Several years ago ebay starting pushing free shipping. They were trying every promotion they could think of to get sellers to offer free shipping. I remember getting coaching calls form ebay, and each and every time they would start off the call with wanting me to switch to free shipping. Fast forward a couple years and Cassini hits. Sales started plummeting and I started experimenting with several different strategies to try and get my sales cranking again. I was willing to try just about anything.
I played with titles, I played with item specifics. I even redesigned my listings in the hopes of triggering something with Cassini to get my sales back up. Nothing seemed to work. So, being adventurous, I decided to try free shipping. I had over 1,500 listings, and I methodically went in and changed every one of them to free shipping. Guess what happened? NOTHING! Not a single change in my sales metrics. So much for free shipping!
This was also a time when I was being introduced to amazon FBA, so I let ebay just run itself without much effort from me to keep things fresh and worked on learning amazon. I saw great increases in sales revenue from amazon and decided to just let ebay sell down and keep it at a minimum. I was convinced amazon was the ticket. As with any perceived good plan, it never quite works out the way you think it does. I sure did have some good sales. I was averaging over $15k a month in sales. But I was only keeping about $4k for myself. Something just didn't seem right.
It was at this point I decided to use a program called Inventory Labs. Provided you put the correct data in, it will show profit/loss not just per item, but per category as well. Here is where the light bulb went off for me. In one particular category, I spent nearly $9k in purchasing inventory, and yet I only had $1,800 in gross profit. Talk about a serious bummer. Especially when a smaller category had cost of goods at $2,500 with gross profits of $1,600. It was at this point I started to realize the disparity between sales figures and actual profit. How I longed for the good profits of ebay.
So now I was facing a dilemma. I could continue down the amazon path and keep getting small returns for a lot of work, or I could pick ebay back up and try to figure out how I could get sales rolling again. I decided on the latter. I started thrifting and yard sales again and gradually started to see my sales pick up. I had gotten rid of free shipping and went with calculated. Some items I did flat rate on, but the majority were calculated shipping. I cleaned up my listings and made them optimized for mobile. So what was really responsible for my increase in sales?
As long as I have been selling, I have had a pessimistic attitude about buyers in general. I figured most, if given the opportunity, would screw you out of your money. For that reason I never went beyond a 14 day return policy. But this time around I figured if I was changing everything, I may as well change that. I opted for a 30 day return policy. And guess what? No buyer has taken advantage of me. I was once again building my revenue stream with ebay. So much for the free shipping!
Now I have been increasing sales by a good amount over the last few months, and as always I keep watching for news/tips just to see if I miss anything that may benefit my sales. During a recent round of research, I stumbled upon a video by a guy who was a part of the Cassini design process. He went into how Cassini worked and how your listings are filtered for searches. Cassini is dynamic and it changes based on what the buyers are demanding and looking for. What they discovered was that buyers really didn't prefer free shipping over tradition shipping. Imagine that! It only took them 2 years to figure it out!
So now I knew that free shipping had nothing to do with my sales. I did however feel that the increase in return time contributed to my increase. I think an increase in return time from 14 to 30 days helped get my sales back on track. There were other factors, but I think this was the start of that upward trend. Never just accept that what ebay is telling you is the gospel. There are a few things that are, such as optimized for mobile, but policies, and business practices are not. Experiment and see what works in your store. You may just find the one item you never really thought about could be the restriction in your sales funnel.
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