Our Online Sports Card Auctions Are Not Doing Well, Suggestions?
Norcal
Posts: 278 ✭✭✭
Good Morning Everyone,
My girlfriend and I have been running sport card auctions, every card start a $1 and typically have an Auction every 2 weeks at 300 cards per auction. Our other auction services is doing great however the cards ones are way down. I know after the "boom" cards are not going for as much so I was looking to you all for suggestions/ Any ideas to increase sales? I know some of you out there have stores and sell online. And shipping is available. Currently we only advertise on Craigslist and Nextdoor.
Thanks for any help!
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Comments
Do you have a link to your auctions?
Sure, This one closed Saturday night-
bayareaonlineauctions.com/auction/24-basmac
Are these not on eBay?
These are not on Ebay, we typically only sell our "high end" cards on Ebay.> @professorpuck said:
These are not on Ebay, we only sell our "high end" cards on Ebay.
Then the suggestion is.... eBay. Volume of eyeballs is key.
Yaz Master Set
#1 Gino Cappelletti master set
#1 John Hannah master set
Also collecting Andre Tippett, Patriots Greats' RCs, Dwight Evans, 1964 Venezuelan Topps, 1974 Topps Red Sox
So here's my feedback, looking at the first item I clicked on (https://bayareaonlineauctions.com/auction/24-basmac/lot-2-2020-panini-prizm-drafts-josh-green)
1, I've been buying cards (too many) for the past 40 years. I have absolutely no idea what that web-site is that you are using for your auctions, so I would never see them.
If I DID know about that web-site, here's more feedback:
2, Unless I missed it, there's no indication of how much it cost to ship the item.
3, There's no such thing as Prizm "Drafts". If people are looking for "Draft Picks", they won't find your auctions because if the search mechanism is anything like ebay, a search on "Draft" or "Draft Picks" will not hit your items.
4, Probably most important, what are your expectations? My first search for completed Josh Green Draft Picks found this item on ebay: https://ebay.com/itm/154507242311?hash=item23f9596b47%3Ag%3AWKYAAOSwfDhg1q2Y&nma=true&si=fz4b7gAoI3sJ%252F%252FpzIfuez78Gwe0%253D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
That's 61 cards for $8 delivered.
Not trying to be critical, just some thoughts. . .
Define "high end". Is it a $500 card ? $1000 card ? $50,000 card ? $300,000 card ?
Thanks for the feedback, Detroit. This is our own website we started years ago. We typically do estate online auctions which is doing well. And you right about the Josh green card, we wanted to do higher end but also a way to get rid of lower end cards, Josh Green for example. We ship winning cards at a rate of $8 in a USPS envelope.(Your right that we should state that in the information provided).
Any places we could market this that might be useful?
Appreciate the feedback
Like others have mentioned, I've never heard of you, so wouldn't know to go to your site to purchase cards. That's foremost.
Secondly, even if I did find your site, the image in the Josh Green auction is very poor. It's not well-focused or well-lit and does pretty much nothing to show the actual condition of the card. In the future, don't use photos of cards - use scans.
I took a look at your website and here are my thoughts. All of them are intended to be helpful, hence taking the time to look in the first place. (Not trying to be a wise guy). I was also in web marketing for 20 years.
-At least the most recent closed auction, cards are very low end in terms of resale interest. Many of those cards wouldn't have sold on E-bay either.
-$8.00 shipping is WAY too high; especially if there's any expectation of buyers buying a single card. Low end cards on E-bay can ship for as little as $0.51.
-Your drop down menu offers only current, upcoming and past auctions. If you're serious about improving card sales, add "sports cards" to the navigation.
-I don't see much optimization on the website and it's pretty dated in appearance. Google and other search engines aren't likely to rank your pages very high. If it's in the budget, I'd suggest refreshing your website to 2021 standards.
-The 10% buyers premium is common place in the auction world, but not so much with online card sales. I'd suggest including it in the price if you're able.
Checking E-bay comps may help curb your expectations too. I have a feeling several of those cards, if they sold on E-bay, probably sold for less than $3.00 including tax and delivery. It's hard to compete with that at $8.00 shipping. Again, just lending some thoughts that could potentially help. All the best to you.
Also, if you're not using Google Analytics, I'd suggest adding it and reviewing it closely so you can see how visitors are finding your site and how they navigate through it. There's an amazing amount of information.
Take these for what it’s worth. They are meant to be helpful. But first, I can’t find any auctions that are open. They all appear closed. That’s enough of a turn off that if I was a first time visitor I would be unlikely to return. You need to have some options open at all times. Second, don’t charge a buyers premium. I hate that so much that I would never bid on an item that had it. Just build it into the cost. Third, as someone mentioned, there’s no indication of what shipping would cost. That needs to be listed upfront before I make a bid. Good luck, hope things pick up for you.
I really appreciate the feedback, thanks for taking the time out of your day to respond. Since we typically do pick ups for our estate auction items we are nir use to the shipping option. We will modify the current option and look into deleting the buyers premium as that’s something we did with all the other auctions.
As always, this forum is a great place to come to for advice and suggestions.
I remember you pumping this site a few months back.... I took a look, but never went back.
Moral of the story, sell them all on eBay, or don't waste your time. If they have value and/or buyers, eBay will get it/them to you. You could always try Mercari, but those aren't auctions, it's fixed price.
The big ones have been covered, but I can not stress enough the exposure that ebay brings. Even within ebay, well known sellers do better than average joe's. It's all about getting your name out there and being well known. Nothing will substitute for that.
People love to hate ebay for their rules, their fees, and anything else that they don't like about it, but in 20+ years they grew from essentially nothing to the premier place to buy and sell items. Right place, right time perhaps? Who knows, but they made it work out for them and it's paying off big time. If anyone wants to create a better place that was closer to what ebay once was, they have to take the hit and work through the growth phase all over again, IF that will even happen again for another online site.
Each of the biggest online sites in the card market have a niche they have built (Ebay, COMC, Sportlots, etc). It will be extremely hard to replicate that.
I don't like all the things that have changed on ebay and I don't sell much either, but someday I hope to sell off a bunch of stuff. I would love to do that for no fees and get the max money, but building my own site or using a small guy won't maximize my returns. It's suck it up and go with the big dog, consign to a different big dog or take your chances.
$8 s/h! That is almost criminal. I'd have suggested charging a little more and use priority mail in the flat rate small box or envelopes, but I suspect there is a lot of cost recovery built into that $8 fee, so probably not going to happen.
I agree with most everything else that has already been adressed. One thing I would add is take them out of the sleeves for pictures. It's hard to tell if there's issues on the surface of a card or on the sleeve.
fresher more up to date site.
better pics.
more advertising.
people need an incentive to buy on your site vs ebay. $8 shipping is the opposite of that.
I have to add that our auction site is mainly for our estate item auctions and we do pick ups only on those items which works out great for us. The majority of our cars buyers are local and pick straight up from the shop. The customers that we do ship for, it’s typically 10-50 cards at a time that we send in a priority flat rate envelope. (Well protected).
We stay extremely busy with our estate auctions but we enjoy cards so much we wanted to incorporate the card auctions, it’s mostly because we enjoy it so much.
Thanks again for the tips!
Looks like you’re making your profit on shipping. Not good. Not many people are going to buy a low end card(s) and pay $8 to ship when it costs less than a dollar.