TulipTools Internet Business Owners and Online Sellers Community

Quote:Marty said it is THE place to go to get away from all the whining on the Stores Board.

He can't face that his advice sucks.  He's losing it.  Today he accused everyone who disagreed with him of making up facts. 

clact/marty
I would really like to see some factoids to back up these claims of falling sales, and better sales both before and after the stores in core, cause to be honest, I have not seen that.
...
Other people have posted with posting IDs so I cant check. Still others have auctions now and none were selling so how much worse can it be now then then?

I have asked for people to post info from their sales reports to show what they are saying is true and I have not seen any evidence of such.

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?t...1000271325&start=51

For those who might remember my recent best offer experience, where the fine gentleman wanted me to give him the book for free AND knock 50 cents off my shipping . . . the book sold two days later at B&N.  For $1.99.  Plus shipping.

Let's just say my little best offer experiment is over.  Forever. 

[quote author=sneakymagenta link=topic=2527.msg13128#msg13128 date=1146183465]

Quote:Marty said it is THE place to go to get away from all the whining on the Stores Board.

He can't face that his advice sucks.  He's losing it.  Today he accused everyone who disagreed with him of making up facts. 

clact/marty
I would really like to see some factoids to back up these claims of falling sales, and better sales both before and after the stores in core, cause to be honest, I have not seen that.
...
Other people have posted with posting IDs so I cant check. Still others have auctions now and none were selling so how much worse can it be now then then?

I have asked for people to post info from their sales reports to show what they are saying is true and I have not seen any evidence of such.

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?t...1000271325&start=51

[/quote]

I thought the OP presented his/her opinion very well.  I also got a kick out of the explanation given to Marty concerning the word "factoid." 

Hey now that is a real lot of Smileys!

I wonder if you can guess who this is! Its me the guy that gives sucky advice

I just wanted to pop in since people have been sending me this thread to read and I figured Id clear up some stuff.

First off the membership decline in the SRG because we have been trying to keep up with deleting people that havent posted in 3 months. We started this process a few months ago. Im in groups with 10x the members with a lot less members posting than we have. Membership means nothing its who is talking that means something.

Also Id like to discuss all this hubbub about the SRG some...

We had a political thread which was fairly slanted in the direction of the beliefs of our group leader (and many others. It lasted a long time and had over 1000 posts and I am surprised it lasted that long. One person posted something that some people found offensive so our leader Pat booted her from the group. The lady apologized and was re-admitted. That posting (which didnt bother me and many others) actually spurred a pretty good discussion but we decided to get rid of the thread as political and religious issues get pretty heated.

As for Pat that was a mystery to many of us as well. Behind the scenes what really happened is that her husband went back to work and she got stuck running both stores and 8 venues. This lady was selling $400 a month when we started the group and between all venues sells about $40k now a year. She has a lot of stress and it was just a bad time for her to get ticked off. She is already back in the group.

As for that discussion on the stores board it is very interesting because other store boardies were sending me info on people that that were complaining about things and the info showed the opposite of what they were saying (in pretty much every case) , from the Humidor guy to a few other people. I really dont waste too much time looking up peoples sales but a few people have this competition tool thingy that makes it easy I guess. So the fact of the matter was in many of the cases where people were not using posting ids what they were saying just wasnt true by the numbers. That was my point.

As for crappy Best offers, we all get them! Maybe even most of them are crappy. But since I didnt sell the item it doesnt matter to me. I realize when you get crappy offers its my fault of course but if you knew how many emails I have received from people that post on the stores board about how much raising their prices and using best offer helped their businesses than you would understand why some people like it. Of course not everything applies to everyone.

I hope this addresses most of the stuff mentioned. I have to say this site is pretty cool. Was this set up by the bloodhound guy that had the odd colors on his ME page and tried to tell people all the fancy stuff didnt matter? I always liked that page if thats him. I am not sure though.

In any case as far as the SRG, when the stores board imploaded we had about 150 refugees come by. Obviously things are not going to be perfect in any group of people , but if you do come by and notice how people have done with their sales you will see it is not such a bad place , even though eBay has been doing all they can to decrease sales lately.

I dont mind when people disagree with me, argue, even say they hate my advice, I learn in the process as I dont have all the answers and sometimes a better approach lies in the middle somewhere.

All the best,

Marty

Marty Wrote:I dont mind when people disagree with me, argue

*thinks, oooh, an opening, I'm still asleep  but I'll post anyways* 

OK, 2 minor things I'll argue or disagree about...

1. (a minor point) Your contention that most sellers benefitted from having stores in search.  I'll disagree solely because there are only 240K US stores and yet eBay claims 720K US sellers rely on eBay for all or part of their income.  Add to the fact that storeowners constitute a small portion of all eBay sellers the fact that fixed price sales accounted for only 34% of eBay's GMV in Q1 and it is hard to build a case that the average eBay seller gained any benefit from the inclusion of their store-owning competitors items in search.  I also don't think all store owners benefitted (there were many who didn't), so would it be possible to change your wording to the more accurate "most store sellers" instead of "most sellers"?

2. (something that drives me nuts  ) People on eBay's boards who quote their sales figures or the percentage increase in their sales...you have a habit of habit of doing it, there's a thread on SRG where everyone's doing it, and of course if you go to the PayPal board all of the posting IDs are doing it (FYI, PP board posting IDs allllll gross $1 million plus  ;D ).

My problem with people quoting their sales figures is that the sales numbers by themselves are meaningless.  As an example I could quote you sales figures of several top eBay "volume sellers" who saw strong annual sales growth and were selling millions a year but operating on either margins of pennies or in the red...not exactly healthy businesses.  One of them (we'll call him PeSA board member Brandon Dupsky for short) in fact sold $8 million on eBay...sounds great if you just quote the sales figure...too bad it cost Brandon/Sell2All $9.5 million to make that $8 million.

