My EBay Life
(A series of essays about what it is like to sell stuff on EBay)
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I guess that it is obvious that if you list more you will sell more. But here are some of my actual findings. Of course these are just my results but still they may provide some sort of guide post. As I have mentioned before my listings are 99.9% Fixed Price Good Til Cancel listings and they are also, I am just guessing here, 95% in the clothing category. I believe that these percentages are valid for last year as well as this year.
Some other stats are as follows.
For 2011 I had around 400 listings in my store for pretty much the whole year. Early this year I worked to get 450 listings in my store. Currently I have 456 listings. Now I am not advocating carrying more inventory exactly. But here are some interesting numbers from last year.
My listing numbers were all over the place anywhere from 14 items to 83 items listed in a month. My sales numbers on the other hand were pretty steady at an average 50 items per month. But perhaps the most interesting number is that I sold just 3 more items than I listed. In 2011 I listed 596 new listings and I sold 599 items from old listings and from new listings. All the while carrying right around 400 items in inventory.
As you may already know I did this working on average 10 hours a week. But I am trying to take my business more seriously this year and put in 20 hours a week dedicating most of my additional time to getting more listing done. As you can see I am carrying 50 more units in inventory right now.
Here are my listing and sales numbers for the year so far:
Now I know these numbers may not be that impressive but they do represent a few key things.
1) January and February show a 30% increase in units sold and March looks like it will be even better. (Of course this is only part of the picture. My margins also make a big difference. I don't have a number for March yet but for January and February my average profit margin was higher the last years average. So it is a double win if that makes sense.)
2) Based on the numbers above, limited as they are, the trend is a positive one.
3) My goal is to try to list on average 100 units over the average of 50 that I listed last year which is a 100% increase in listing.
4) Based on this I will have to watch my sales closely and hope that my sales percentage continues to increase or I will have an inventory level that might get out of control. But I do expect that my inventory level will be higher in 2012.
In summary I am please that my sales numbers are up so far for 2012 and am hopeful that this trend will continue. Of course there are many economical factors involved as well but I do know "if you don't list it you can't sell it."
How are your sales going so far this year?
Happy Ebaying,
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