The short answer
How do I sell more on eBay with the tools I already have?
Run a daily coupon, send bulk coupons to past buyers and followers, and only buy brands that sell through at about 50 percent in 90 days. When I made this video in Jan 2023, Columbia pants sold roughly 8,000 to 9,000 in 90 days on eBay, and I put the brand first in every title.
- A 30 percent daily coupon that renews every morning at 7 a.m. was bringing in about $250 a day in sales when I made this video in January 2023.
- Sell-through is the sold count in the last 90 days divided by the total results. Old Navy jeans came in under 10 percent, and John Varvatos men's jeans were about 45 percent.
- I only buy brands at about 50 percent sell-through or higher, unless I have the warehouse space to wait.
- Title order is brand, item, gender, size, then keywords that describe the item. A misspelled brand name means buyers won't find the item under that brand.
Chapters (5)
If your eBay sales have gone quiet, the fixes are mostly the boring ones: coupons, a sell-through check before you buy, and titles written the way buyers actually search. This is my January 2023 video on all three. The numbers are from when it went up in January 2023, so use them as a method, not as today's prices.
How do coupons help you sell more on eBay?
Run a daily coupon, and send bulk coupons to your buyers and followers every three to five days. Those are the first two things I'd set up.
My daily coupon is 30 percent off, and it renews every morning at 7 a.m. It shows at the top of my listings, so buyers see it while they browse. I renew it every day because I noticed that the same coupon left running for a week or so goes stale, and sales slow down. Making a new one takes about 10 seconds.
The bulk coupons go through eBay's buyer groups. You can group past buyers by how recently they bought. Last month's buyers might get 30 percent off, buyers from two to four months back might get a bigger discount, and so on. You can also send a coupon to your store followers, and I give them a bigger discount because they chose to follow me. One send I made reached 3,358 buyers. The smaller groups I showed reached between 64 and about 1,100 buyers each, so your reach depends on how big your groups are.
On the sales side, the daily coupon was bringing in about $250 a day in those months. Some days were lower, like $112, $139 and $103, and on October 19 coupon sales alone hit $700. I also keep a 30 percent coupon running year round that lasts two years, and I send that one to bulk buyers. Someone who missed the daily coupon still has a discount to use.
Old stock needs a markdown too. Items that have sat for three to six months are the ones that drift down to page 10 or 15, where buyers rarely go. Under Marketing, click Create a promotion and choose sale event plus markdown. You can select a batch of items that are 100 to 150 days old or older and take 30 or 50 percent off in one go. I do this because it shows eBay I'm working to move the item. A price that's too high is usually why an item sits, so the markdown fixes the price, not just the listing.
One Columbia sweater I had carried a 30 percent coupon on top of a 30 percent markdown, so it was up to 60 percent off if the buyer used the coupon. Use all three together. The daily coupon, the buyer groups and the markdowns work as a system. I also send a weekly newsletter to followers that shows the new listings in my store.
How do I calculate sell-through rate?
Sell-through rate is the share of listings that sold in a set window. I use 90 days. It tells you how long your money sits in a brand, and that's the number I check before I buy anything.
Here's the check. Search the brand on eBay and note the total results. Then tick the Sold items filter and note how many sold in the last 90 days. Divide sold by total. eBay moves its search filters around, so look for the same thing on your screen.
Here's what I found for the brands I checked in January 2023:
| Brand (search term) | Results on eBay | Sold, last 90 days | Rough sell-through | What I took from it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Old Navy jeans | 97,000 | about 10,000 | under 10% | Too slow for me. I don't have room to hold a pair for a year. |
| Faded Glory | 24,000 | 6,300 | about 26% | I usually skip modern Faded Glory. Vintage has a cult following and still sells well. |
| John Varvatos men's jeans | 659 | 300 | about 45% | Close to my bar, and a narrow brand I can get to know. |
| Columbia pants | 19,100 | 8,000 to 9,000 | about 40 to 50% | Bread and butter for me. I'd want these at 50% or higher. |
| Arc'teryx | 7,400 | about 7,500 | 100% or more (see note) | Very fast movers, but the numbers need a recheck. |
| CC Filson | about 1,000 | about 1,000 | about 100% (see note) | Same as Arc'teryx: check the numbers yourself. |
The Arc'teryx and CC Filson rows show sold counts equal to or above their listing counts. That's a sign they move fast, but the numbers look off enough that I'd recheck them before using them to buy. Listings change quickly.