A sales figure (or a percentage increase in sales number) by itself is a fairly meaningless number to quote as proof of anything because it says nothing about the most important number: profits.  Focusing people's attention (especially inexperienced first time business owners like many ebay sellers) on sales without a corresponding focus on profits can be dangerous and lead to disaster (ask Brandon how much he's enjoying Chapter 7).

There is too much focus in "ebayboardieland" on sales numbers and not enough on the more important profit numbers.  Over the years I've seen 100s of people on the eBay boards who thought they were doing great because of their growing sales numbers...and then were rudely awakened one day when they finally sat down to do their books at tax time (or maxed out their credit cards paying fees/buying inventory) and discovered they'd actually lost money (or netted  less than a sweatshop worker's wages) during the year.  Sooo, my request is instead of focusing relatively new sellers attention on sales numbers why don't you instead put the emphasis on profit margins and profit numbers...in the long run it will help people more.

p.s.

Quote:even though eBay has been doing all they can to decrease sales lately.

This is where I step in and say my oft-repeated "You can reduce the impact of eBay's idiotic decisions on your business by gradually expanding your online business beyond ebay and not putting all of your eggs in one basket...set up a web site....set up a web site"

I cannot say I disagree with much of what you said. I only talk in terms of sales because noone really discusses their profits, and you are completely right on that issue.

The bigger problem is that most people Id say the good majority of them dont make any profits. That figure of who makes part or all of their income on eBay is way distorted. Just to give you an idea only about no more than 20% of that number are even powersellers with SALES (not profits) over 1k a month! So if you take out fees, cost of items and all that you are left with diddly.

You have to really hunt for those numbers because eBay doesnt release them that often.

As to stores in search I agree for many auction only sellers and for some store sellers sales might have been affected the other way. I have the Q&A from the analysts meeting and sales did NOT drop however, they went UP . So net the change met with increasing GMV, the problem is the rate of growth was not fast enough to offset the decline in auction fee revenue.

I dont even think your off eBay ideas are wrong either. My wife and I work other jobs we have other incomes we really dont have much time to build things or design websites and the like so this is fine for us. The other things is we teach classes, get paid as consultants, sell books, even one we made ourselves for students and that is an ever larger part of our money we make especially in spring and fall when classes run.

So lets talk profits. We started selling in Jan 2004, and we sold over 1k our first month. That is really no big deal, not sure why people make a big deal. We didnt really ramp things up til we closed down the store for vacation came back and decided to raise prices and use best offer. Since then our sales grew from about 1000 a month to over 2k a month. Then they hit the 2.5k-3k level and March 06 (store in core search ) was about $4500. So what do we make? Depends on each month but my wife takes an actual paycheck about twice a month (we take out taxes and such and use a payroll service), we also have a ton of inventory (which is where some profit remains as opposed the money pulled out). Each class night pays about 300-400 bucks and another 150 or so in book profits and that might be 2-3 times a month and most pay by check with taxes taken out (like adult ed programs and the comm college etc).

We make money and have made money since we started but people have to get up to that 4k or more range to really start making decent money (depends on what you need and what you consider decent).

When the stores were in the core search we not only sold a ton of stuff but our average sales price soared to $45 (about twice normal). The last two weeks of March we had crazy auction sell through as well (66 then 100%) we usually do half that. I have no clue what happened but many of the 1200 some odd people that posted to that long thread had the same thing happen. So its a little hard to come back down off that sales high. PLUS we listed way less stuff, its tax time and I am a CPA so we were busier than ever with our own stuff at work. The stuff was just flying!

Also just another bit on the SRG thing, I always made it a point to invite everyone. The last time I did that 150 new people showed up. Obviously no group is perfect but if you poll those people on how their sales have done they have done really well . Some people have gone from a few hundred to many thousand in sales per month. Everyone also has their own opinion of what they like and dont like and what offends them and what doesnt, that part is just human nature.

Marty

Hang in there, as one of the chief complainers I have to tell you people at eBay seem to be hearing  all the complaints.  As ebay stated in their official release they have been working on different ways to include items and will be bringing those forward. This WILL happen and unlike the first time I presume they will probably test it   here and there first.  I have confirmed this with people who have spoken to stores people on the phone and with other people attending events and all. What they said in the release about finding a solution that will help store owners   but not hurt auction results is true and might be here shortly .  Just hang in there. I was really upset myself but feel this will give people a chance at bringing back what happened a month ago without hurting those who didnt benefit or saw sales decline.

IF eBay makes any changes, it will probably be a crumbs worth.  Oh, and if Marty is giving out "inside" info from Voices... the poop is going to hit the fan! :chitfan:

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?t...1000275783&tstart=0&mod=1146756991996

Frantic lurkers rushed to send emails after Anita posted this  --kind of like when I joined a certain group and after the leader posted a thread welcoming me and another new member someone posted "Oh brother.  Rob check your email!"  :

Dontcha just love them cute lil eternal optimists?

I'm wasn't making in fun of Marty.  Well, I guess I was... but I didn't mean it to be nasty.  His eBay optimism intrigues me.  I can't imagine ANYONE selling on eBay for any length of time having ANY faith in eBay.  How many glitches, work arounds, and underhandedness does a person have to experience with eBay before respect is lost for the company?? 
Oh, and I forgot about him being a Voices member.  Soooooo, if it isn't just optimism and he does have inside info... the papers he signed about keeping info confidential is going to tick off eBay's attorneys.