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Bulk Updates On Product Pricing
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universalcomputers



Posts: 217

PostPosted: Thu Mar 05, 2015 1:58 pm    Post subject: Bulk Updates On Product Pricing Reply with quote

Are we to understand there is no way to update your product's price once you've posted them in a bulk form? That the only way to update a product's price is to go into each and every product and do a manual update?

Is the bulk upload form for new products only? Or is there any way to do a mass update on products, instead of using the function to multiple a bulk products by a percentage.

Since there is no export functionality, we're getting the scary feeling that they only way to do any type of updates is to edit each and every product and perform a manual update on the product's price and/or the shipment.
We dont have the time to go into each product and do a manual update.

Why isnt something so simple not part of this marketplace?

Any help would be appriated.
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universalcomputers



Posts: 217

PostPosted: Thu Mar 05, 2015 2:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

4. The bulk lister or eBay import cannot be used to update already uploaded products. You must edit the products manually. Uploading a bulk file and then removing the store products or deleting the store and creating a new store and uploading a new bulk file is considered bulk editing. As a result all future feeds will be rejected during the review stage

Why does this site prevent you from doing a bulk update on your pricing. That means sellers that have hundreds of items will have a hard time repricing their items especially when the product has a time limit to it.
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elpereles



Posts: 3427

PostPosted: Thu Mar 05, 2015 2:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Is the bulk upload form for new products only? Or is there any way to do a mass update on products, instead of using the function to multiple a bulk products by a percentage.


You can use the "Global Editor" for categories. eCrater isn't affiliate to eBay. So it doesn't have a sync function.

Quote:
Why does this site prevent you from doing a bulk update on your pricing.


It is one bulk update by user from eBay. It looks like eCrater use some manual process.
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universalcomputers



Posts: 217

PostPosted: Thu Mar 05, 2015 2:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi ELP.

Can you clearify the update feature on the Global Editor. We are speaking about updating each product's price individually. Not taking a bunch of products and decreasing or increasing the prices by a percentage.

We're undertanding that the global editor does nothing but increases prices by percentage. if you have a product that is $10. and want it $9.90 you have to select the entire category and multiple it by 0.99.

If you have different prices for items for say laptop batteries we want to edit each individual price not multiple the category by a percentage.
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tigercreekgifts



Posts: 6293

PostPosted: Thu Mar 05, 2015 6:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I know you can use the global editor to update prices for the whole store or just certain categories but you can only use it to add or subtract from your current price amounts like, add $2.00 to every item or deduct 50 cents. You can't use it to add $3.09 to one item and $5.00 to another item, you have to make the change to an entire category of items at one time or the entire store.
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MoonwishesStore
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Posts: 17389

PostPosted: Thu Mar 05, 2015 7:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Since there is no export functionality, we're getting the scary feeling that they only way to do any type of updates is to edit each and every product and perform a manual update on the product's price and/or the shipment.
We dont have the time to go into each product and do a manual update.


That is the only way to change prices for items individually. The bulk feature is only for bringing items into ecrater, nothing else.
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universalcomputers



Posts: 217

PostPosted: Fri Mar 06, 2015 5:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks guys for your answers. Just dont understand why they cant just do the bulk update for pricing, its nothing big. Its like they prevent you from doing standard maintenace on a store. Sellers who build their inventories cant update pricing and be price competitive.

There's so many other stores that can do a bulk update or an mass edit. Its been a long time and we still havent had a sale on here. It has to be the site itself, because we just gave up on it and just opened our own store and we've gotten sales on a daily basis.

We guess its people want to see a real online store not one that is some sort of a marketplace with all types of non related advertisements all over the product they are trying to purchase. At this time, we're only going to contribe "spare time" to adding products to this online store, just to gradually build it. But for us to go through hundreds of products manually thats not an option.
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tigercreekgifts



Posts: 6293

PostPosted: Fri Mar 06, 2015 5:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't know how I managed to do it, but somehow I've gotten over 400 additional products listed on here since December. I'm starting over from scratch because I lost everything I had for sale originally (crazy ex-neighbor, whole other story) anyway I only had about 47 products left in my store after I removed everything I no longer had so I was able to get a lot of work done this winter but I don't know how. I took things slowly because I went back thru & edited my description formats, updated some prices, and photos which I had to do all manually.

