posted on June 3, 2001 04:37:40 PM
I've seen some claim it's 50%. That simply makes no sense if you visit the site! I thought it might be 20% but looking at various categories yesterday I'm thinking it might be more like 10%. I'm seeing tons of sellers with pages and pages of listings with no bids. If you start a listing for under a $1 sure you'll get a few bids, but who in their right mind wants to sell items for under cost? Are we trying to run a charity? Items that finish under $1 shouldn't even count in analyzing sell-through IMO.
What's the true sell-through at eBay? I realize it has the best sell-through rate of any auction site but what is it really?
posted on June 3, 2001 05:17:11 PM
When you find out please let us know.
I'm sure there are overall numbers and all sorts of breakdowns by category, price, time, features and dozens of other factors.
There are a few hundreds of thousands of my friends and acquaintances who would also like to have that information.
Short of selling your company to eBay I haven't heard of any source.
You can take their claims of total sales within a quarter, total listings and average price per auction to come up with a number.
But you would have to believe there numbers are correct, that they do have, for example, 27 milliom users and make some correction for items like real estate, cars and high ticket charity auction.
Having users believe low sales are totally their fault and the purchase of listing programs, options, features and other eBay services would be a good marketing approach.
Appealing to buyers with ever decreasing prices is also in eBay's interest when the inventory belongs to us.
The numbers are available in the "closed auction" search but, other than a few sellers that carefully watch a narrow category, I don't believe anyone is doing the work to collect the data.
Since eBay won't make a raw data feed available someone would have to record almost 1,000,000 transactions each day or some part of them that provided a sound sampling.
I expect a sample and the using of a optical scanner might make the job possible but where would the funds to cover expenses come from? Does the information have enough value to justify the effort.
Given eBays desire to prevent us from using our feedback and maybe even contacting our customers, how long would they allows that type of data to be harvested and used?
posted on June 3, 2001 07:20:54 PM
when you look at the completed auctions,some may have bids yet the list shows nothing,so you have to go to detail page to find out.
i think the sell through rate is higher than 10 %,higher than 20%.
it is not 100% or 90 % or 80%.
so shall we say it is in the range of 30-60
posted on June 3, 2001 07:46:58 PM
I thought this question was really interesting because it made me realize that...I don't care!
By this I mean, I've decided that my OWN sell through rate is definitely worth putting the time and effort into selling on ebay, so I don't really spend time wondering how the site in general is doing.
Same with Amazon and half.com. Who knows how many of the listings on Marketplace and half.com ever sell? In my case it's probably much less than 50% within, say, 3-4 months. But given no listing fees...I don't care, because I've found that my stuff sells pretty steadily and if it doesn't, I haven't made an up-front investment in listing. I have confidence in my selections and the sites themselves.
If only this was true at Yahoo, Bidville, or whereever also. Maybe I haven't given them enough of a chance, but when I have listed, my own sell-through has been so poor that I have to struggle to sustain any interest in continuing to try.
posted on June 3, 2001 07:51:10 PM
I don't know what the sell through on Ebay is but I do know that our sell through is about 75-85%. One week in May our sell through was 100%.
I think it has a lot to do with what you sell and how your prices compare to the competition. A lot of sellers want too much for their items.
posted on June 3, 2001 07:55:49 PM
I got into a discussion along these lines on the Ruby Lane dealer's board. It concerned the Railroad category on eBay and the idea that things sold there and that because of this fact no alternative auction sites could compete for sellers with this merchandise.
To prove my point that I didn't think things do sell all that well on eBay, that this is just an illusion people want to believe, I took the time to pull up all the ended auctions on eBay for "Model Railroad Car" in May. What I came up with was this:
348 completed auctions. 128 ended without a single bid and 81 ended with just one bid. That's 37% - none; 23% - one; 40% received two or more bids. Unfortunately, I didn't go into those with bids to see if the piece actually sold or still had an un-met reserve, but it is a sure thing that a percentage remained unsold. As a random sampling for a reasonably popular collectible, this would make the sell through rate for May somewhere below 40%.
posted on June 3, 2001 08:22:06 PM
I just did a run down of my May Sales Sold 244 items out of 271 listed with 1240 bids places on the 244 items sold. That is a 90% sell through rate averaging 5 bids per item.
I find it works better to start the price low and get several bidders interested so they get into a bidding war.
I love when I see these sellers with similiar items to me who start them 5 times my opening bid. Not only do you pay higher listing fees but these sellers have 100 auctions going and bids on 4 of them.
I wonder how these people keep listing with a 10% sell through and high listing fees.
I bet the total Ebay sell through rate for the whole site is probably 30% there are just way to many categories with thousands of overpriced items and no bids.
I think 90% is pretty good. But then again it depends on what you sell.
posted on June 3, 2001 10:38:18 PM
Reasons for poor sellthrough percentage
1) Not doing your research
2) Unrealistic prices
3) Reserve auctions
4) Bad or no pictures
5) Lousy descriptions
We sell some very expensive items but we almost never start an auction at more than $24.99. I take that into consideration when purchasing the item for resale. I want to at least double my money.
I do my research and find out which items sell and which ones don't. I don't sell collectibles. Collectibles aren't great sellers when the economy is soft. Practical items sell, [b]if the price is right[b].
May was our best month ever percentage wise. December and January are usually our worst (less than 50% sell through).
That's the July and August percentages you quoted from Queen Meg.
The Oct., Nov. and Dec. percentages, during the busy holiday selling season, are 43% higher....(Although the sample on which these percentages were based may have included only listings using both the gift icon and yellow highlighting.)
