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High Dollar/High Volume Sellers - From Where Comes Your Profit?
 

Sales are down for most people. Why not for you?

I have to admit, I'm envious of some of you, but more confused than anything. If you high rollers are seeing huge profits, is it mainly coming from ebay or your own private enterprise (own websites, existing customer base, brick and mortar sales, ect)? I've taken a good look around at ebay lately, and sales seem to be in a definate downward trend here in the middle of summer. Now I'm not going to call anyone a liar but the stories some of you are sharing just doesn't match the current trend. Now assuming you're not peddling narcotics, getting your inventory "off the back of a truck" or other less than legal activity...that pretty much leaves only 3 options.

1) Luck
2) You're in a niche market
3) High demand, low inventory

Personally, I've had a bit of all three at different times, but at this time of year, nothing seems to be working, no matter how hard I try. Are you just listing SO much that you have no choice BUT to make a profit just by sheer volume alone? I could do that but much of what I sell came out of my own pocket, so there is the overhead cost that has to be met before one could truly say I'm making a "profit"

So out of extreme curiosity, how are you doing it?

Considering we're the only seller on eBay for this high priced niche, that could be why we are doing great. Every auction we put up sells for our reserve. Now just playing with some marketing techniques on eBay for one new "property" on our books that is quite a bit more expensive than our previous.

George, since you're the only one, I'm not going to pry any further into what it is, but I am curious if because of this you list longer duration (7-10 days) instead of 3-5? Or does the shorter auction work better for you? Also, when you use a reserve, do you start out in the .01-1.00 range or higher in order for the reserve to be met, and do you use any of the featured listings or not? Although some of my items are niche, a lot of them aren't, but there are some times when I get lucky and there's a stretch where it's the only one listed.

I do 7 day listings (usually 2 a week). Once I've done 10. I want to of course take advantage of some of the features I usually use. I use homepage featured (its my big ebay marketing part right now, so I get a lot of attention every single week and maybe future buyers who aren't ready at the moment). .01 is always my starting price, and then my reserve is much higher of course. I don't have to higher my starting price to make my reserve. It always does sometimes with 5 days to spare.

You had me at homepage featured. That explains. If the item is extremely valuable, putting it in everyone's faces seems obvious enough. Anyone else use this feature often? I haven't, although I don't tend to sell products that are extremely valuable (ie thousands and thousands of dollars) either.

Just a couple more questions for you George if you don't mind. What days do you usually find brings the best benefit to using the home page featured, and about what time to end (or does that tend not to matter with HPF)? And I know you like GCO. Do you have Paypal mentioned at all on your listings, or have you removed it completely yet you still get the demand?,

Ive sold before without homepage featured too. My main goal with homepage featured having it on one auction each and every week is to get a real good base on eBay.

If you have a lot of quantity of the cheap item or it is expensive, or you just want to get viewership I'd say go for homepage featured.

Did it seem to make a huge difference not using HPF George? It's not cheap to use this feature, as you know, but if it's effective, it will balance out fine I'm sure.

Sorry I revised the question after you posted. Thanks

I still sold at my reserve. More watchers though with HPF.

Thanks George! BTW, you got PM :)

I do 3 days listings 3 times a week with products listing at a time and I make over 4x profit :)

Do you mean "one at a time"?

2 at a time. But heres the trick, I send out second chance offers right after the auction ends to each bidder and almost all of them accepts. But only do this if you start your listings at .99. That way you will have a ton of bidders to send offers to.

I sell from my personal sites now. Sales are always up and down depending on supply and demand. Supply has its problems, and demand is still going strong, so we're okay for now, but business in general is sucking for me. With our supply taking a hit, prices rise and demand slows, so we move fewer products. It's just how it is for a virtual seller. Summer is usually good though.

How is your supply taking a hit if you sell virtual goods? And should never have a problem with supply?

Aspkin, your Morpheus avatar suits your business, being virtual and all. :) I can't remember--I know you mentioned it before--what type of virtual goods do you do? I'm not sure I understand the whole "virtual" thing myself. There's obviously money in it though or you wouldn't be pursuing it.

he sells virtual currency for games

What like online slot machines and the like? Or more like virtual arcades? Of course I guess the two are similar anyway. I know I pumped a lot of quarters into my share of the real thing.

I think he means online roleplaying game items and currency.