[quote author=Kaboing link=topic=3775.msg39800#msg39800 date=1168269422]
[quote author=jojo-p link=topic=3775.msg39799#msg39799 date=1168267890]
Just noticed, the sales reports for the last 2 weeks of December are on the WP site - sorry if I missed this here. They weren't announced over there at all.
Date       single multi total
12/18 to 12/24 583 1523 2106Â (a "record" !)
12/25 to 12/31 611 1131 1742
Â
JoJo
[/quote]
Even if its a record, its still not impressive. Its still around a 1.2% site wide sell through. Since the bulk of the sales were multi purchases, its safe to assume a lot of the sellers made no sales during that period.
[/quote]
One thing that has always bothered me about the sales reports (apart from the fact that they are manually entered, so there's no way to verify sales), is that the reports cannot show "quality" of sales, so it is impossible to tell whether they are reflective of any sellers actually making money.
In following the sales activity of many of the "top" sellers, it is clear that WP's stars account for the multiple sales with  multiples of low-end items. SCL, for example, appears to have many of those multiple sales, with average item prices at about $3. Another example: some of the card dealers are selling cards at 5-6 cents each. Since the FVF to WP is 3 cents on a 5 cent card, the seller is only netting 2 cents. He'd have to sell 500 cards each month just to cover the store fees. To cover acquisition costs and PayPal fees, he's have to sell way more. It would look impressive on paper, but would be far from making a living.
Having a much higher volume of multiple sales compared to single sales tells me that what is selling is a repetition of little, piddly, low-cost items, like charms, beads and cards that can be shipped together cheaply. And it also tells me that these purchases were probably made by other sellers, since the traffic during that time was appallingly dismal. For all we know, it could be Ray himself selling items between his stores to pump up the sales report, which would, in turn, definitely show up as "multiples." It's all part of WP turdonomics -- razzle-dazzle and no substance.
Â