The last few weeks have been abysmal. I even did a couple promos, including 50% off except Canada and the Carribean, with lackluster results. I'm going to halt my buying for awhile. How are others faring?
sold so far this month out of around 860 items you have listed. So you moved about 15% of your inventory in the last month. That's actually not bad. Keep building quality inventory. Think of it in terms of inventory turnover each month. For January, Bentley the Cat is around 20% items sold versus current inventory numbers and that is probably high since we've made a concerted effort to add a lot of quality inventory recently. It shows. We will finish off January with a record month so we'll keep building inventory.
John, I took a minute to check out your store. Looks good. It appears that you have sold about 56 items so far this month out of around 860 items you have listed. So you moved about 15% of your inventory in the last month. That's actually not bad. Keep building quality inventory. Think of it in terms of inventory turnover each month. For January, Bentley the Cat is around 20% items sold versus current inventory numbers and that is probably high since we've made a concerted effort to add a lot of quality inventory recently. It shows. We will finish off January with a record month so we'll keep building inventory.
Greg....I just looked back. And I agree with you....not really that bad. Just me I guess. Spent a lot of time getting my site loaded up, and changing listings of many stamps from SG#s to Scott/Unitrade#s. I had been hoping for more consistent (ie at least a sale a day), and at least an occasional higher priced item. I think I have a case of the normal/seasonal no fishing blues. If I was catching a few fish I wouldn't be such a whiner.
I have your back. Just keep grinding. It will work out. Happens to everyone. I'll go a week with a few sales here and there...then, BLAMMO! A couple of really good days. Nature of the beast.
This may seem like a silly question but how did you come up with John selling off almost 15% of his listings for the month? If he currently has about 860 and sold about 56 then his listings for the month would have totaled about 920 with about say 60 sold. should the actual percentage of what John sold be about 6.5 % of his listings for the month?
Is that how they figure out the amount of volume that they can take up? IE they seem to be able to take up the square root of the volume of the smallest possible box they can fit into but yet on the other hand they can also take up the area on your computer desk cubed.
Yes, but that calculation is inversed when it comes to my lap. He takes up more of my lap than I actually have lap.
My point remains valid however crappy I am at math. I consider a couple of performance parameters important. One is inventory turnover. Another is sales price per item sold. But turnover is important, and I do think that number is related to the number of eyes there are on a given store. Meaning, in the case of a HipStamp store, a larger inventory will drive more people to visit and thus more people to purchase. At the extremes let's say a store that has 10 items listed is likely not going to attract a lot of attention whereas a store with 10,000 listing will get more eyes on it and with that, more opportunities for sales. Just common sense. That's why I always push good newer stores to really focus on building inventory early on and not worry so much about early sales numbers.
Another thing to consider is, unless you offer free shipping, you're more likely to make a sale if you have multiple items the buyer needs rather than just one, so they can take advantage of combined shipping charges. The best way to do that is have more listings for sale. I have about 700 fixed price listings in my eBay store and sold 40 last month. I am sure I would sell more % of inventory if I had more listings.
Comments
Greg
John, I took a minute to check out your store. Looks good. It appears that you have sold about 56 items so far this month out of around 860 items you have listed. So you moved about 15% of your inventory in the last month. That's actually not bad. Keep building quality inventory. Think of it in terms of inventory turnover each month. For January, Bentley the Cat is around 20% items sold versus current inventory numbers and that is probably high since we've made a concerted effort to add a lot of quality inventory recently. It shows. We will finish off January with a record month so we'll keep building inventory.
Greg
Thanks for your thoughts./John
This may seem like a silly question but how did you come up with John selling off almost 15% of his listings for the month? If he currently has about 860 and sold about 56 then his listings for the month would have totaled about 920 with about say 60 sold. should the actual percentage of what John sold be about 6.5 % of his listings for the month?
6.5% sounds about right. That’s exactly what my store did.
My point remains valid however crappy I am at math. I consider a couple of performance parameters important. One is inventory turnover. Another is sales price per item sold. But turnover is important, and I do think that number is related to the number of eyes there are on a given store. Meaning, in the case of a HipStamp store, a larger inventory will drive more people to visit and thus more people to purchase. At the extremes let's say a store that has 10 items listed is likely not going to attract a lot of attention whereas a store with 10,000 listing will get more eyes on it and with that, more opportunities for sales. Just common sense. That's why I always push good newer stores to really focus on building inventory early on and not worry so much about early sales numbers.