 Hey there everyone and welcome back to ebay life and the first video of 2024 So how did your quarter four go? A lot of changes happening a lot of things going on on the platform off-site ads the hua around that etc There's lots of things going on lots of things going on I have noticed a few changes in searches and we'll come into that in a little bit as well But uh comment below how your quarter four ended up being for you in comparison to previous months or even Previous years seeing if you're up or down. Have you noticed any trends or anything different going on with your account? By all means share your comments below. I'd like to hear the stories and see how everyone's doing So let's have a look at what we're doing. So it's been quiet on the channel for a couple of weeks That was intentional Not really a burnout, but more a case of there just wasn't enough time to Give to family and myself. I needed to recharge the batteries and especially over the festive season I needed that time for family If you don't put time for yourself and your family, what is the point of business? You're working to live You live into work what we need we chose this business For a reason we chose it to better our life and our lifestyle Choices so Yeah, I needed to take some time apart. I needed to get to grips with the accounts And stock and the marketplace and the changes and and then just goes on doesn't it, you know So anyway, so let's have a look. So what are your new year goals? Um for myself It's going to be to structure a bit more time for personal time and lifestyle It needs to happen. I've just been putting in far far too many hours getting Yet again the foundations of the business with the changes in the marketplace and I think I've started to find And focus on A direction I want to go in with my business I don't know about yourselves if anyone's thought about restructuring reevaluating their accounts seeing what they want to do on their accounts Um If anything that you want to share by all means pop it in the comments And obviously we can have a chat about it See if there's anything we can come up with or even better if there's anything you can come up with to help each other in these new Market strategies that are going on, you know um For me, I have been looking for A better direction with my stock and I have chosen several Aspects of doing that. It is not just thrifting as it were at Thrift stores as you would call them We call them charity shop secondhand stores, etc Not just car boot sales. Not just wholesale, you know the whole cabit caboodle I don't stick to one strategy. I think the strategy That wins is the one that's diversified you Unless you are in a very Controlled niche fears and by controlled. I mean you are in control of it, you know, you know the platform You know your market your sourcing and if it's still working if it ain't broke don't fix it, you know but For myself. I like to diversify into multiple avenues of sourcing And it's just a case of sometimes you need to bring some More emphasis into a certain area or if it's fading you can bring it off because obviously the market fluctuates all the time And depending on your sourcing depending on your strategies They move around, you know that that is the nature of the business is always going to be moving and for myself I have quite a niched product range Which I am looking to branch out in 2024 some of which is I'd say sub niched within the same category But i'm also looking at new categories to Do in my second account now as some of you may know if you've been following previous Content and if you haven't go back and check, you know some good stuff in there to catch That I had to end the subscription on my second store for the time being as it was just costing and wasn't sustaining itself in the marketplace with everything that's going on with the main account Now my strategy going forward as far as the second account I was going to come to it in a bit, but I'll do it now Is to hone in on that it was those new categories of products that I'm looking at But I don't think I'm going to be Putting time in I mean I may do it sooner. I don't know. I don't want to rush it, but I'm probably looking at either June or September June because there'll be more time Depending on the slowing down the sales during the summer period So I've got more time to emphasize and put into it there Or alternatively September gearing up the account ready for late quarter three and quarter four of 2024 But for the moment I need to build up the main account again There's been a there's a lot of A lot of plates To spin to make sure your account is working. Well Is not just sourcing good products The customer service side or how you deal with your account your account health Is front and foremost if you don't have An optimized account You're not going to get the traffic You're not going to get the customers and you're not going to get their trust when it comes to purchasing from you So Yeah, so I mean I've focused heavily on the quality of the account over the last 12 to 18 months to be fair just Finiting points on the account to make sure they cannot get any better The listings themselves over the course of the year. There's been a absolute plethora of different approaches and different tips hacks not cheats but Ways to possibly favor your account or your listings in the algorithm of a ebay And that will go on and when I hear of them when I have tested them when I've trialed them If they are successful or even if they're not I will feed that out to the community because obviously we all need to know And again, though Not all accounts are the same everybody is different Different products different categories different quality of account They all play a part So you'll have to take out of it what you will Trial it how you will and see if it works for you if it's something you want to try as we go through the year So, yeah, my business restructure. I've spent a lot of time as you can see For the channel, obviously we've upgraded the camera. We've now finally got nice quality to our pictures We've had a little bit of a change around I've got a Nice little display here. I'll turn it on but it conflicts with the camera lighting for The the color coloring coloring. So when I do Some videos that are not quite Like this I can put that on so the lighting isn't overpowered So we'll be looking at putting that on at some point But you get the gist. It's just a little bit of fun a little bit of fun to the the channel so The business structure. Yeah, so I'm going to be putting more time into the first account Whilst doing that I have Obviously got to spend time looking for Nishes that are going to work for the second account So that I can boost that up by Christmas I want to be looking between the two accounts by Christmas. I want to be at least double Double what I've done In 2023 and it is possible You've just got to work hard and you just got to be really really careful with your research And when it comes to research that is the next point I want to mention is You can't Shortchange yourself, you know, you you've got to do proper product research when you're sourcing you need to check on Time of year trend seasonality Sell-through rates what works well what categories are working well and I personally Like many others use a piece of software called Zeke analytics and I'll pop her Information in the content below but as you can see above obviously that's the logo if you're looking for it Highly recommend it now a lot of people use this software For research now a lot of styles of people use it and it originally started off As a piece of software that Dropship has used and it was very basic in my view but it was What it was first used for I think and since then they have massively expanded out the software and the package It can check your competitors Not just on eBay you can check Walmart the the international Chinese site so you can see if there's Cheaper products coming from abroad to the