New Seller - No sales yet - Are my listing OK?
Hi all - I am a new seller to this site and I am wondering if my listings are OK for this market place as I have not had any sales yet?
It is almost a month now without one sale. Hipstamp have transfered over all my buy-it-now stamp listings (over 300) from ebay UK. I was hoping that a long standing member could check 1 or 2 listings for me to see if they are OK.
I have not listed any auctions yet. Is this site like ebay where I find that auction listings help to "drag-along" your shop BIN listings?
I also have a good selling reputation on ebay - is there any way of bringing over my Feedback?
Any tips will be appreciated.
It is almost a month now without one sale. Hipstamp have transfered over all my buy-it-now stamp listings (over 300) from ebay UK. I was hoping that a long standing member could check 1 or 2 listings for me to see if they are OK.
I have not listed any auctions yet. Is this site like ebay where I find that auction listings help to "drag-along" your shop BIN listings?
I also have a good selling reputation on ebay - is there any way of bringing over my Feedback?
Any tips will be appreciated.
Comments
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/the-online-stamp-shop
You may have thousands of stamps in stock, but they have zero chance of generating revenue if they are not listed for sale.
Hello Tania,
May I suggest that you price your material in USA dollars, which is more or less a universal currency. I am located in Canada and a large majority of my buyers are from the United States, followed by Canada. Recent sales were to 3 different Russian buyers, Thailand (1), New Zealand (1).
Why not list the Grand Prix covers in the Topical section, transportation, Cars. The World Cup covers in Topical, Sports. The 'Last traveling Post Office" cover in Topicals, Transport, Trains.
Same for the Ice Age animals cover. Etc...
You state that you have thousands stamps. A good idea would be for you to invest in a scanner.
As for pricing, you may want to compare with what is offered on Hipstamp (and other sites) for comparable material.
For example, you have Australia SG # 6a used @ 27,50 £ with a light but practically illegible cancel. Moreover, it it seriously off-centered.
There is so much (almost unlimited) supply on the market for used UK, one has to be really aggressive in pricing. Same for Australia.
I wish you all best in your endeavour.
Francois
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/stampboutique
...and your point is?
@Taania " I notice that most of your items are low value less than $1 to $33 with just one item at $55 and one at $70. that hardly quality stock"
I've sold thousands of stamps on Mark's sites. How much have you sold? You equate "quality" with $$. I equate quality by offering the stamps that people want to buy.
In this case, we have a seller who spends more time whining about not having any sales rather than acting on the very good suggestions and advice made by many people here who have tried to help the seller do better.
I sell most weekends at a flea market. I have done this for years I have seen new sellers come and bring high dollar items and complain that they can't sell anything, that the flea market was no good and they will never return again. Obviously they brought the wrong items to sell at a flea market.
I have seen new sellers come to the flea market and put a few items on the table, and then complain within an hour or two that they weren't selling anything and that the flea market was no good. Their cars remained full of merchandise to sell, but they said that they only put out a few things to see if anyone would buy something. They did not want to waste the time putting out what they brought until they sold something. People can't buy what they can't see.
But, that's the seller's choice to sell how they want. Those who are successful, however, adjust their selling to that which the potential buyers may want based on the market venue. Those who don't go away, and no loss to anyone except the seller who was unwilling to adapt.
I have learned to try other ways of listing and pricing. As the old saying goes, you can not expect change when you are doing the same thing over and over. In other words, change what you are doing and you might find it works.
You need to manually adjust the postage on individual items to reflect the £8.25.
Unfortunately there is no way to accommodate a total order over £25 made up of several items. This is a critical shortcoming of setting up postage on HipStamp and Mark does not want to accept the rationale for the need. I have had to cop the extra postage on several large valued orders now because of this.
I hope you are reading this Mark.
(I thought you were going to say it took you 2.5 years to understand how ebay works....I've been there since 1999 and I'm still trying to figure it out!)
" Mighty Oaks from Little Acorns Grow!"
I think if you stop buying your own items, you could rise up the store store list.
Get yourself a long extension cord. Set your scanner on 1200 dpi so you get a nice long slow scan, hold the scanner (with the lid open, of course. Duh!) as close as you can to the car while you walk around it. I do it all the time.
(I have better examples, but this one popped up quickly.)
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/the-philatarium/?sort=catalog
Adding more items to your 364 item store will add more variety and quantity. You mostly have first day covers and sheets. Those are items that sell slowly. Buyers will purchase what they want, not what you think they want.
Additionally, 50% of eBay stamp sales are made to US buyers and 50% international. Here I suspect it's more 90% or more US buyers.
