Well it may be a bit longer haul than I expected to sell this here Diatomite. When I first placed the item on Ebay I told my husband, if this sells, we are in business. So, I guess I am not quite it business yet. The first listing was $20, buyer pays shipping and it was viewed 29 times. This time I listed for $20 again, but it was free shipping. Since Ebay is driving sellers to include shipping in the price and it seems many buyers want free shipping I expected the second listing with free shipping to garner more views than the first. Well, as you can see from the screen grab above, it was only viewed 11 times. However, neither my husband nor I watched it, so, since it had one watcher I take solace there is someone out there who cares.
But, Is Ebay getting it right? First, if you have never sold on ebay you may not know that the seller can monitor the item and see how many people have viewed the item and how many people have watched the item. The views should be cumulative. When the first item was posted as soon as my husband ‘watched’ and ‘unwatched’ the tally was updated. This led me to believe that the viewed and watched values provided by Ebay were accurate. But on this second item the number of views went from three to zero. Hum, very suspicious. Ebay may not be as accurate as I thought.
Steve Chou did mention that when he looks for items to sell, he considers the Ebay success rate, to see how often an item sells when it was offered and he considers ~30% to be decent. So, maybe I need to list my $20 Diatomite just one more time – third time is a charm. I will keep you posted.
Well, that was sort of an aside, the point is, I have not sold any Diatomite yet. I think I may rebrand to, “Diatoms”.
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