posted on September 16, 2000 09:32:49 AM new
I am curious as to what people's experiences are on the number of hits versus bids. I don't seem to see a real correlation between the two, but it is interesting to see how many hits I get before someone bids.
Does anyone have insight into this sort of thing? I have the feeling people just watch and wait till the last day before bidding.
Also does anyone notice the difference between eBay and say Yahoo in terms of hits and bids. There are more shoppers than bidders on Yahoo IMHO
posted on September 16, 2000 10:42:09 AM new
On the majority of my auctions that sell I receive a bid within the first five hits. Occassionally I will have something quirky that receives over 100 hits, but no bids. Generally those items will receive bids in the first few days of the second listing.
I have relisted 14 laserdiscs with over half of them being relisted for the third time, and the others for the second time. I lowered the price by a third. Nine of the 14 have bids. The one with the most hits does not.
I've compared the present/past sale record on these same titles. Hardly any one is selling theirs either. I almost feel lucky to have bids on these at all. My brother, who is the expert on movies, tells me that these titles are difficult to sell because they are on DVD, and selling for rock-bottom prices.
posted on September 16, 2000 10:51:11 AM new
Hits verses bids I have got bid after only 3 hit in the frist hour list and I have got bids in the last 5 min before end after 115 hits.
the two main correlations are this I find you need the veiws on the item to even get the bids and the earilyer your frist bid is the more likely you are to get many more bids on the item.
seems that if an item sits bidless no one else cares to bid either at least right away but when they do searches the fact it has bids catch the eye or something.
maybe its because some buyers are less sure of there chooses and if it has one or two bids they think the other guy cant be wrong so they bid too
hits on your auction do matter for sure with out them your getting no bids at all
there is truely not more shoppers on yahoo then bidders if you go by yahoos counter it may say there is 100 veiws but if you use a smart counter that only counts each person once that out of the 100 hits only 10 to 20 different people looking at your auction over and over again and one of them veiws was prolly you checking your own listing.
I use AW smart couters on yahoo and ebay and there is definately more shoppers on ebay when there counter shows 115 veiws and you got 1 to 3 bid you got 115 different people looking.
this isnt a bad thing when you are selling collectables and antiques you are listing in hopes that the buyer for that item is out there, you have the better chance of finding that buyer in 5 to 7 days on ebay then yahoo.
I have sold well on yahoo over time. lots of the veiws on yahoo are people checking how your listing an Idenitcal item they may have and trying to judge if they have better quality then you,90% of veiws on yahoo are people fishing not shopping.
I use to think the same many shsppers few buyers till I used the smart counters and found that over 2/3 of the veiws were from the same people everyday.what some are doing is looking at the show photo only and this way have no Idea if its an Item they have seem before or a new Item till they veiw the auction.
this dont make ebay better or yahoo worse anyone can sell very well on either sight with the right mix of Items to sell.
I have listed on yahoo and sold witha one bid wins buy price within the frist 30 mins to the frist person and have waited till the last second to sell something listed 5 days on ebay with one bid from some one snipeing but either way the goal of either listing which was to sell was met.
Im sure if ebay had the buy price option you could sell some item in seconds and have payment and ship in the same hour.great deal for the buyers killer of a deal for sellers with hundereds or thousand of item listed with buy price imagine haveing to pack address and ship 50% of 200 to 1000 items hours after you list.
posted on September 16, 2000 10:58:03 AM new
I've never really understood why a seller would put a counter on their item page in which the prospective buyers can read the number of hits. Can you have a hidden counter that you can only see like some web pages have?
I ask this because if I clicked on an item page that had 70 hits and was not a quirky type item, I'd envision a sniping fest at the end and not bid at all.
In addition, if I saw 100 hits and no bids, I'd wonder why that is and check the seller's feedback. If they were all positive, I'd wonder even more and probably just back out.
As an aside, I've never used a counter in an auction but it must be a major bummer to see a lot of hits and then get no bids.
posted on September 16, 2000 11:14:50 AM new
Kerryann :
seeing hits and no bids is the hardest part of selling but you use the counter to judge how the ad or title for the item is doing for you if your count is low your title could be not good enough to make most peoples searches.
on the matter of visable or unseen on the auction, I cant say how it effects buyers since I am not really a buyer I do know this on yahoo showing the count or not showing the count dont seem to effect bidding could be cause yahoo dont have the snipeing other sights like ebay has cause of the extend auction feature on yahoo.
this is really something sellers have to look into though how buyer veiw there counters do they see a auction with high veiws and no bids as a less worth wild deal are they snipers who wont snipe you cause they feel many have the same Idea.
either way I use the counter myself to tell how effective my title and ad is am I drawing the veiws I need to sell the item is it doing well in the search for this item and so on.it a marketing tool really for seller not so much for the buyer.
I do visable counters for ease I can poppin on a listing and see how the sale is doing but I get my best detail from AW which not only says how many but what hours and other details.
posted on September 16, 2000 11:19:57 AM newI do visable counters for ease I can poppin on a listing and see how the sale is doing but I get my best detail from AW which not only says how many but what hours and other details.
Wow! How cool is that? I had no idea you could get that kind of info. I'll have to add a counter to the next item I sell. I thought it was a number of hits only kind of thing.
posted on September 16, 2000 11:30:38 AM new
I use hidden counters on all of my auctions. In many cases it is hard to draw a correlation between hits and the winning bid price (I am more interested in the final price than I am the number of bids). But I have observed some linkages.
A high number of hits (more than 50 for my items) usually means that I will have from one to three snipers and get a very good final price.
A high number of hits can be achieved by having an odd title. If the title intrigues the drive by bidder enough to make them look (and I don't mean LQQK, or any of that nonsense) it will generate significant numbers of hits but not necessarily a high final price.
However the odd title does seem to generate more hits across all of my auctions. I place a link to my other auctions in every auction. The odd-ball title seems to get them to check out the rest of your items. For this reason I try to include one unique title in every auction batch.
posted on September 17, 2000 12:44:10 AM newfigmente is right, IMO. Putting counters on your auction is statistically useless. It collects no usefull data.
The problem is the a counter is a Tool. And this Tool needs to be placed into an acceptable statistical model to have any meaning. For instance, if you simply put a counter in your auction, you get to see not only those who read you auction title and were interested enough to look at it, but you get those who searched for keywords and hit your page by accident and aren't interested in the least about your item. You also get those who read your auction title, think it is one thing and click to see the page, then realize that it was absolutely nothing that they thought it was.
