More products, less sales
What a week, I keep increasing the products I sell on Amazon, now up to 900 lines, and each time I make sure I am competitive although half of my items are handmade so no exact same items.
Sales have not been good for the last 3 years dropping from 40 a week to 20 a week last year and in the last week the grand total was 3
I know Brexit killed things and I know that the Government taking the caps off energy companies have cause even more expence for people but it’s getting chronic.
Any one else having similar problems?
29 replies
Seller_irlhbfo76bUbc
Yes. Probably a good idea to offer cheaper goods,diversify platforms, and also probably a good time to put your retail offerings into hibernation in the short term if things are that bad. It’s going to get much harder, and I’m not really sure there is a way out of this at the rate things are going. We’re dealing with war, oil supply issues, more gas demand because the EU is ditching Russian gas, inflation at 15%, Brexit, a changing monetary order as more countries consider ditching USD and so on…
This is a global issue and if you think we’re having it bad, you should check out what’s going on in less prosperous countries. A lot of businesses are going to go bankrupt and we’ve got some tough few years ahead of us, buckle up.
Seller_amUAzjvL5uIzu
You obviously have too many non performing lines 40 week from 900 is pretty poor,looks like you need to ditch most off them & find something else to sell.
Over the last 8 years Ive averaged 190 sales per week from abt 30 sku’s, in the main the same sku’s.
Seller_6sxtIS0RbZ5k7
My first thought is that you are diluting your own sales by competing with yourself. Having more choice might work on the popular auction site but here, where ranking and visibility is everything, you don’t want to be splitting your sales across similar, but different, ASINs.
For example, there’s no way I would sell 6 different birthday cards for ‘daughter’ as, if 6 different people like my style, I want them to all buy the same one and push it up in the ranking, not all choose a different one and have them all slowly sink.
Seller_ZjZ4slOF0jHpk
I have nearly 2700 listings and I’m consistently in the top 10/20 best sellers of handmade photographs - if it wasn’t for the person listing in that category with pictures made from pebbles (they should be in Mixed Media, not photos), I’d have most of the top 20. At times I have had all the top 10.
But I do landscape photography and 99% of the time, people want a shot of a very particular location. Combined with all the different sizes and frame options, hence the number of listings.
I get that too much choice can put people off, contrary to what some would think. But for me, I have to list as many different locations as possible. I have thousands and thousands more photographs, so it’s not as if I’m just listing everything. And yes, many of those listings have never sold a single item. But often one pic will lead the customer to another in my range. And what people buy online has been totally different to what they bought when I did the markets and highland shows - and even in the shops. So I put up a wide range because you just never know.
And I don’t just list here. But found Ebay just didn’t work for me.
Seller_7VbclcPFFRTnc
From a buyer point of view and a mother of an avid earring collector , even with a prime account, my daughter buys all her earrings on etsy
Do you sell there too ?
Seller_e2Jc0PNpNKfoY
Are you drop shipping or doing POD ? If no, then you seriously need to relook at what you are selling. Selling 40 units a week with 900 SKUs is pretty bad.
With 900 SKU’s I am pretty sure you are not able to focus on the basics of selling on Amazon - ie KW research, listing optimisation, cross selling, increasing LTV etc.
Personally I would really try and have a smaller inventory. Go through your data to understand trends, what are customer really buying from you, and focus on those products - get them ranked, and dominate that niche, you will likely improve your sales with a much smaller number of SKU’s.
I have to also say, on these forums I also always see that people blame very large drop in sales on external factors. I think this is an easy and perhaps lazy analysis. Sure, Brexit, Covid etc has an impact on sales. But if your sales has fallen by 90% over the last few years it is not just because of external factors. I am not saying this to be rude. But make sure you are really trying to understand why your sales have collapsed, rather than falling back on such analysis - it might just be the difference on how well you do when things improve.
Seller_t8tPiUA5wff9m
I would look more at how you are advertising and marketing your items, perhaps to bring in more sales you may need to increase this area, rather than increase your products.
Do you have a Facebook page? Do you upload items to Instagram? I would start uploading everything on there, have a link in the bio to your Amazon shop for each item, link your account to Twitter so you only need to post it once. Try to engage daily. Use popular hashtags. See if you can drive people to your Amazon store.
Also, target seasons, use words in your listings that you think are fashionable at the time.
Weddings are huge this year, so many people had to put them off and everyone is ready for a good celebration. Can you target weddings in your listings, Instagram posts etc.
I may be saying things you are already doing, but it may help direct sales to Amazon for you.
Seller_ZQyopdiwkUHOZ
I think there are a lot of people in this thread assuming that because we’re all selling on Amazon that what applies to once type of business will be broadly applicable to all, and I don’t think that holds true.
The type of products you sell will determine the type of buyer who is looking for your items, and even large groups of buyers are capable of being wildly different to other large groups in terms of behaviour.
Some of the advice here actually confuses me. Whether I offer 200 different products of the same type or 20, there are still going to be plenty of other sellers out there offering slightly different products of the same type, so I don’t see how having a limited range of items is somehow going to make those listings perform better. If you’re in an extremely niche category with only a handful of other sellers across the whole platform maybe, but is that even a thing on Amazon anymore?
