Sad news for auction sites

[JanetB]

I am willing to pay a higher FVF if eBid were to advertise more. This is a great site for sellers as eBid gives you the platform (lots of bells and whistles for a low lifetime price when upgrading within 24hrs of signing up) to sell and gives you the freedom of how you sell, ship, receive payment, etc.

[mark4740]

I agree i would happily pay higher fees or and even a small monthly subscription if they were to do ANYTHING SOMETHING,sorry for shouting lol but there is never anything no comms no nothing just silence and tumbleweed

[theElench]

Has anyone had a look at the "Recently Sold Listings" on the Home Page recently ? Following up on a suggestion from @Pastime Vintage in my continuing attempt to make some sense of google shopping and how it affects sales here, I did just that.

What I found really surprised me and seems to go against the advice often given here about regular auto re-lists. Perhaps it could do with updating and that in itself might help with more sales and more visibility on google.

Excluding Postage Stamps, which is a very crowded category, I found that most of what sells is listed as RUS, not regular re-listed auctions. That included sales in "Health & Beauty", "Models and Toys", "Books and Comics" and even some "Stamps" and "Postcards". Not at all what I had expected.

Perhaps the advice was good in the past when sales were more easy to come by, but these days they're not and as times have changed so too do the tactics needed to get a sale? On the obay boards it's said often enough to notice that sellers are saying it's easier to search for stuff on obay using google. I think that's where my sales come from, not foot-fall here but how often I'm seen on GS.

Perhaps GS is now even more important and the regular re-lists aren't helping sales because GS likes old listings and regular refreshing puts them at the back of the queue again and again in GS's lead-in time?

I can't help but notice that most of the sellers who think that raising fees to finance advertising seem to rely solely on the regular re-list formula and have few, if any, RUS listings. Perhaps it's time that changed and sellers tried experimenting to discover how to ensure that they always have a few ads. on P.1 of GS, rather than just being on P.1 of Ebid's results ? Perhaps monthly re-lists of small numbers of RUS listings to freshen up Ebid's results, while leaving enough RUS listings for GS to notice?

Personally, I'm not in favour of raising fees to pay for advertising. Mainly because the Management would put the money into advertising the biggest categories or those that make most sales, to get value for its money. I can't see them making much effort to grow sales of smaller (less profitable) categories like vintage glass and even increased "brand awareness" would be short-lived in times where attention spans are short without constant re-enforcement.