I needed to find a way to sell "not so popular" items on eBay. Many buyers are searching for "a particular" title or color, or whatever ... so if you have something "similar" but not exactly "the one" ... that buyer will not be buying your item, regardless of your great, low price.

I deal in laserdiscs. I find that selling laserdiscs is a ‘title-driven’ business … Laserdiscs will sell, or not, based upon their title.

Trying to sell a laserdisc on eBay by lowering its price may not work. A disc, if of a desirable title, stands a good chance of selling at a fair price if a particular buyer is searching for that particular laserdisc. You cannot expect to make a disc more desirable with a lower price … a buyer will want it, or not … and, within reasonable limits, he will pay your price for the right item.

I used to list a huge number of titles, all at one time, to close within minutes of each other. I offer a good ‘combined shipping discount’ and I try to price each laserdisc to be competitive. When all is said and done … I find that it was eBay who was the big winner of my money!

If I listed 50 laserdiscs … my listing fees were about 0.35 each. (.25 each + .10 each for scheduling my listings … I use Turbo-Lister II and space out my auctions at two-minute intervals to allow any buyer/sniper enough time to bid on my next items.) That works out to $17.50 in listing fees. Then I would probably sell only 4 items at about $6.00 each. So I would net about $30.40 … That’s $24.00 in actual sales plus about $6.40 in handling charges (excess shipping fees collected). (4 x $1.60) (I charge a shipping charge of $4 per sale … the Post Office charges me an average of $2.60 each … and the remaining $1.40 is my packing/handling expense. I use corrugated mailers that I create from larger cartons which I purchase in bulk. It takes time and tape and computer printed labels to complete each transaction.)

So … I got $30.40 into my PayPal account … and spent $17.50 on eBay listing fees to get it … plus PayPal gets another 3%, or so, of the total sale … $1.00 … PLUS eBay gets another 3 or 4% of the Net Sale ($24.00) as Final Value Fee $0.75 … so my Final Into-My-Pocket Cash is about $11.15. I just let FOUR of my laserdiscs go from my collection for an average net of only $2.79 each … when I had been asking for $6!

You might think that one way around all that expense might be to lump your laserdiscs into ‘lots’. Take a look at laserdisc ‘lot’ and ‘collection’ completed listings (use Advanced Search). You can see that collections, too, are title driven. A huge "lot" of average titles will not sell for much. I recently watched one seller’s plight as he sold three ‘lots’ of 50 discs per lot on eBay. They only sold for about $35.00 /each lot … less than $1 per laserdisc! (True … each lot did contain a copy of ‘Top Gun’ … but I’m sure that that’s not the reason for the low sale! :o) The seller was asking a fair shipping amount of $20/lot … So we can see that he gave his discs away in exchange for way less than $1 each … almost nothing!

The solution that I have identified is to put my laserdiscs into an eBay Store. The basic store cost is $15.95 per month … and 0.03 per each item in your store per month. I can load in 100 items, have them for sale on eBay, and pay only $19 for a whole month. With the laserdisc market being ‘title driven’ … my individual items will appear in a buyer’s search results when one of my discs matches his particular search request … cool!

I still need to spend some more money … and time … driving people to my store so that they can browse all of my titles. I keep one laserdisc listing up on eBay all of the time. I make sure that I have something about to close each evening so that the casual laserdisc buyer will see that my listing is ending soon … will click to check it out … and then will see that I have a store and give that a click to see what I have to offer. I also add my store’s logo and URL to my other personal web pages in hopes of sending a buyer to my store.

A store lets me put my 100 items on eBay at a low cost … much, much cheaper than continually relisting my failed auctions. True … eBay’s Final Value Fees are higher for store items than for auction items … but my over all cost is much reduced. A store also gives you great marketing tools so that you can better manage all of your eBay sales.

Please Click below to indicate Helpful or not. Thank you! -- KingmanEric

UPDATE: 11/2/08  So far ... it has been about two weeks ... I have sold only one laserdisc from my store inventory. I have been doing as I said I would ... listing something on eBay at all times as a way to get store exposure ... those auctions are attracting no bidders ... and I have not yet had any measurable success with my store. I still think that a Store is the way to go. Now I just have to make it work!

UPDATE: 11/11/08  Mid-last week I quit running auctions ... now I have only my store. I had one sale from store inventory on Friday, 11/7. I don't know if it was a direct search for that particular title or if the buyer browsed my store and saw one he liked. I have spent nearly $14 on auctions this month and had no success. The one sale from store inventory had a gross sale of $8.95 ($4.95 price + $4 shipping). eBay got their piece. Paypal got their piece. I spent $2.56 on postage. I provided a mailer and gasoline to and from the post office. No success, here! 