A disclaimer also mentioned that the actual percentages experienced by individual users may vary.
posted on June 4, 2001 03:26:45 PM
I don't think you can have one number.
You might be able to apply something to each catagory or type of merchandise, but it's just too wild and wacky to make blanket generalizations.
Ancedotal evidence is great, to a point, but as outoftheblue said, it's subjective even as far as presentation goes.
If every ad were as slick as an Eddie Bauer ad, or a Returnbuy (now that I think about it, the name contradicts their TOS and I wonder what marketing wizard thought of that?) then you could easily say what sell through is based on current buyer trends.
"You can't manage what you can't measure"
Ebay can easily measure and manage sellers, but as sellers, it's a challenge.
typo edito
[ edited by Capriole on Jun 4, 2001 03:30 PM ]
posted on June 4, 2001 04:55:12 PM
Our sell through rate on eBay is about 99%. We start almost all of our auction at $0.01 and our average item sells from about $177.00, while they range from about $25.00 to $2,000+.
If you REALLY want to know the eBay sell through rate you can try reading through the 100+ pages of eBay's most recent 10k filing with the Securities Exchange Commission. These are public documents and should contain business outlook information such as revenue and sell through rates.
I am sorry, I do not have the time to do it myself. However I would be much obliged to anyone with the time that posts the answer here.
Thank you
P.S. My guess is about 60-70%, no lower than 50%.
[ edited by hdoutlet on Jun 4, 2001 05:20 PM ]
[ edited by hdoutlet on Jun 4, 2001 05:20 PM ]
[ edited by hdoutlet on Jun 4, 2001 05:21 PM ]
posted on June 4, 2001 05:39:32 PM
Before the IPO ebay had said the first time sell through rate was 70%, it was a bit higher if you added the items that sold the second time around. With more competion now I would say it is probably between 50-60%
posted on June 4, 2001 05:56:17 PM
I just checked 3 categories out of curiosity.
For June 3rd (completed auctions):
Black Americana: 299/623 - 48%
Head Vases: 145/188 - 77%
Chalkware: 130/223 - 58%
I didn't want to take too long doing this, but in these categories at least, a glance at what didn't sell seems to be, in general, the reproductions and new items.
posted on June 5, 2001 05:10:24 AM
Excellent replies but I don't think we'll get the true answers here. True sell-through requires more analysis than seeing that items received bids. I'm really talking profitable sell-through. If a seller puts up an item with a cost of $10, opened the listing at $.01, and received 15 bids and the item closes at $2.00, I don't consider that true sell-through. THAT'S HIGHWAY ROBBERY mixed in with seller stupidity! These absurdly low starting bids to drum up bidding is skewing results. Toss out the numerous items closing absurdly below seller cost and then what would the profitable sell-through be? I'd wager it'd be like 10%. Selling well below cost might be perfectly acceptable for Joe Schmo trying to get anything he can for junk he has lying around the house, but for those trying to run a business that's totally unacceptable. I've never listed anything lower than my cost plus fees with a slight profit added on, so my sell-through is considerably lower than most of the ones I'm reading on this board, but I've never sold for a loss. Then again that could be stupidity on my part since I tend to hold onto inventory a lot longer than I ought due to my refusal to sell for a loss. If it doesn't sell on one of these pay sites I just toss it on one of these free ones with 99 relists and hope it'll eventually sell some day before I die.
Maybe I should have asked what percentage of listings close yielding the seller a profit? I guess there's really no way of knowing in aggregate terms. However, eBay makes a profit on each and EVERY listing!
posted on June 5, 2001 05:56:52 AM
Well, I've got one thing on and it's got a bid so that's 100% sell thru rate, right?
I think this would be interesting research and as soon as I have listed and sold everything including my property either online or at real live auctions I'm going to do some research.
Course that'll take about a year if I'm very lucky and industrious and stay off these boards. LOL
I do know that the number of users is probably inflated 3000% or more. I understand (no Proof) that ebay keeps you on the numbers even after you unregister or get NARU. Then there's the thousands (millions?) of multiple user names and there are the millions who have registered since ebays inception and have never bought or sold a thing. So 27 million users or whatever they claim is pie in the sky.
What might be of more value to us would be to know how many unique buyers have purchased off of ebay in the past year and the total sales.
If I had the ability to figure that one out,what would I be doing here?
posted on June 5, 2001 06:16:53 AM
I runapprox 600 auction a month and avg 550 sales. that's 91% and the other 9% will almost always sale on the relist. Doing research as to what to sell and what times of day to sell are the 2 most important things for a seller to do before launching his or her e-bay career.
Care to give us some insight on the best hours of the day to close an auction? Everyone says it's the weekend and I figure weekdays it would be when most people are free (lunchtime, and maybe after 6PM Eastern), but then again what the heck do I know??? My sales tend to run the entire gamut: morning, noon and night, with no discernable pattern so I can't make intelligent assessments.
Toss out the numerous items closing absurdly below seller cost and then what would the profitable sell-through be? I'd wager it'd be like 10%. Selling well below cost might be perfectly acceptable for Joe Schmo trying to get anything he can for junk he has lying around the house, but for those trying to run a business that's totally unacceptable. I've never listed anything lower than my cost plus fees with a slight profit added on, so my sell-through is considerably lower than most of the ones I'm reading on this board, but I've never sold for a loss. Then again that could be stupidity on my part since I tend to hold onto inventory a lot longer than I ought due to my refusal to sell for a loss. If it doesn't sell on one of these pay sites I just toss it on one of these free ones with 99 relists and hope it'll eventually sell some day before I die.
