Sell through rates for eBay auction listings

When the fixed price sell through rates started to tank on eBay I began experimenting with auctions listings and here are my results so far.



I also did a comparison of fixed price sell through rates to auction sell through rates on accident. I forgot to change my listings to auctions on 11/04/2008 and the following week I listed the exact same listings (plus three new ones) as auctions. The fixed price listings on 11/04 had a sell through rate of 13.41% (11 sold out of 82) and the auction listings listed on 11/11 had a sell through rate of 32.94% (28 sold out of 85).

At this point it seems worth the effort to list some of my items as auctions and I will be expanding the number of listings I put up as auctions to see if the sell through rates hold up as I add more listings.

Global Sources Direct closing up shop

I received the following e-mail from Global Sources Direct today (along with a close out sales promotion).

"After 3 years of servicing wholesale customers from 144 countries with thousands of quality products, it's time to say farewell! Global Sources Direct will close its doors by the end of 2008 and will take its last orders on December 1, 2008. We will continue to provide helpdesk support to our customers until June 30, 2009."

I found Global Sources Direct through the eBay reseller marketplace but never made a purchase. The main reason I never made a purchase is that like almost everyone else targeting smaller retailers and eBay they claim to have wholesale prices but it just isn't true. As a example there is this foldable keyboard offered for $5.40 each ($108 for a case of 20) plus shipping of $111.55 for a total of $219.55 or $10.9775 per keyboard. I could (and did) purchase the exact same keyboard from a US based wholesaler for $5.05 per keyboard including shipping for a total cost of $101 and less than half the price Global Sources charged.

Falling eBay sell through rates

My sell through rates on eBay sales started to drop off in mid September. Business overall was still good so I didn't dig into what was going on but I knew something was up. Near the end of October I decided to take a closer look and found hat the sell through rates on my fixed price 7 day listings had plummeted as shown in the chart below.



The slow down really kicked in the week eBay rolled out fixed price 30 day listings and I converted all my eBay store inventory listings to fixed price 30 day listings. The main reason for this drop appears to be recent changes to eBay search that keep identical fixed price listings from the same seller from showing up in search (as of 10/23 only one listing was being shown per seller other identical listings were being hidden). Because of this there is no longer any point in listing the same fixed price listing multiple times and after this week I will no longer be listing fixed price 7 day listings.

In order to do something to try and create more sales I have been experimenting with listings some of my best sellers in the auction format with buy it now. So far the results have been positive with sell through rates around 40% a week with about 50 items listed a week. However at this point I have pretty much given up on eBay. I will continue to list to get the the sales that still trickle in but all my efforts at growing sales will be focused on my website and Amazon.com.