posted on August 2, 2001 11:32:45 AM
Something that was posted in another thread got me to thinking about this even though I know it's been brought up before. Sorry.
A poster stated they'd looked at my auctions for the past 30 days and that 90% of my items close without a bid or only 1 bid. Of course, I pointed out that a lot of us are going through a summer slump, but even so I thought that number seemed unrealistically low.
I checked today and it is.
I think the poster failed to realize a couple of things, but correct me if I'm wrong.
1. Each auction that closed within the past 30 days is not necessarily a unique auction. In some cases, the items were listed twice and sold on the second try. 2 auctions yes, but only 1 item and still a sale with only 1 listing fee.
2. Many of the items were storefront items. I paid no listing fees for these and made only 1 sale, so I gave that idea up for the time being and closed my store. And the 1 item that did sell does not show as being a successfully sold item. A glitch in the system perhaps.
3. There was an extenuating circumstance with the PhotoPoint fiasco. I had no idea my auctions were running without pictures and during that time I did have an extremely poor week to week-and-a-half because of it.
So, I'm wondering about this 10% thing and how different people come up with their numbers. You can get vastly different result depending on how you do it.
For example:
Let's say you ran 100 auctions. Half sold. That's a 50% sell-through for that week/batch.
You relist within the 30 days the 50 that didn't sell the first time. On the relist half sell, again giving you a 50% sell-through on that batch.
OK, so you had a total of 75 sales on 150 auctions run during the period. Is your sell-through 50%?
I wouldn't calculate it that way. The number of auctions you ran was 150, but the number of items you tried to sell was only 100. You actually sold 75. To me, that means you sold at a 75% rate, a significant difference.
Even when I don't take duplicate auctions into account, I come up with something closer to 35% than 10%.
I know the 10% was only supposed to include items that had multiple bids because the discussion partially concerned bidding wars. And I explained that in my category, bidding wars are not always that common.
If I or anyone else took the 10% at face value, I'd have to wonder myself why I was wasting my time.
So do you calculate your sell-through based on the number of auctions or the number of items? Seems that some do it the first way.
I"ve never bothered to calculate it, but I would do it by the item, yes, with the caveat that I only re-list once. On the second re-list you pay new listing fees, right? Would that then count as a new item? [just asking hypothectically].
On the last FLD I conveniently listed exactly 100 items and simply counted up the sold items when it was over, but I never remembered to go back later and count the ones that I relisted and sold the second time.
Also, I rotate my stock between Yahoo, ebay, and half/Amazon, where a lot of it sells. It's not "ebay sell-through" when it sells elsewhere, but it's money in my pocket so I don't care. The challenge is deciding how many failed auctions are worth the listing fees as an investment. If I don't list, I don't sell, but an excessive amount of no-sales isn't fun either.
You bring up an interesting point about the relists beyond the first one.
Should it count as a new item? Hmmmm.
Well, literally it's not.
But I think you'd have to limit your counts by time period to get a meaningful number.
In my example, assume these listings took place over a month. But if you relisted beyond that month (or whatever your time frame is for tracking progress) then the earlier auctions would drop off and you'd have a rolling total.
I think that would be a fair way to do it. As long as you're consistent in the time frame.
And, of course, you'd have to remember to pool all of the information from all the sites you're selling on.
posted on August 2, 2001 01:50:37 PM
I calculate my sell through rate based on how many auctions I list at a particular time (I use 7 day auctions) vs how many of those I sell during THAT timeframe. If I run 25 auctions and sell 10, I see my sell-through rate on that set of auctions as 40%. If I list 100 and sell 10 then my sell-through was 10%....Is that correct? Number of auctions sold divided by number of auctions listed? Maybe, I have been doing it wrong???
If I relist, I include that in the next weeks total auctions LISTED and start the calculations over.
If someone has a way of making my total sell-through look better, I'm game...will make me feel better anyway!
Actually, I don't really think my sell-through is what is realllly important. I think the money that actually gets put into my bank is what is really important.
I ran some auctions for 1$ NR and sold every item, BUT I lost so much money on one of those items that in the end I had very little to put into my bank!
I was not impressed with that sell-through rate at all.....Of course, I can brag about selling 100% as long as nobody ask me what my actual profit % runs!
edited for some random keystrokes-if I missed some, sorry...
[ edited by sulyn1950 on Aug 2, 2001 02:04 PM ]
I think that's a very good way of doing it also. You're doing it by the batch instead of a time frame.
The problem I had with the 10% figure was that if I'd been selling so poorly, no way would I be showing the cash receipts coming in as well as they are and I would most definitely be showing a profit if most items were going unsold week after week. That's why I decided to find out where this 10% might have been coming from.
Since summer started my sell-through has dropped dramatically, but not as dramatically as that, thank goodness.
[ edited by sulyn1950 on Aug 2, 2001 02:04 PM ]