posted on June 7, 2001 06:36:33 AM new
As a seller, I am going to look solely at sell-through rate as my indicator for the success of an auction site, and there is no how-long-have-they-been-in-existence variable in the sell-through rate equation to give them some kind of "bonus."
These "other auction sites" should understand that they are in a sprint, not a marathon. They must produce meaningful results in the short-term. One or two have already fallen by the wayside after failing to produce results, several others aren't even mentioned at AuctionWatch anymore.
posted on June 7, 2001 08:05:11 AM new
Check out these results:
http://www.bidville.com/search/word_search.asp?user_id=979599791&shop_type=all&sort_by=bids+desc,minimum_bid+asc&PgNum=1
I also had 3 auctions close yesterday. Are these results good enough for you?
posted on June 7, 2001 08:31:53 AM new
Daredevil2010,
Thanks for the pointer to your auctions. I'll take a closer look later today. Have a dentist appointment this afternoon. Root canal. That should be fun.
toollady,
When I do a sell-through rate estimate, I check a number of categories to get an overall idea of how much bidding/buying is actually taking place.
Some sites make it easy by providing either a sales history (ePier) or a list of completed auctions (SellYourItem) which makes their sell-through rates quite accurate, the others have to be estimated.
posted on June 7, 2001 03:10:30 PM new
Dimview
"look solely at sell-through rate"
IMO a much greater factor is seller profit. I know there are sales on BV but rarely do I see any over $3-5. Are the sellers making any money to justify their effort? We wouldn't know because we have no idea what the sellers paid for their items but even if they got them free the low $ sales don't look as if they could be "profiting" much.
When scanning the closed lists in many categories I see a large amount of 25 & 50 cent items. So I started thinking about the effort involved in a small $ sale. With the time it takes to photograph, load the pics on the PC, write the ads, email the winners, post feedbacks, package, plus the expenses of shipping materials, Paypal fees, trips to the bank & post office...
Ugh, now I'm really depressed. I have listed items in a broad range of prices and had many sales in the $1-2 range but rarely a sale for over that amount. I hoped the cheaper deals would draw bidders to the fairly priced more expensive items but it seems all that sells on BV for now is the cheap stuff. Anything I list over $5 generally closes with 0 views again & again.
I don't much care what my sell through rate is when I'm not making any real money from it. It is 26% but I do not consider myself successful because I've only averaged about 40 cents profit per sale. That certainly doesn't justify the effort I have to put in each ad.
Daredevil
With what I've said I'm not sure I understand your point. You have active bids on 3% of your listings. 474 ads with 14 bids totaling $27.99 as of now. The first page of your feedbacks is almost all from buying so I can't tell how much your final sales have been for other than a few 10 cent to $2.00 ads you got rated for. The real question is are you happy with the profits you have made from your sales? Did they cover what you paid for the items plus all of your effort, time & expenses to complete the transactions?
The basic measurement for auction sites is the sell-through or success rate:
(auctions with bid(s) / total auctions) x 100.
This can be accurately calculated for ePier and SellYourItem, and must be estimated for the others based on a sampling of categories.
There's other measurements that could be made by playing around with the numbers, like a Multiple Bid Percentage or Average Selling Price, which require a bit more information on closed auctions, or an similar estimation.
So what would constitute a good sell-through rate for these "other online auctions?"
First, the rate of increase in the sell-through rate should be greater than for the number of listings for which an auction site would have a "positive growth rate"; if the two rates are equal then its merely holding its own with "zero growth"; if less, then that auction site has a "negative growth rate."
Second, the "other online auction sites" are not in a marathon, they are in a sprint. There's a cash "burn rate" during which time an auction site must produce results either by banner advertisement revenue, fees, or some combination of the two, otherwise they will fail when the cash is depleted.
So I don't know. Would a 10% sell-through rate after six months or a year be a resonable "milestone"?
Hope this makes sense.
fixed goofy sentence.
[ edited by dimview on Jun 7, 2001 06:33 PM ]
posted on June 12, 2001 07:13:09 PM new
dimview - I'm assuming you mean:
completed auctions/total auctions
because "uctions with bids" doesn't mean anything if there is an unmet reserve. My experience is that most items of value have a reserve on the smaller sites so a $50 piece doesn't go for 50 cents.
The ideal is certainly completed auctions but, unless we actually look at each one individually, we only know the auctions with bids and have to accept the error due resulting from reserve auctions for which the reserve was not met and auctions for which the bidder was a deadbeat.
I've been keeping an eye on the stats at sellyouritem (dimview can't do it all, doncha know ).
And what I've done is anything that has ended and has a very decent price, I've looked at the auction to see if there is a reserve. Highest winning bid there so far has been $76.00.
Quite a few have been in the $15 to $30 range. Again with no reserves.