So if you have a large inventory, it's not fun updating things manually! Luckily, I only had less than 500 products to update and not 2,347 items like I used to have!
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MoonwishesStore
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Posts: 17389

PostPosted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 8:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
It has to be the site itself


Not necessarily so. It is of course the easiest explanation for you to make, but things are selling here. Since your first post where you said you had been here for two weeks, about February 7, I went back to that date and calculated up through last night. In that time frame there have been well over 18,000 orders placed on ecrater. My store has gotten 32 of those orders. You haven't sold anything for the first month you were here. Guess what, I don't think I did either, but that doesn't mean I gave up. I continued listing and started selling and soon I was getting regular orders.

Rather than doing a mass bulk edit to insert changes, I tweak (edit) several listings a day, some more than others. I started selling here in 2008 and dropped ebay completely in 2009. And in the next 6-7 years all my editing was done on a daily basis a little at a time. For about the last two years, as I tweak something, I also promote it to G+, Pinterest and twitter. I also promote in other ways. The point being I have no need for bulk editing because I stay on top of things daily. I rarely change my prices, but that is just due to my niche and I probably have some of the highest prices for what I sell. I know that not everyone can do things that way, but there are work arounds. Self promotion of your store is vitally important as well.

Funny but 2 weeks ago you blamed no feedback for no sales, now you blame ecrater as if there are no sales here. Obviously not to the extent that ebay has, but we do have sales without all the hassle or stress ulcers of ebay. You seem to want everything that ebay offers or your own website. Perhaps you should work to build up your website since as you say it is doing so well for you. Forget about ecrater since you seem to mainly be complaining about ecrater and don't seem in the least to be happy here. Ecrater is not the perfect place to sell for everyone, and if you find it isn't then find a site that gives you (or sells you via fees) the bells and whistles that you seem to want and need to sell.
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universalcomputers



Posts: 217

PostPosted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 8:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

No need to be on the defensive moon. There is no explaination whatsoever - when you dont know why something is, the first thing you do is analyse what is vs whats not. We have no explaination whatsover to explain why there have been no sales at our ecrater store for since the beginning of February.

How do you explain establishing this ecrater store, having no sales in a month, then opening our own paid store a month after the ecrater store, priced exactly as this one and yet to this date we've had 105 sales since February 27th.

So the analysis is our paid online store vs. ecrater. Our paid store has been in operation for almost 2 weeks with over 100 sales and yet ecrater is 2 months and yet not a single sale?

the differences is :

1. theres no feedback option on our new store - so buyer's dont get scared away from a 0 rating, just like its on eBay.
2. there's a bulk update that we can immediately updated prices at our disgression.

We're not trying to discredit this site, we're just pointing out what has been our experience. There has been no reason why we havent had any sales.

There could be a problem with the payment acceptance not working on this site vs. our site's payment acceptance, it could be the feedback rating, who knows.

What we do know is that Ecrater changed its payment method for paypal from a simple email address input to some API. So the only way to see what the problem is is to remove the PayPal API. It could be that people are trying to buy something but its Ecraters API for PayPal. But we're getting sales on our account eitherway.

So we're throwing our hands up - because there is no explaination or reason - and all logic doesnt seem to apply. Yes its fustrating to put in all that work and see no result, but when you go our own way and go to another method of selling and seeing a jump in sales for the same products and price format as this one, how do you explain that, process of illimation states to take decude all variables and whats left over is the cause.

If your making sales great for you to make money. But we havent made a single penny on this site. And we are totally lost in the reason.


Last edited by universalcomputers on Sun Mar 08, 2015 8:54 am; edited 1 time in total
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universalcomputers



Posts: 217

PostPosted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 8:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ok correction here, as we were typing this, guess what WE GOT OUR FIRST SALE! Hurray! Very Happy Very Happy Very Happy Very Happy
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universalcomputers



Posts: 217

PostPosted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 8:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Going back to bulk editing of prices. There's a nother site we'll just intitial it as BJ they have a feature that isnt exactly CSV but there is some kind of mass update that you have to do manually.

You have a list of your products and it shows the fields for price and shipping right underneath the product name. As least you can tab through that in a matter of time.

Correct us if we're wrong, but the only way you can edit price and shipping rates to a specific amount is to go to into every item and edit each one individually. If thats the case, that is way too time consuming.