compete against your products if you are sourcing from the uk or from the us wherever it is you're based it also checks countries you can check locations of accounts because you could be in uk only selling to uk but you could have somebody say in us That also sells to the uk and they're on the us platform, but they're still undercutting you possibly for example And this software it just goes on. I will put some dedicated time in and give you a run through But I just want to let you know that There is masses of wealth of information You can check a specific specific competitor. You can check a specific product. You can check location Of a product you can check Or a range or a category You can just so much there's so much. I highly recommend it. I will also put the link as I say below and Check it out. You know, I mean you've got a trial period on there. You can check it out and trial it out Um Well worth it just for the trial just to see and get a feel of it, you know I mean it's worth it. It's worth it because it can link you to the product It can link you to the listing and you can check out that listing and you can draw information From your research from there So i'm going to be using that a lot more during 2024 I mean, as I say I have Played with it a little but it's just had a massive relaunch a massive change worth checking out So, yes, we've covered the second store and we've covered looking at my new year's goals We've also covered the business restructure and the higher level of research That i'm going to be doing for the branching out In the sub niche on the main store and on looking at stock for the second store Um looking at possibly wholesale on some of those products Again, we'll see we'll see, you know, I mean obviously I like to diversify my my range Now with regards to 2024 new year, there is a category exchange coming that is due soon um within the next Or I'll say next within the next but I mean I would imagine within the first quarter generally this all about February time before they get to april and there is also um An update to search coming that is meant to have been due early 2024 now with that said I don't know if the first stage of it or if it has completed Or if it's in process of those changes happening because I don't know about yourselves, but I have certainly noticed within the last week a Incremental increase day to day today today of better organic placement better organic impressions Especially my promoted listings stand campaigns the organic promotion is just going up and it's A lot better than it was I always used to sit around about 5 000 impressions a day on the organic promotion placements. That's obviously in the search When people search for your products That has now increased As I say Mentally and I'm probably sitting around about about 50 000 a day. So that's a massive change there, you know um with the promoted placements for The products when you're promoting listing standards are where it puts you within uh, somebody's Else's listings or where it places promoting your products within other points on the platform and their third parties that they do within the platform That is increased massively. I mean I literally yesterday was The highest amount of promoted impressions. I have ever received in four years or just over four years now Of selling on ebay on this account I'm hoping it's not going to landslide this time last year. It landslided within the next week Um from the levels that I was out I'm hoping keep my fingers crossed that doesn't happen this year I mean I expect it to come down as we go through into in the quarter one into quarter two, but Excuse me I'm hoping that the levels stay more consistent. And I'm hoping that's also down to this new search Changes that they're making Um, let's keep our fingers crossed that quarter quarter one quarter two are strong and we can start feeling a little more relaxed in 2024 With our choice of strategies and our business Structures within ebay and I hope ebay grows better in its placement what I have noticed as well though, which I will just share is the Um, the offsite ads now I have tried three campaigns through offsite ads And since the 5th of december and the reason for that is the first one turned out to be some sort of problem And it didn't work Uh, that was with the 100 pounds that they offered Not so much as a single click not a single click nothing I tried a paid offsite promotion ads To see if that made a difference with the glitch possibly being it within the the The promotion No clicks I tried a different strategy With the offsite ads for about Two or three days just to see on a higher volume of daily spend No clicks So three campaigns covering nearly a month Not so much as one click multiple calls to customer service To the leadership team that have raised tickets No one has ever called me back Every time I call in all they do is pass a message to the person dealing with it They'll call us back And then nobody calls you back and then you chase it again, and I gave up on that especially over the festive period Just wasn't worth it So I tried going straight to google ads Now anyone that's considering this um, you have an incredible amount of control Not like not like should I say Google Google ads? Sorry Offsite ads through ebay You basically just Say how much you want to spend a day and how long you want to run it for that's it That's all the control you have you don't even know where it's being promoted When you choose google ads you can geographically choose where you're doing it You can Do your daily spend you can Create Exclusion Countries you can choose your cost per click Average your You've got just a huge wealth and you can also upload images To the campaign For it to promote It's a no brainer You've got so much more control and ebay's not taking a cut if you're doing it All I will say is it's not As simple as you think when you're doing it is a little bit of a learning curve when you're using the the platform But once you've got around it it works, but they have zero customer service. I just If you can't figure it google it Because you're not going to get that answer from anyone the customer service is a reception desk. There is no customer service um You literally have to submit an email and then wait for them to ever come back to you again I've never had anyone come back to me in line, but mine sorted itself out And on the back of that the last two days I ran a five pound a day campaign And I have received I would say about 100 clicks a day But I did get tens of thousands of impressions. I mean we're talking tens of thousands impressions just on a fiber Because of the nature of being ebay. I'm not putting their Tracking URL to see conversions, but I can also tell from where my traffic is coming from whether or not it's On-site or off-site the reason I say that I probably get less than one percent a month organic sales On the platform definitely in the last few months. It's all promoted So if I get any organic sales for the sake of this test that I'm running I'm classing it as from google ads Uh, and I've had two sales today From that then um, so it's looking good looking good so far It's covering and paying for itself at least which is then increasing the strike through and sell through rates Which is then increasing the traffic coming to the account These are just my my thoughts obviously you have to trial and test and decide for yourself what you want to do for yours So there we go I think we've pretty much covered everything in its simplest form today I just wanted to get some content out there to you to let you know i'm still here We're still running We're still going and we're still strong and we're still here to support the community you and you guys hopefully can Uh support myself as well where needed Uh, so share your stories share your quarter four disasters your your successes And your thoughts going forward for 2024 Okay, guys. Well Keep on trucking keep it going and remember keep it real