UPDATE: 11/19/08  No success, here!  Just got my eBay invoice for the month: $31! Thats about $19 for the store ... and the balance of the bill is for failed auctions ... auctions I had run hoping to draw attention to my store inventory. I had only the one sale of 1 disc at $4.95 + $4 shipping ... 8.95 total income. eBay got their listing fee ... their final value fee ... and PayPal got their transaction fee. I am just going to let it ride for another month.

UPDATE: 12/7/08  The STORE WORKS ... Sort of ... My 31-day sales record shows 9 sales ... only 1 auction closed successfully and 8 sales from my store. $69.55 net sales + my shipping charges ... brings my total income to $103.55. ... ... My average shipping cost is $2.58 ... x 9= $23.22 my cost out of pocket for shipping. PayPal got their 3% of the gross (about $3.11) and eBay gets about 8% of net store sales (8% of $69.95 = $5.60) and their $15.95 monthly store "rent". SOOO ... It looks like I took in a gross of 103.55 ... -23.22 -3.11 -5.60 -15.95 = $55.67 total net cash into my pocket for the 9 sales = $ 6.19 average net/sale. I must further reduce that income by the price I paid for the auctions I ran throughout the month as "bait" to lure shoppers to my store ... that cost about $20.00 in eBay Listing and Relisting fees ... - my $55.67 net = about $35.67 net cash in pocket for the nine sales = $3.96 average net per sale of each of my laserdiscs.

That's a whole lot better than my original strategy of selling my laserdiscs through auctions, alone ... that's 42% more cash in my pocket per sale at the end of the day ... see the opening paragraphs at the beginning of this article: $2.79 net cash per sale using the "auctions only" strategy ... $3.96 / 2.79 = 1.42).

My asking price (and sales price since there was no competitive bidding on my items) was $69.55 for the 9 items = $7.73 average asking price ... but the net in my pocket was only $3.96 ... my costs ate up nearly half of my asking price ... even after I had tried to cover those costs with a tad bit of shipping charge markup. ... I was asing $4.00 shipping charge. eBay has set a limit of $6.00 as acceptable, legal shipping charge. If I ask, as others do, $5.95 shipping ... that'd be another $1.95 profit in my pocket ... that'd bring my net cash per sale to $5.91 ... much closer to my asking price per disc. As of today, I am raising my shipping price to a minimum of $5.95 per item.

ONE SIDE NOTE: I offer a cheap Combined Shipping Discount of only Fifty Cents per each additional disc paid for at the same time ... the same transaction. Not one of my buyers took advantage of that offer. Each disc went to a unique buyer and I was not asked to combine any shipping charges.  ... ... As stated in the first paragraph of this article: The laserdisc market is title-driven. My discount did not add to my sales ... although it MAY have made potential buyers review my store inventory more often than they otherwise would have.

UPDATE: 1/12/09  The STORE is costing me money! My laserdiscs are not selling. My inventory of about 75 titles is not broad enough to attract a steady flow of sales. I have sold something every week or two ... but it seems that I am giving away my items in exchange for keeping my store OPEN on eBay. Actually, I am not recovering my costs ... I complete transactions as they occur, I take in a little money, I ship my item, and I have to add a little money out of pocket to pay my eBay fees, store rent, and postage for the items. NOT A POSITIVE EXPERIENCE. I do run an auction from time to time in an effort to draw attention to my store. That is an added expense that rarely results in a sale. Only once has a buyer purchased more than a single item from my store ... taking advantage of the Combo Shipping Discount. The laserdisc market is Title Driven.

UPDATE: 1/17/09  I HAVE CLOSED my Store. It has been interesting and fun to operate my store on eBay ... but it was eBay who made the profit. I was essentially giving away my laserdiscs to keep my store open. I didn't have enough inventory items to generate enough sales to make a profit from my store's operations. To sell my laserdiscs ... I will have to carefully price and individually list each one.

UPDATE: 2/3/09  Based upon my store experience.... I developed an Excel spreadsheet to simulate my Store. It automatically adds eBay and PayPal fees, and lets me enter my packing and shipping costs and my best estimates for inventory turnover. I found that a larger inventory might make me some money! I see that there are a number of eBay Simulators for sale on eBay. Check 'em out!

Please Click below to indicate Helpful or not. Thank you! -- KingmanEric