My rule is to pick up brands at 50 percent sell-through or higher. If you have a big warehouse, you can carry lower rates. If you're short on space, stick to the higher ones. This is why I keep a brand list. The more brands you know sell through, the less you're guessing about what to buy.
How do I write eBay titles that get found?
Start broad. Most buyers type the brand and the item, like 'Nike shirt,' 'Adidas jacket' or 'Ralph Lauren jeans.' Put those words first, in the order a buyer would type them:
| Position | What goes there | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brand. If the item is vintage, put 'Vintage' before the brand. | Ralph Lauren |
| 2 | Item type | Shirt |
| 3 | Gender | Men's |
| 4 | Size, from the tag | Size L |
| 5 and up | Keywords that really describe the item | Classic Fit Oxford Plaid Long Sleeve Button Up |
Here's the example from the video. A Ralph Lauren button-up had 'Classic Oxford blue plaid long-sleeve' at the front, and 'shirt' didn't show up until the fifth or sixth keyword. Buyers almost never type that. They type 'Ralph Lauren shirt,' so that's the word that should come first. The reworked title looks like this:
Ralph Lauren Shirt Men's Size L Classic Fit Oxford Plaid Long Sleeve Button Up
Big Star jeans follow the same rule. Start with Big Star Jeans, add Women's, then the size, then the keywords. A vintage jacket works the same way, with Vintage at the front, then the brand, the item, the gender and the size, and then the keywords like bomber, cotton or lined.
Spelling counts. If you spell Nike wrong, your item won't come up under Nike, no matter how good the price or the photos are. Don't fill the title with keywords that have nothing to do with the item either. Words like pickle or banana hurt the listing. Use the words that describe it: bomber, cotton, lined, plaid, collared. That part gets better the more of an item type you handle.
If you'd rather not type every title by hand, EasyFlip reads the brand, size and tags from a few photos and writes the eBay listing, title included.
The bottom line
If you want to act on this video this week, I'd do four things:
- Set up one daily coupon at 30 percent.
- Send one buyer group coupon to last month's buyers.
- Pick three brands you already buy, check their 90-day sold counts, and skip anything well under 50 percent unless you have the room to wait.
- Go through your 10 oldest listings and retitle them: brand, item, gender, size, then keywords.
If you want more notes like this, sign up for the newsletter.
Questions people ask
How do I calculate sell-through rate on eBay?
Search the brand on eBay, note the total results, then use the Sold items filter for the last 90 days. Divide the sold count by the total. When I made this video in January 2023, I used 50 percent as my bar for buying.
Is a daily eBay coupon worth it?
In my store, the daily 30 percent coupon was bringing in about $250 a day in sales when I made this video in January 2023. It takes about 10 seconds to set up. I renew it every morning because I noticed sales slow down when the same coupon runs for a week or more.
Is Faded Glory worth reselling on eBay?
Modern Faded Glory didn't clear my bar. In my January 2023 search, about 26 percent of the listings had sold in 90 days. Vintage Faded Glory has a cult following and can still sell for a respectable price.
What order should eBay titles be in?
Put the brand first, then the item type, gender, and size, then the keywords that describe the item. Buyers usually search for things like 'Nike shirt' or 'Ralph Lauren jeans,' so the broad words go first. Vintage goes at the front when the item is vintage.
How do I mark down old eBay inventory?
On eBay's Marketing tab, click Create a promotion and choose sale event plus markdown. You can select a batch of items that have sat 100 to 150 days or longer and take 30 or 50 percent off in one go. That's how I get stale items moving again.
Sources
Prices are eBay sold listings, and every fact below was checked on January 17, 2023.
