posted on September 6, 2000 11:09:06 AM new
You put up a widget for X days with 2 auto relists.
It sells in 1 hour.
Your sell through is now 1 for 1 but is counted 1 for 3.
posted on September 6, 2000 12:12:01 PM new
Uh Oh vmodern-----you may be ON TO THEM!! I was waiting for the other shoe to drop....in other words, if you can list 1,000 the formula you just quoted, drops it to 500??
Veddy crever....those yoohoos Maybe this party is really over and it NEVER really began?
posted on September 6, 2000 12:28:06 PM new
I was just rereading the current (revised???) explanation of the rewards program and it seems that a seller's "sell through" is destined to become critical.
It also seems that you are DOCKED an auction every time something closes unsold. If I am reading right, you use a listing of your 1000 to put it up and lose another if it does not sell.
posted on September 6, 2000 02:30:04 PM new
VM
Yes their point is to stop relists of the same items constantly
"Unsuccessful auctions that are relisted will count toward each seller's total, so the new policy also will help to combat the endless relisting of items that never sell...Perhaps because they are not paying, sellers are thinking less critically about the likelihood of selling an item...Buyers would see more high-quality items to bid on...It's a great step toward making sure the items on the site are of high quality and real relevance."
I don't know if either of your theories are correct because I have no understanding of exactly how it works. You do lose 3 if you use 2x auto relist if it sells on the first run. This is the first time I've heard anyone ask if that also counts against your sell-through, good question.
Safest thing to do is never, ever use auto-relist. I actually never have, preferring to run each item 1 week of every month to give my repeat customers variety. I always feared they'd stop looking if I always had the same items listed. It sounds like Yahoo has come to a similar conclusion.
posted on September 6, 2000 02:57:44 PM new
"Unsuccessful auctions that are relisted will count toward each seller's total, so the new policy also will help to combat the endless relisting of items that never sell...Perhaps because they are not paying, sellers are thinking less critically about the likelihood of selling an item...Buyers would see more high-quality items to bid on...It's a great step toward making sure the items on the site are of high quality and real relevance."
1. Just because an item doesn't sell without relisting DOESN'T mean it's not a high quality item.
2. Many sellers have commented here that many of their bidders are newbies. With that in mind, many of the bidders are seeing everything for the first time regardless of how many times it has been re-listed.
3. What exactly do they mean by "real relevance." It almost sounds like they want nothing but "hot items" to be posted.
posted on September 6, 2000 06:01:12 PM new
thanks for the link to the article, many things to ponder about this new limit. i stopped using auto relist some time ago in favor of allowing a week or so to pass before relisting. I need to plan my listings more carefully but i'm really appreciate that they're still free, can't say that about ebay
posted on September 7, 2000 02:11:33 AM newVeryModern,
Good question. The way Yahoo SEEMS to be structuring this whole "seller performance rewards program" would tend to make one think that the two (or one) unused auto-relists would indeed count as "unsold listings" in calculating the seller's sell-through rate, since they haven't as yet written code to REIMBURSE the seller for auto-relists that weren't used.
As far as being PENALIZED one listing (in addition to having one deducted when you listed it) for having an auction close unsold, it doesn't appear that will happen (though their wording is very confusing on the issue). I had several close unsuccessfully tonight and I DON'T THINK I lost "points" for them, but I was so busy writing correspondence for the ones that sold, plus listing, relisting, and getting feedback, that I couldn't keep up with my "count".
CAN ANYONE ELSE TELL IF THEY LOST "POINTS" WHEN AUCTIONS CLOSED UNSOLD???
It's a shame that one of Yahoo Auction's most POPULAR features with sellers is being so strongly DISCOURAGED as an option by Yahoo. Either Yahoo doesn't want us to automatically relist anything, or the implications of what they're doing by deducting auto-relists (whether used or not) from a seller's "count" truly hasn't yet OCCURRED to them (which is a possibility, as haphazard as this program seems to be).
If this as-yet-undisclosed sell-through rate-based formula for determining a seller's allowable listings is LOWERED by unused auto-relists, as you speculated, then it won't be long before no one uses auto-relist at all.
As for whether using auto-relists is good or bad, I agree with auctionee here. There are many instances when a seller NEEDS to use them on Yahoo, when they're appropriate and not degrading to the quality of the site.
