buyer quality is low this time of year, not as low as tax return season, but pretty bad. Amazon is horrible. That raising the price thing does not work on amazon because buyers return after the holiday and buy when the prices are cheap, especially youth or Christmas seasonal items, then again you can charge a 20-50% restocking fee.... So two years ago I personally sold a slew of youth archery kits on amazon. Maybe a hundred grand worth. 68% return!!!! BUT profit was double with the 20% restocking fee and if the package was open 50% restocking fee.

I don't like this business model, but I have a seller who does and easily makes an extra salary in January via returns. Last year an extra 49k on remote thermostats alone.
Not for me, but it makes cents.....for many.

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

Also keep in mind your customer service and well, but kissing skills need to be top notch this time of year.

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

One more thing, if you can process credit cards, you can triple sales by adding a telephone number and answering the calls 24 hours a day this time of year. Hire someone if needed. Especial the higher priced items.

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

Wait wait wait... adding a telephone number increases this much? I have 3 business plans but only one is going to be effective this year, which is used clothing. Would you honestly think adding a phone number would help this much?

I guess I haven't thought about seriously adding a telephone number, in the long term I plan to.

Just for future reference how do you go about this? Do you add a telephone number in your listing(s) with a set hour time frame like 10-5 eastern time?


Thanks!!

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

Come to think about it ...I believe in the whole "you build it, it will come" type thing. If there is anything that can separate a Ebay seller from the rest is having a actual number to contact. That'd make me feel like I'm really starting a business(es).

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

When I first started stealth I didn't take it as serious as I should have. This second time around I'm taking a completely different approach (more professional). I try to ship everything same day, uploading tracking..always send a message to cover DSR and it works! I find it amazing that simply shipping can make or break a sale. On top of that I offer 14 day returns (wait I mean 180 day returns ha).

I take it you stay away from USPS around December then?

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

1-800-give-money

At the top on my listings

Make sure it is a number not assotiated with any other ebay account.

Typicaly the person who calls wants to buy off ebay and pay via a credit card. TXT is super productive too.

My new accounts say

TXT US NOW AT 1-800-buy-off-ebay

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

You can give a 5-10% discount if they order right now over the phone. Helps with the paypal 1099k issued too

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

I realize this may sound silly but ...how do you process the payment without paypal? Do you have your own websites to? Its smart regardless...

I'm only trying to use ebay as the training wheels to set me up for the future. Haha thats all.

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

Merchant account.

I suggest to always use ebay and Amazon even if to just farm buyers onto another platform such as your private website.

This is my baby for next year. A handfull of private websites being fed in nitch markets to previous buyers.
I have a few hundred thousand existing/previous ebay buyers, 35k or so Amazon buyers and a few thousand from Facebook, etc... Even if I can get .01% of these very targeted active buyers to move over to private website, that is a sustainable business and should keep ten employees busy year round with extremely good pay.

My goal is to have several of these up and running before tax season and rip roaring and ready to go by the busy season.

I am also creating products to target very specific nitch foreign markets such as Brazil and Australia. I have a decent base there already but with shipping, paypal exchange rates, etc...I can do a lot better on a private platform and collect foreign currency and exchange how and when suited best.

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

As for the phone number deal, MOST people calling dont want to buy on ebay. Many dont even have an ebay account. It is incredibly easy to make a private direct sale on the phone.

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

If you don't mind me asking, how do you tracking your buyers? Do you save there email and form a contact list in your email? I respect your opinion thats only reason why I ask.. You've inspired me, thank you! Forward thinking.

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

If u download "Selling Pro" the free version on eBay, it gives you more statistics on sales, and there is a section on the bottom left of the page where your able to create a report

The report can be saved to excel, and it has all your buyers, name, address, phone email, date of purchase, whether they left a positive or Negative, a wealth of info with a couple clicks

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

Really? I will check into that later tonight, thank you! Do you crossover any of your accounts with these buyers? In other words do you take information from one account to help another? Even typing that makes me think there could be problems with doing that. Haha

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

Wait is there anything special I need to know about this "selling pro" in regards to stealth, besides the basics?

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

I save every notification of payment from paypal for the past decade :) I invite into an email list via direct reply to the paypal payments. Super easy way to gain repeat buyers, especialy in a nitch and extremely targeted market. Albeit slow process, VA staff is cheap....
Also I make a telephone number required to checkout to capture numbers.

SMS marketing is king these days. 90% read within one hour. Email is 2% in seven days.

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

Fantastic info!

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

You guys are really dropping some jewels for me! Thank you!!

Re: Pre Cyber Monday Discussion
 

If you have been doing that for 10 years you must be crossing information between accounts right? Technically what were talking about is all outside of ebay so unless I'm missing something there shouldn't be any issues with stealth right? Everything new I do now I need to make sure there isn't something I'm overlooking (usually its always the simple things).

Its not anything I'm looking to do now but in the future I would like to expand away from Ebay as much as possible. Having a nice list of peoples info isn't too bad!