Hows everyones prechristmas sales going?
I for one am having a terrible period for my year on year sales. It started at the middle of October where the lines crossed the wrong way, ie being ahead of last year up till then it went the opposite and I am now sinificantly behind last year.
One oddity is that the black friday sales were comparable. Not sure what to draw from this, but Im thinking that it shows that there are buyers still interested in my products but they are not there shopping on other days.
A good percentage of the sales drop can be attributed to me not having some of the stock we had last year but certainly not al of it by any means.
I dont advertise as Im not very good at it. But is this the only way to succed on Amazon now.
58 replies
Seller_esvgLzKXw2YAl
For starters, Advertising is definitely NOT the only way to succeed on Amazon.
I very rarely advertise anything mysefl, but then most of what I sell is run of the mill stuff that everyone wants.
So unless your selling your own brand, generally I don’t see any need for it.
But even then, once your established, it should sell on it’s own merit.
Obviously one shoe doesn’t fit all though.
I’m a fair bit up on last year, but then I have increased my range a lot.
I just wish the margins would grow as well 
Seller_BhAmt3EmRnb5s
TBH I think I totally agree with you on the advertising but I had to ask as lots of people seems to be doing it.
My range is a lot less than last year so I know thats playing a part. So I have to keep repeating the mantra “turnovers vanity , profits sanity”. This is mostly why I reduced my range, Ive ditched the stuff that everyone else is selling and making about a 10% margin on. At the end of the period if it carries on like this I will be down around 50K but that may well have only beeen 5K profit for a lot of stress and effort.
I had some products made for me and once they got going the margin on these is much healthier. Might have to go more along this path next year.
Strangly those my ebay is way ahead of last year. Are the buyers moving there?
Seller_bE8WOioAiXxEA
I also noticed an increase in sales in October, one of my best months so far this year! But my November sales were lower than my October sales, even after a good Black Friday… I sell mostly books and my own products, so I advertise a bit on my own products but don’t find the conversion very good to be honest. I’m hoping for a crazy amazing December, maybe everyone is saving up??
Seller_DTrNv5POp8UZl
theres been alot of discussions on here about amazons changing algorithms in October andmy sales fell off a cliff…I opened back up across on ebay to help make up the shortfall… now I sell a lot of my own branded items so I recorded many titles and keywords and that’s helped BUT unfortunately I’m unable to do anything on the items I didnt create or are not my brands so Amazon expect us to pay advertising, which I refuse… I’d rather pay Ebay. who at least I can create listings and keywords etc…
Seller_eckHlIjDZ6crR
The usual negative feedback “my item hasn’t arrived” as a first point of communication, and then a refusal to remove or amend.
Seller_doGlODBPCqLJ0
Hi
Due to Black Friday and Cyber Monday (Today ) officially xmas pre sales i don’t believe have started for us yet.
I would say this starts tomorrow. However sales seem to be good this year.
Seller_W6IbwSPxN8QUm
Making an insane amount of money, though I have been all year
Seller_ZPjajjMXjCNQH
the thing to remember about advertising on any platform on a PPC method is that it takes quite a while to get the data to tweak (and constantly tweak) your keywords to refine them down to ones that actually convert and at a reasonable cost to make profit.
its not something you do of a Friday night and expect results over the weekend, you need to be at it for quite a few months to get to an acceptable level. then you need to use those “good” keywords and make sure they are on your item page to get organic results. b prepared to run at a loss initially until you narrow your keywords down.
In fact some times negative keywords are as important if not more important that the actual keywords you use and a lot of people forget to get negative keywords sorted out.
i use advertising but not for everything i have an ACOS of around 6% on items i make a 20% mark up on, so i look at them as sales i would never have had bearing on mind sponsored sales are only about 20% of my total.
Seller_vJ08QoZpmGgNp
November 2019 was way down on 2018, more inline with 2017.
After 5 straight years of year on year growth, I’m hoping this is a Blip rather than the start of a Trend.
Seller_xp1ABbMH0Ykva
Awful for me, been OK all year but about 90% down on last November and the entire weekend has been awful. For me I think it’s because I have stopped doing FBA, I can’t make enough profit to be worth my while with FBA and I just can’t make any sales FBM anymore, should be doing 30 sales a day and instead I’m, doing 12. I’ll see out the year but after that it’s probably time I gave Amazon up or at least stop putting any effort into it and just treat it as a small extra income, just not worth if for me any longer. Very stressful as I’m not sure what else I’m going to do.