Read the full video transcript
one of the hardest things to figure out especially for new beginner eBay resellers is to know exactly what eBay wants from us so I went over this video series here covering things that we can start doing now in our eBay business to start generating more sales I cover things like sell through rates figuring out the supply and the demand of items also going more in depth on titles how eBay wants us to title our items so they can be found in Search and also doing things like daily coupons if you're not doing a daily coupon then you are not taking advantage of the tools that eBay is wanting us to use to help engage with the algorithm and also attract more buyers so let's get right into it we're going to jump right into one of those tools and that is called buyer groups buyer groups on eBay allows you to send out bulk coupons
to previous buyers so maybe you've had previous buyers within the last month you can create a group of the last month's buyers and send them out a 30 off coupon in bulk you can take all of your buyers from the previous two to four months and create another group group b and send them a 50 off coupon and so forth you are also able to now send out those same bulk coupons to your followers the followers of your eBay store and maybe you want to give them a bigger discount because they chose to follow you they took the time to get to know you as a seller and now they're following you because they like what you have in your store so you can see here I just sent these out a couple days ago and every three to five days you're able to send these out so you can see the reach here is
amazing you know you're able to reach 3358 buyers by sending this one coupon out I send out a 40 off coupon to previous buyers and I have a 30 percent off daily coupon so it incentivizes them to make a purchase again because they're getting that extra 10 off makes your um buyers and your subscribers feel a little bit more special because you're giving them a bigger discount so 3358 this buyer group got 472 sent out this buyer group got 793 1100 817 64. so you're gonna this is gonna vary depending on how many times you're sending your bulk group coupons out but I highly suggest looking into your bulk group coupons and adding that to your repertoire repertoire as a strategy to start getting more sales in quarter four and not just in the coming months but continue to do it every three to five days make it a habit to send out these bulk
coupons because they are going to bring in extra sales if you look here and look how much we bring in by just doing a coupon strategy I do a daily coupon meaning that I do a coupon every morning every day at seven a.m I have a new coupon come out of 30 off in my store and this is the coupon that you see and on all the tops of your listings where you're gonna see uh 20 off 30 off right at the top here you're gonna see that come up every morning that renews and I do that for a reason because I have seen that if you just have a coupon go out day after day and after a week you notice that you start getting less and less sales um in your coupon that coupon kind of goes stale and it's not as active as it once was so that's why I do it
every day it takes 10 seconds to do that coupon and you can see every day we're bringing in 250 dollars in sales um yesterday we brought in a 112 the day before 1 39 103 240. on this day we had a 700 day on October 19th of just coupon sales so are you applying coupons I would highly recommend adding that into your strategy to help bring in more sales so another thing I wanted to touch on was um was Mark down sales and um adding in volume or adding in your markdown sales for older inventory inventory that might be sitting in your warehouse for three months for six months we all have that type of inventory either bad buys or long tail items how do we get those items refreshed and moving again my uh strategy for that is going to your marketing tab in in going to the top right and clicking on create
a promotion and you're going to see here um you're gonna see sale event plus markdown and when you click on that you're able to now do a bulk discount on items that are maybe 500 Days 200 days 150 days in your store and you're able to just select them all in one shot and apply a 30 discount a 50 discount just by doing that really helps um activate items in your store and it really helps it sends the algorithm a signal to hey I'm not just letting these items sit in my store and I'm not doing nothing about them by putting a markdown sale on items that are greater than 100 days to 150 days old is just showing the eBay that hey I'm trying to get this item moving and I'm trying to get it sold so I can reinvest those profits back into more items so you can see if we're scrolling through
my store here you're going to see things like this like this item right here this Columbia sweater um this Columbia sweater women's has a 30 off coupon in addition to a 30 off markdown sale so you're seeing a sixty percent off uh markdown in in up to 60 off that's if they apply the coupon but that's what I'm talking about is like items that are getting stale and getting lost on page 10 page 15. like who what buyers do you know go to page 15 looking for a Columbia sweater right so we must as resellers be doing everything is possible to be able to get those older items get them pushed up and ranking higher in search so they can be found in purchase and a lot of that times when when they're not selling is just because your price too high so by simply doing the uh markdown sales and adding bulk coupons to
your uh buyers and doing a daily coupon all three of those are going to be really working like a synergist basically with your with your eBay business they're all going to go they're all gonna work together and as well sending out a Weekly Newsletter to your followers as the something that I do just showing them the new items that are being listed in our store so um that that's just the the thing is like we really need to be taking advantage of the tools that eBay offers us and I'm wondering right now are you doing a daily coupon are you doing markdown sales are you staying active and using the tools that eBay gives us and to take advantage of those um I also offer a 30 off coupon that runs for two years and that's what I have on my store page as Party Time 19.99 um and this is just something that goes