With only about 300 listings I would expect you to only sell something here about every 6 months
To improve your chances, I would:-
Use good quality hi res scans, not photos from your phone.
Have a minimum 3,000 listings.
List more material for the US market.
List some niche areas that others are ignoring.- stand out from the crowd!
List mainly quality stamps.
List heavily postmarked or poorly centred stamps at no more than 10% cat. Even these will then sell.
Try featuring a few stamps/covers. This is cheap advertising on the main page and will draw attention to your store.
80% of sales will be for stuff priced at less than £5, so accordingly 80% of your listings should be in the £1 to £5 range.
I don't see an issue listing in UK currency. I used to list in pounds on the old BidStart with plenty of sales. Now I use $AU and everyone still seems to know what an Australian dollar is worth.
Cheers, Rod
Definitely some good suggestions to help increase sales.
One quick note, I see that you've noted a few times that ebay currently sells more stamps than HipStamp does. While this is true, it wouldn't be accurate to say that if ebay has 50 times more sales / traffic than HipStamp, Sellers here should expect to sell about 50 times less. This would only be true (and on average) if we also had the same number of active Sellers. We currently have 710 active Sellers, and across all international ebay sites, there are more than 10,000 active Sellers of stamps.
So if you just want to take an average across all Sellers - you would need to take that into account.
That being said, we also have many Sellers (both US and non-US) who sell more with HipStamp than they do with ebay, even quite a few of the larger Sellers bringing in over $10K a month.
With regards to US / International buyers, about 60% of sales are currently to US buyers, with the rest being non-US.
With regards to listing a Penny Black at auction, here's one that started at £0.01, which was listed by a UK Seller, in British Pounds, and sold for £290 last week:
https://www.hipstamp.com/listing/penny-black-la-plate-1a-superb-four-margins-fantastic/15181641
yes Hipstamp is based in the US and gets many US buyers. As a Canadian seller I have to live with that but it is just part of being in a mail order business . I have buyers from the US. Canada, Australia, Germany, etc, etc, Some months I have a lot of buyers and other months not as many. Mark over the years has done a decent job of promotion ( anybody remember the inverted Jenny giveaway?) and if he is based in the US it is going to be easiest for him to build the site in the US. If you have any ideas for advertising in your part of the world pass them on to Mark. I'm sure he is like most of us sellers - we don'r care where the money is coming from as long as the money is coming.
Have you dona any promotion of your Hipstamp site to your eBay buyers. Hipstamp fees are generally lower than Feebay, so why not try to pass that on to potential Hipstamp buyers, ie reduced shipping for Hipstamp buyers, free shipping for Hipstamp buyers if purchases exceed a certain amount, etc. And build a mailing list from your eBay buyers and let them know about your Hipstamp store.
I would give Hipstamp more than 3 months. It is a good site and is becoming better every month.
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/stampsfirst-day-covers-and-curios
One shipped only to the UK so you're excluding everyone else in the world.
Two shipped to the USA (I pretended I was in the USA since that is where the bulk of the buyers are located).
Both were covers for 2.5 pounds or less. The shipping was 8.25 pounds or more, making the cover cost to someone in the USA about $15 for each cover as well, the "with another item was an additional 8.25 pounds so if I bought 2 covers for 5 pounds, I would be paying 17 pounds of shipping.....which probably translates to why you're not seeing any sales.....
Are you saying that hipstamp customers are more "trustworthy"? - and it is OK to post international hipstamp orders by ordinary Air Mail?
I don't mind doing that if it is the case and if it will produce orders for me?
However, I am not prepared to ship orders (including multipul items) with a value of £25 or over without sending it tracked and signed. Is that fair to histamp buyers?
I also sell on ebay and delcampe, and I track very little.
Never assume anyone reads the listing.
The buyers have no idea why you're charging 8.50 so you're (in my opinion) pushing them away before they become a buyer the first time.
The buyer decides what they think is fair, things you want to do to protect yourself are not their concern other than they won't buy if it costs them more than they think is fair/appropriate.
I sell 1000s of lots per year across the sites I sell on, my package loss rate is less than 1/2 of one percent.
Generally GB stuff is weaker here, at least in my experience, and you're competing with people who will be sending this stuff "free shipping" which will put you at a disadvantage....
So mainly USA buyers then? I will try some United states and Canada stock listings.
With respect to no sales at this stage, it really comes down to a numbers game. Think 1/50th of whatever you are achieving on eBay as a realistic expectation, especially early in the game. And yes, the bulk of the buyers and sellers here are US based. A good clue is the HipStamp main page which is a US showpiece (well, apart from Mark's great penny black giveaway each month). Cheers, Rod