If you manage your eBay listings poorly, it will certainly cut into your profits. Let’s talk about some basic, yet incredibly useful techniques to efficiently manage your eBay listings.
Where to begin?
If you have many products, you’ll need a priority list. Optimizing your best performing products first will yield results quicker. Therefore, through the use of software, like Multiorders, you can bring up sales reports and see which products bring in the most profit.
You can also do this manually by multiplying product profit margin by sales volume. However, this is more time-consuming. Be sure to set appropriate timeframes. Otherwise the figures won’t be accurate.
Now that you have a priority list, you can begin optimizing your listings.
How to manage eBay prices?
The most important concept you’ll need to grasp for this is price breakpoints. Basically, product price does not correlate with demand linearly.
For example, you’re selling water bottles at $1. Let’s say you increase the price by 10 cents. Demand goes down 30%. But it doesn’t mean demand will drop again by 30% necessarily if you go up 10 cents again. Nor does it mean every cent drops demand by 3%.
It could be, that at $1,09 the demand will only drop by 13%, but at just an additional cent goes down by an extra 17%. This would be considered a breakpoint. In other words, a dramatic demand reaction to a small price change.
As a merchant, you’ll want to test prices and find these breakpoints. Then, position your products at the sweetspots, as high as you can go right before an unproportionate drop in demand. Don’t forget to look for the breakpoints below your price, as well. You might tap into a much bigger demand that will cover the profit margin loss.
These breakpoints, of course, are dynamic. Since they rely on competitor prices a lot, you’ll need to perform regular check-ups. At the very least, do this for your most profitable products.
Useful to know: If you’re selling antiques, you might want to check this brief pricing guide for them.
Compare your eBay listings to competitors
Monitor your competition closely. Try to learn from the market leaders. What are they doing differently than you are? Look into the product pictures, descriptions, titles, prices. There’s little to expand on here, as everything depends on the situation.
However, one thing we could recommend is to show your and competitor listings to friends. Ask them which one would they choose and why. As well as what do they think of each of them. Having a focus group can provide valuable insight into something you overlooked or haven’t noticed at all.
Use software
All these tasks take up a lot of time. If you’re someone who manages their inventory manually, you could benefit greatly from adopting software. It’ll reduce the time you spend managing inventory, as well as the likelihood for human error.
On top of that, it makes the whole experience much more pleasant and easy. It’s quickly becoming the norm to do so, as it is incredibly time- and cost-efficient. And with software prices being as low as they are, you’ll wish you’ve done this sooner.
We suggest trying Multiorders. Now, you can do so for free. After the two-week trial you’ll know for sure whether you want it or not. And we’re certain you will, especially after seeing the prices.