year round because sometimes people can feel like they missed the daily coupon and if if they're not following my store they're gonna wonder you know when can I get a discount like that again well that's that's what I send out to my bulk buyers is that I send them out that party time 1999 coupon where they could use it anytime they wish within the next two years and there's no expiration maybe you have an eBay store right now and you're wondering why you don't have any sales or maybe you've been thinking about starting an eBay store and you want to get on the right track well you can check out the link in the description down below where I offer eBay coaching I work with you five hours a week Monday through Friday for just a dollar a day I help you put a system in a process in place that helped me reach over
100 thousand dollars in sales within just my first year on eBay you can also see that I include a reseller spreadsheet that can help you track a lot of your expenses that you start to compile along the way and also an instant store review covering your items that you currently have in your eBay business that I could start reviewing your titles your photos and your pricing so you can hit the ground running and like I said you could find that in the link in the description down below and I'd love to help you and let's look at a few brands that I sell personally we can discover that our sell through rates so we could get an idea on if I should be picking this up or if I should not be picking this up so it's very important to understand the brands that we are picking up and understand their sell-through rates so we
can get an idea on is this going to sell in the time frame that we're expecting it to sell but when we're on eBay we're just gonna keep it simple we're just gonna stick to the 90-day sell-through rate so let's look look at some of these Brands whether we should be picking them up or leaving them so we're going to be looking at Old Navy jeans is this something that I want into my store to increase my sell-through rate let's take a look when we type in Old Navy jeans into eBay we see that there is 97 000 results when we go all the way down and clicked sold items this is going to show what has sold in the last 90 days on eBay out of 97 000 items we see that 10 000 have sold so that is giving us a less than 10 percent sell through rate or around there and that
is meaning that you have a 10 chance of selling your Old Navy jeans within the next 90 days and for me that's just not gonna work because I don't have the space to be holding on to a pair of Old Navy jeans for a year learning to improve your sell-through rate can be one of the best things things you can do for you and your eBay store why because by increasing your sell through rate you are then able to sell more items quicker the next one the Beloved Faded Glory everyone knows what Faded Glory is and in the reseller Market we tend to stay away from it unless of its vintage even vintage Faded Glory does sell for a respectable price because it does have a cult-like following just for modern day Faded Glory we're looking at here on eBay there is 24 000 results when you type in Faded Glory and when you scroll
all the way down and go to sold items six thousand three hundred have sold in the last 90 days giving us a sell-through rate of less than 40 percent I'm trying to increase my sales and I'm looking for brands that will sell through at a higher rate picking up Faded Glory is probably not going to increase your salary rate so we're looking at John Varvatos specifically men's jeans now we're narrowing down our Niche and we're looking at what do men's jeans under the brand John Varvatos sell for total of 659 total on eBay listings of John Varvatos men's jeans let's look at how many sold in the last 90 days 300 selling in the last 90 days giving us around a 45 to 50 percent sell-through rate so we have a 50 chance of these genes selling within the next 90 days I'm okay with 50 and higher we really need to concentrate on not
having an an attachment to our items we're just looking to get things moving to get items from point A to point B to collect our profit and then go take that profit and reinvest it into other items this is so important on why you need to develop a brand list how can we sell more items quicker by looking for items that are more in demand when there is less Supply and more demand for an item that is going to have a higher increased sell-through rate and if you want to know a little bit more about developing a brand list and how I developed mine I'll put a video here in the corner going over how I Market my brand list on Facebook to get those Brands coming to me we're going to look at another pretty popular brand here in the Pacific Northwest you find it everywhere and that is the brand Columbia Columbia pants
to me are bread and butter I pick them up all the time so Colombia there is 19 1000 Columbia pants listed on eBay let's take a look at what those are selling for in the last 90 days so we have about an eight thousand to nine thousand sold we're looking pretty good on Columbia pants there is a demand for Columbia pants where are hitting that 40 to 50 percent sell-through rate So within six months these pants have a good chance of selling and that is important as a reseller that we pick up brands that have at least a 50 sell through rate everyone's situation is different maybe you have a 5 000 square foot warehouse and you can pick up Gap Faded Glory morona that's fine but for people that don't have the most space it is so important to pick up brands that have at least fifty percent sell through rate so we can
increase our margin so now we're going to be looking at these two brands that I love and that are a little more rare to find because a lot of resellers know their value in the marketplace and we're we're looking at arcterics arcterics is a high-end hiking apparel and it goes for really good money and it is highly sought after so we're seeing that there are 7 400 arcterics pieces on all of eBay and let's take a look at this sell through rate so we're seeing the sell-through rate is actually a hundred percent plus we have 7 400 items of arcterics on eBay and we have 7 500 that have sold in the last 90 days so that means you have a hundred percent chance of selling arcterics within the next 90 days being that you price it according to the market so arcterics might be a good brand that hey if you see it I