I've had a perfectly good book listed for several months without bids. About midnight last night it finally sold (first bid wins), I relisted another copy and it sold again just 8 hours later!!! This isn't JUNK...it's a "high-quality item" with "real relevance". Yet it took months for the right two buyers to come along.
That's why I bristle a little when Brian Fitzgerald says, "Perhaps because they are not paying, sellers are thinking less critically about the likelihood of selling an item."
How the heck am I supposed to know the "likelihood" of an item selling unless I can PREDICT THE FUTURE??? If I had only run this listing for one week of the month like kasmoon does, how can I know which week is the "right" week???
I think the mass of potential buyers should be so vast and changing that a "quality" listing will NEVER be "stale". Besides all the newbies looking at your listing for the first time are the regulars who suddenly decide to buy a widget and "discover" your listing, though it's been sitting there for months.
The problem we've had on Yahoo is the shortage of this buyer mass, so we've resorted to "First Bid Wins" strategies to compensate. SURELY Yahoo can see this buyer shortage problem, and realize that our so-called "stale listings" aren't the whole cause of it. Granted, buyers will go elsewhere if they don't find what they're looking for on Yahoo....but sellers HAVE NO REASON TO LIST an item if there's no one to
BUY it.
So which comes FIRST, the sellers or the buyers???
Ebay's attitude has always been "if you have buyers, the sellers will come", so they court their buyers and disregard their sellers.
Yahoo, on the other hand, has appeared to court their sellers and disregard their buyers.
posted on September 7, 2000 07:18:16 AM new
Well, this is the pits - and what I think we will see is many folks posting under many ID's.
Of course some of the stupidity I have seen with items spammed all over the boards, regardless of category they really belong in, this may stop some of that, but normally, this type of seller has already figured a way around the system.
I'm afraid that Yahoo is going to kill off one of their most attractive attributes and that is easy relist.
They are also gong to see listings at given times from experienced sellers dropping considerably because the experienced seller already knows what time of year is most profitable, what holidays weekends have low sales results, etc.
Guess we will have to live with this, but I would prefer if they just charged a flat fee and let me list as I chose, sort of like the Amazon program worked at one time.
*******Under the merchant program that one pays for, can one list on the auctions unrestricted?
If so, to make life easier, I might just opt to do that instead of trying to figure out all this "how many auctions do I have left this month" approach. Heck this is getting to be as big a pain as eBay. That was one of the things I loved about Yahoo and that was the lack of the endless rules and rule changes that eBay constantly has.
posted on September 12, 2000 10:13:14 AM new
I relist until an item is sold -- it is not all that uncommon for something to take months to sell. I could care less about the points as I rarely have more than about 60 items out there at one time. I've moved roughly that amount since I started in July
posted on September 12, 2000 12:15:17 PM new
I am wondering, or maybe reading (sellerzone??), that your 1000 per month is reduced by the number of auctions you have running on the first of the month which seems like double jeopardy to me. Charged when you list, charged again when your new ration is delivered. If this is the way it works, it could get dicey for a lot more sellers than initially thought.
Personally, I will err on the side of caution and am not listing for 2 auto relists because although I want to because it is convenient, I too often sell first time out and don't want my sell through percentage damaged. I have am concerned that we may come to learn that this value is vitally important...
It has also occurred to me that Yahoo may really start REWARDING successful sellers - say with more credits to feature or something that is valuable but free to them to provide. This would be good business, and Yahoo does good business (my opinion). On this bet, I am playing my cards...
posted on September 12, 2000 03:04:41 PM new
Okay, I listed 3 widgets (I just love seeing how many people sell widgets on these auction sites LOL ) this morning, they sold this afternoon. Okay--no problem. GREAT! I LOVE IT!
However, rather than retyping the whole thing, I just went to my sold auctions and hit re-submit to relist the auctions as I have several, but cannot sell 1st Bid Wins as a dutch auction (and I don't understand the dutch auction format anyway) and I cannot list more than one of each type at a time.
To the bottom line here...Everytime that I hit re-submit, it reduced the number of auctions that I had left for the month by THREE!!!!!!
posted on September 12, 2000 03:13:50 PM new
labbie - thanks for letting us know. This is the kind of thing that scares me. I am going l listing at a time until all the results are in and the bugs(?) are out.
posted on September 12, 2000 04:07:05 PM new
Okay, I have just finished another experiment. This time, I hit re-submit, but listed it with no auto relists. Yahoo just subtracted ONE from my total auctions available for the month.