Even having a button that does a mass edit of the products isnt hard to do. The price & shipping rates could could be placed right next to the inventory listing of your products. Thats a simple PHP edit of the form.
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universalcomputers



Posts: 217

PostPosted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 8:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

TheMysteriousRose : What we do is create a text file with our product descriptions in alphabetical order. So we have the list by category and in each category the products are alpahbetical. So in case you have no way to back up the your store, at least you have a text file of your products, which is the bulk of the work.

You might also want to create a directory and save your images in that directory with descriptive names. Assign your own internal part numbers which you can put into the description and reference that part number to the item image.

So if you have to get things back to normal, you just cut and paste, cut and paste and you can get your items back faster.

If you have products that are mass produced or more than 10 or so that sell consitently, we would recommend a spreadsheet with the product price and shipping. Then you go to your competitors and see what they are selling the products for and update your spreadsheet. Then take that newly updated spreadsheet and go through your online store and adjust them accordingly.

All 3 ways you have a complete backup of your store on your local system, since your updating your store, you update those 3 key things, so technically you'll always have an updated backup and can manually restore any downages you have. We have over 1500 products and it grows about 20 a day, but going down through a spreadsheet is quick. We can do that 1500 product update spending 2 hours a day completed in about 2 days.

Since most CSV files are speadsheet form, we just go down the list and update left and right. The problem is that PHP based, we should say MYSQL databases (we believe ecrater is MYSQL Based) doenst update in alphabetically order, but first in first out. You can go through that list the same way as the spreadsheet and cut and paste your spreadsheet into the CSV file and upload it, the MYSQL gets updated the same way.

The SQL database is something like this format :

product1,9.99,3.99,battery

product name, price, shipping, description

CSV Text Delimited follows the same exact format.
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MoonwishesStore
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Posts: 17389

PostPosted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 9:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Absolutely not being defensive. As I said "You haven't sold anything for the first month you were here. Guess what, I don't think I did either, but that doesn't mean I gave up. I continued listing and started selling and soon I was getting regular orders." And now guess what? You got your first sale and congratulations! This is how things go.

I just think that you are blaming things that have nothing to do with getting sales or not from very limited data. Decisions made with not enough data tend to be incorrect decisions.

How are your ecrater listing showing in google searches? It sounds like you have numerous sites you are selling on and if they all have the same titles and google knows it is you doing the selling from all these places, they aren't going to show all the possible results for all your sale sites in the search. One of the computer people here would have to explain it fully.
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tigercreekgifts



Posts: 6293

PostPosted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 10:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

As I said before,
you can bulk update prices using the global editor, one category, sub-category or entire store at one time. Other than that, I don't know what you are looking for in terms of bulk price updates as you seem to have skipped over those suggestions so it can be done, unless you referring to something entirely different?

Many times, I will list products as fillers to keep my inventory quantity high until I can replace those items with new better un-opened goods. Things like clothing & small trinkets or craft supplies that only list for a few dollars. If they sell good, if not no big deal, I'll take them to the flea market & have an "Everything is $1.00" sale. But I list those items here in the fall for like $5.99 to $12.99 hoping some of it will sell for a few dollars more, sometimes they do, then come spring it's off to the flea market for a clean out.

This is the last year I'm doing that. I'm taking all of my items priced $1.99 to $3.99 to the flea market, selling them or donating what doesn't sell & only focusing on higher priced items from here on out. Might as well, my sales here are always for items priced at $7.99 and up. It's too much work to list 300 extra products as fillers, knowing only 4 will sell by spring, then when I have my flea market sale I have to affix item# stickers to my items, keep a list of what sold at the market, then backtrack thru my inventory & delete those items. I have to put my store on hold while having the flea market sales so nothing double sales.

Too much extra work, so from now on, any inventory I acquire that is only worth a dollar or two goes straight to the flea market pile & only listing higher priced items here. If someone gives me 2 boxes of stuff from their spring cleanout, not going to reject it, it's free inventory but if it's not worth much I'd rather take those items to the flea market & sell them all within one day. Hey, making only $1 on those items & coming home with $100 in my pocket is better than listing those items on here for $5.99 each & watching them sit crowding up my inventory bins unsold. You'll see by spring my lower priced inventory will slowly be phased out.
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