would pick it up let's look at another favorite brand of mine CC Filson they're more of a western type of brand and if you do find it I highly recommend adding this brand to your Rolodex we see that there is a thousand CC Filson pieces listed on eBay let's take a look at their sell-through rate we're looking at one thousand sold in the last 90 days another brand that is giving us a hundred percent sell-through rate so the more that we develop our brand list and get familiar with the brands that we are looking for we can increase our profits on eBay how exactly can we write the titles for our listings that eBay suggests us to write so we're going to jump right into the computer here we're going to be going over on how exactly not to write titles and how to write the correct title to start generating more sales for your
eBay business so let's bring in a listing here where I just brought up a few random ones to where I thought that the titles could be reworked to help these people sell their items so this is just a classic Ralph Lauren button-up shirt nothing special here right but you're seeing here that the title is a little bit funky right so eBay says to write their titles like this when you're listing clothing shoes um menswear women's wear purses whatever it may be in the clothing category to start with the brand first and then to start secondly with the item next would be gender and after that would be size after those broad terms you're then able to now narrow it down by applying the correct keyword that describes your item so when we are looking for buyers to find our items we want to make sure we start out very Broad and very broad maybe boring
it may be boring for some people to write um you know Abercrombie shirt men's size large but by doing this you're able to really get that broad audience the majority of people who search for items on Ebay are writing Nike shirt Adidas jacket Ralph Lauren jeans so there's nothing really fancy about that right but we really want to stick to those Basics because we're looking to reach the broad audience we want to go for the biggest audience possible so we can have our listings found in search so I picked these listings in particular because I believe there's a few things that they could be doing to help their items get ranked higher in search so you're seeing they're starting right off the bat with the brand Ralph Lauren classic Oxford blue plaid long sleeve and you're finding the item is a shirt but it is not the second keyword like it needs to be it
is fifth sixth seventh keyword after Classic Oxford blue plaid long sleeve so you're you're looking for the broad audience right but you're seeing here that very rarely are people going to type in Ralph Lauren classic Oxford blue plaid long-sleeve shirt they're most likely going to be typing in Ralph Lauren shirt right so we're aiming for that people for those audience members that are looking for a Ralph Lauren shirt so just by simply changing it from Ralph Lauren classic Oxford blue plaid long-sleeve shirt you're changing it to Ralph Lauren's shirt and then you're gonna go with the gender it is meant we're looking for Ralph Lauren shirt men's size 2x LT and then you're able to put in the keywords of classic fit Oxford this is plaid long sleeve button up um doing it in that order is going to rank your listing higher in search enabling you to have a better chance to convert that
sale it is very important that we understand the the tools and the information in the principles that eBay is giving us on how to structure our titles if you are figuring that you're not getting the sales that you are wanting and seeing that your store has filled with all these listings it could be that your titles were written incorrectly I've said this before that if even if you misspell one word no matter how good your price is no matter how good your pictures are if you misspell the word Nike your item will never be found under Nike so just being sure that you're writing the correct titles is a great way to start going back through all of your listings and start rearranging them to how eBay and how the end buyer is searching for your item so we'll go to another one here these are some big star jeans so big star is the
brand what is the item they are jeans so big Star Jeans what is the gender women's so big Star Jeans women's and then you go with the size so you could see that the the title here could be reworked a little bit better to be targeting the broad audience searching for Big Star Jeans and I want to go over some of the listings that I have have on how I write my titles very generic the first four to five words of your title should all be pretty much the same they should be all starting with the Brand This is a vintage Ralph Lauren jacket if the item is vintage I always put the word vintage first because I'm thinking of my end buyer my end buyer is most likely typing the word vintage first when they're looking for a vintage item they would less likely be putting vintage last so I put vintage first it
is the brand Ralph Lauren the item is a jacket the gender is a men's and the size is a small and then it is followed with the appropriate keywords we do not want to be putting in the keywords just for fun of it like pickle banana uh fuzzy if they're not related to your item right A lot of people just try to get fill all the keywords up but they're not related to your item and that's actually going to hurt your listing when someone is searching for that item so make sure that you're using the correct keywords to describe your item so a bomber jacket it is cotton and it is lined so using the correct keywords after you're done with your main structure of your of your title is going to help find that that end buyer that's looking for that specific jacket like they're looking for a bomber jacket that's cotton right or
they're looking for one that's collared looking for a certain color or plaid or a line jacket so that's just going to come with time with you mastering the items that you're selling and learning more keywords so we're going to go into these jeans these are vintage Ralph Lauren jeans they are men's 3130 and then after that is where I can play around with the keywords and depending on how good I am at my keyword research then I'm able to describe this item as accurate as possible so doing that quick switch for your business is going gonna be huge just by changing your title structure to how eBay wants it into how your end buyer is looking for your item you will start generating sales right now you need to start really looking at a lot of your listings and going through them and maybe making some few tweaks if you guys have any questions leave
them in the comment section down below and check out this video here where you can see what exactly has been selling in our eBay store in the past couple weeks hope you all have a blessed day and take care