I guess it just has to do with the number of times you set it to auto relist.
So, VeryModern, I guess your 1-3 count would be correct if you choose to auto relist twice.
posted on September 12, 2000 04:33:53 PM new
The count on yahoo isnt working the way you state you list an item your count goes down one if it ends with no bids you dont lose a second I have Items relisting unsold all month so far and not loseing listing for unsold items.
tip of the day:
to avoid loseing 3 listing for item that sold on the frist week of three Use auctionrover list all Items for 1 week set rover to relist your items that dont sell automatically this way you dont use yahoos auto relst feature. this way you if you have an item listed all month with out selling the most listing you would lose is 4.
another waist of a listing is if you close an auction early with out bids because of errors in your listing you can lose up to 6 listing this way if you list an item with x2 auto reslist have to cancel it to fix then relist it with x2 auot relist again kiss 6 listings good bye.
the person who is most effective at listing can list 250 items resubmited 4 times with a 1000 listing avaable or 1000 items all listed once in a month.
there is no statment as to your sales ratio for the 1000 listing if you sell what you list you will incress the amount you can list each month but so far as I can see you will not lose or drop below the 1000 limit.
each month you will be reset to a min of a thousand the max is unlimited.
keep in mind this is for free listings not for paid listing on yahoo
when I listed an items and I featured them when I used auto resubmit my count only drops two not three.
posted on September 12, 2000 04:36:22 PM new
labbie - thanks for the clarification. I know that listing with 2 relists costs "3" but I thought you were saying that you relisted (for one time) and it cost you "3" again - since that was your selection the first time.
Did anyone get that?
If that were happening, it would be a horror.
posted on September 12, 2000 04:48:45 PM new
VeryModern--Oh sorry! On the first set, I lost 3 out of the 1000 when I listed it the first time with the option of 2 auto relists.
Then, when I relisted it after it sold in half a day, I lost 3 more of the 1000 with the option of 2 auto relists.
When I relisted using no auto relists, it just deducted 1 from my 1,000.
I don't anticipate running out of listings unless I continue to burn 3 each time I list a 1st Bid Wins and it wins in half a day.
I am just going to quit using the auto relist feature.
dman3 I have not tried the Auction Rover thing. Do they charge? Thanks!
posted on September 12, 2000 07:26:59 PM new
I list all of my items using Yahoo's bulk loader and the only time my count gets decreased is when I load the batch. Each item in the batch gets re-listed twice, but the count doesn't decrease on these re-lists.
posted on September 13, 2000 07:31:35 AM new
d-man
I just tried to find auctionrover on the WWW, and found a page that related to searching auctions for items, but found no submit program, where is it located?
posted on September 14, 2000 01:00:11 AM new
Auction Rover is a GoTo.com thing isn't it? Tried it once on their Ebay free listing day, but found that it was more time consuming than listing individually was. The best feature (in my opinion) was having the ability to load up your auctions & choose when to launch them. It might save you time in the long run if you use their system systematically, but the thought made me sort of nervous- having all my auction-related business info on someone else's site, in someone else's hands- I'm just too much of a control freak to be comfortable with that. I prefer having my own spreadsheet with all my inventory saved on my own hard drive.
And VeryModern has an excellent point- you're sunk without a thumbnail for most listings.
posted on September 14, 2000 04:28:54 AM new"Has anyone run out of listings?"
I think we're all HOARDING THEM until we see how the month progresses. I know I'm planning on relisting ALL my auctions with 2 auto-resubmits on September 30th (most will be closing that night, anyway), so I'm SAVING my "current listings number" X 3 until then. That way I KNOW I'll have enough next month, since they'll run through October on my count from THIS month. I've been relisting WITHOUT auto-resubmits this month, but it's just too much work to keep doing it that way.
At this point, I have no idea if my allowance for next month will be 1000 plus feedback like it was this month, or more, or less (depending upon how they judge my "sell-through rate". If my count on October 1st automatically SUBTRACTS all my listings from the new count, after they've already been subtracted from September's count, I'm going to be very, very upset.
Maybe this party is really over and it NEVER really began? 
) this morning, they sold this afternoon. Okay--no problem. GREAT! I LOVE IT!
. If my count on October 1st automatically SUBTRACTS all my listings from the new count, after they've already been subtracted from September's count, I'm going to be very, very upset.