I Tried This To Jumpstart My eBay Sales
I’m back, and today, I want to share with you this one thing I did to jumpstart my eBay sales. Sometimes, it just takes a few weeks of slow sales or no sales to make you want to throw up your hands in frustration. You work hard taking pictures and listing your items, and you may even promote your items across social media. Still, nothing seems to be bringing in sales. This was me for the better part of a month or more. Sales trickled in, but often at the rate of one a week if I was lucky. I had my items priced decently, wasn’t overcharging for shipping, and even promoted them up to the suggested percentage rate. What more did I have to do to increase my sales?
It turns out I was falling into a bad mindset that I had heard about once before at a former job of mine. As I was talking to the owner one day during some downtime in the store, they told me we would be running a sale. The owner explained to me that often, business owners can become too attached to their inventory and won’t let it go for a lower price. That seemed crazy to me at the time, but I didn’t give it much thought. I knew in my heart I never wanted to own my own business, much less be in the business of selling things.
As I was pondering my lack of sales, this conversation popped into my mind for some reason, but I’m so glad it did! I had to take a good look at myself and realize I was the exact person my former boss was talking about. Whether I knew it or not, I am now a small business owner of my own eBay store. I also noticed myself getting too attached to some pieces of clothing I was selling simply because they were nostalgic for me. They weren’t even my clothes, but pieces I had found and wished I had when I was younger. And although they were pieces that normally sold, they just weren’t moving.
Discount Your Prices-Deeply
I decided to run another sale in my store. I have done sales before, but I decided to take a chance and offer 30% off all of my items. Yep, 30%! I had recently heard on a reselling podcast that buyers don’t even fool around with discounts that are less than 20%, and the only discount sales I had run in the past were under that. Buyers are often looking for at least 20% off or more. Now, that may sound like too much, and I’ll be honest and tell you that if you have many items under $20, it probably won’t be worth it. However, I don’t look at it that way.
What happened when I ran this sale? My sales increased greatly! I was shipping out many items a week! I started at 30%, then recently increased that discount to 35%.
This sale has easily put over $200 in my account so far, and I’m super happy about that. Running a deep discount may seem like such an obvious thing to do, but in my mind, it felt like losing for some reason. I felt like I shouldn’t discount items because what if I just waited longer to see if they would sell at the original price? I’d be losing out on potential profits, and no seller wants that. It’s especially hard when you see the exact same thing you have that someone sold in the past for much more.
I finally decided that I would at least give it a shot. What did it gain me?
A major increase in sales.
Money in my pocket.
More inventory moved out.
I lost nothing, in my opinion.
Some sellers call this “turn and burn,” where you just list and sell, no matter the profit. I never thought I would be the type of seller to latch on to this idea, but it’s working for me. What good is a room of inventory if it’s just sitting there?
I’m trying to decide how often to run these types of sales going forward. You may wonder why not just deeply discount your prices, to begin with. Well, I am finding that something about a buyer seeing a sale price attracts them to buy. I may play around with more discounts, but I will be letting this particular sale run for another week or so.
So, my biggest piece of advice is to not be attached to your inventory and not be afraid to deeply discount your items. Running a deep discount sale helped me jumpstart my eBay sales. Would you try this?
