posted on July 2, 2001 08:49:49 AM new
Summer is generally a slower time for online selling, on average.
While seasonal items might do better most sellers of general items report lower sales numbers (both sell thru percentage and final price).
Past seasons I've used the traditional responses to this problem, list more, lower prices, look for different items or accept fate and enjoy more time outdoors.
A guerrilla marketeer friend of mine suggested an interesting alternative.
Will not work with every product but you might have some you can use it with.
I have some old MIB widgets in duplicate that I've been selling for over a year. Not a large demand but steady.
At first I used the traditional auction format and occasionally had several bidders. Then things settled down and one bid was the norm.
I switched to $9.95 opening bid and $10.95 BIN. Most sales were BIN and I averaged about 87% sell thru with some wide swings ( everything or nearly nothing.)
About a dozen listings a week which included each of the available variations and some groupings into Lots. Mostly 10 day listings and I would relist items if they sold (BIN) within the first few days.
More listings, launched on sequencial days, do not usually produce much increase, if any, in sales.
So I could expect lower summer sales as people spent less time at the computer. Cutting prices didn't seem to have much effect on increasing volume but it sure hurt profits per sales and further reduced income.
In comes friend with wacky idea.
Raise prices.
His premise was that their was a certain number of buyers who would impulse shop and if you didn't price yourself out of the market they would still purchase general items. Won't work if your selling new items identical to your competitors but applies to anything with some unigue quality and most preowned items.
Gave it a try. Added enough to double my profit per sale. Sales dropped from usual 88% to 63%. Profits went up, less transactions and less drain on non-replaceable inventory.
Even if sales drop to 25% of average, the profit/income will remain at 50% of Fall/Winter/Spring averages, and is what I usually expect for summer. But many fewer transactions and lower inventory depleation.
Wanted to wait until I had experienced several selling cycles before mentioning this idea as one week/10 days is no valid test. But FLD showed up and things won't be normal for the next month so I'll put it out here now for whatever it's worth.
Added bonus for me is it frees up some time and allows me to list on alternative site using my standard pricing, which provides a deep discount over my current eBay price and may attract comparison shoppers to use the alternative sites.
And it's more fun than just sitting here and being a summer slump victim.
What do you do to generate income during the summer?
[ edited by reston_ray on Jul 2, 2001 09:35 AM ]
