0:00
Hi and welcome to ZIK Learn.
You know how most sellers just crash and burn in January after the holiday rush?
Well, to dodge that and actually hit 60,000 bucks in 90 days, you've got to stop thinking like a person and start thinking like the eBay algorithm.
Join Ben and Zoe as they dive into the process of hitting that target.
0:29
I want you to picture something.
It's a deep in the fourth quarter, maybe mid-december.
You're standing in your kitchen, you're waiting for the coffee machine to heat up.
You haven't even had your first sip yet, but your phone is on the counter and it is just going nuts.
Oh, that sound to.
0:45
Ching to Ching The eBay app is pinging so hard it's almost annoying.
Almost is the keyword there.
It is like the best sound in the world.
It's that pure dopamine hit every seller chases you feel like a genius.
Right.
You feel untouchable.
1:00
You're thinking, OK, I've cracked the code.
This is my life now, I am a retail God.
But then the calendar flips, the fireworks go off for New Year's, the confetti settles, and suddenly, just silence.
The dreaded key one.
Silence.
1:15
It is deafening.
You go from checking your phone every 5 minutes to staring at it, wondering if your Wi-Fi is broken.
You refresh the app, Nothing.
You restart your phone.
Still nothing.
That transition from the Cha Ching phenomenon to the post holiday hangover is just.
It's brutal.
It really is and I've been there.
1:31
I remember staring at my dashboard in January a few years back thinking, did I get suspended?
Like did I break something?
It feels personal but it's actually just structural.
Most sellers see this massive drop off in January, January and February because they were relying on, well, seasonal luck.
1:48
They were surfing a wave that naturally crashed instead of building a boat with an engine.
I love that distinction, surfing versus building a boat, because that is exactly what we're digging into today.
We are looking at a very specific blueprint.
If we were starting over right now, literally today, staring down the barrel of early 2026, yeah, how would we structure a store to not just survive this slump, but to actually hit $60,000 in sales in the next 90 days?
2:18
That's the target, 60,000 in three months.
That averages out to what, $20,000 a month?
20 grand a month.
And to be clear, this isn't about hoping you find one magical viral product that saves you.
This is about engineering a system.
So we're talking about a complete mindset shift here, moving from like random drop shipping where you throw stuff at the wall.
2:36
Exactly from I hope this sells to I know this will drive traffic and I know this creates profit.
It's about activity, consistency and building trust.
OK, so let's unpack the engine of this machine first, the algorithm.
I feel like everyone talks about the algorithm like it's this, I don't know, this mystical Moody beast.
2:56
Why does it ghost us after December?
Does it just go on vacation?
It feels like it, doesn't it?
But, you know, think of it this way.
The eBay algorithm isn't emotional.
It's logical.
It rewards one thing above all else.
OK, Motion.
Motion.
OK, define that because I feel like I'm moving but my sales definitely aren't.
3:13
Motion is data.
It tracks listing, it tracks optimizing, and it tracks selling.
Think of your eBay store like a physical shop window on a busy street.
If you walk past a shop every day for a month and the window display never ever changes, same mannequin, same dusty jacket, eventually you just stop looking it.
3:32
Becomes background noise.
You tune it out.
Exactly.
Search engines are the same way.
They crave fresh data.
Every time you list an item, every time you tweak a title, every time you ship a package, you are sending a digital signal to eBay that says I am here, I am open for business, I am reliable.
3:50
So when people stop listing in January because they're tired or burned out after the holiday rush, they are effectively boarding up their windows.
They are telling the algorithm, hey, I'm closed.
And so the algorithm stops sending them foot traffic.
The goal isn't just sales.
4:07
The goal is constant motion.
If you stop the motion, you kill the visibility.
OK.
So to keep the motion going, we actually have to start with some housekeeping.
We call this pruning.
And I have to be honest, this part it stresses me out because it involves deleting things.
It is painful.
Nobody likes doing.
4:22
It it feels wrong.
I spent time finding that item, I spent time listing it, and now you're telling me to just nuke it?
I am think of eBay as your landlord.
Yeah, they're renting you shelf space, which is basically search impressions.
If you fill that shelf with junk that nobody looks at and nobody buys, you are wasting their real estate.
4:41
Eventually they just stopped giving you the shelf space.
This is where sell through rate comes in which.
Is basically the batting average of your store, right?
That's the perfect way to look at it.
If you have 1000 items listed and only 10 sell your batting averages, well, it's terrible, right?
And eBay looks at that and thinks this store lists low quality inventory that hurts the ranking of your good items.
5:03
So by cutting the dead weight, you're actually making your winners more visible.
OK, I'm listening, but how do I know what to cut?
I don't want to accidentally delete some sleeper hit.
We operate on a strict 3 rule system.
It removes all the emotion from it.
Rule #1 If an item hasn't sold in the last 30 days, delete it.
5:21
Just like that, 30 days seems fast.
It is fast, but Q1 is about velocity.
If it hasn't moved in a month, it's dead weight.
Rule #2 If it's sold only once in the last 60 days, delete.
It Whoa, hold on, it's sold.
That's money in the bank.
5:37
Why would I delete something that proved it can sell?
Because once in 60 days isn't a business.
It's a fluke.
It's taking up space that could be used for something that sells, you know, five times a week.
We are looking for trends, not accidents, OK?
That's tough love, but I get it.
5:52
What's the third?
Rule rule #3 This one applies to low ticket items.
If they sold only twice in 90 days, delete them.
They aren't worth the metric drag.
That is aggressive.
It has to be.
We are trying to hit 60 grand in 90 days.
6:08
You don't get there dragging in anchor, right?
The only exception is high ticket items.
You know, if you're selling a $500 camera, we give that more grace because they naturally move slower.
But for general drop shipping goods, be ruthless.
It's like spring cleaning, but for your digital footprint.
OK, now before we move to adding new stuff, there's one more cleaning tip regarding titles and I feel like I see this mistake constantly in February.
6:31
Oh, the ghost of Christmas Past.
I know exactly what you're going.
To say right, you see a listing for a coffee maker that still says Great Christmas gift for Dad.
It's a killer if a buyer sees Christmas gift in the title in February.
Subconsciously they think two things.
6:46
One, this is old stock and two, this seller is lazy.
You have to take down the Christmas lights.
Remove gift, remove holiday, remove Christmas.
Rewrite those titles with Evergreen keywords.
Make it relevant to now.
7:02
OK, so we've cleaned the house.
The dead stock is gone, The titles are fresh.
Now we need to bring people into the house.
And this brings us to the core strategy for hitting that 60 grand the ecosystem.
Yes, this is where most people get the math totally wrong.
7:17
They try to make a huge profit on every single sale.
But to build that motion we talked about, you need what we call traffic products.
This is the part that always feels a bit counterintuitive.
You're basically suggesting selling cheap stuff just to get the customer in the door.
Essentially, yeah, a traffic product is something priced under $20.
7:34
The margins are small, sometimes really small, like under $2.00 profit.
OK, stop right there, $2.00.
I can find that in my couch cushions.
Yeah, you're telling me I have to process an order, deal with a customer, upload tracking, maybe handle a return for less than the price of a Snickers?
7:50
Bar, I know, I know, it sounds like madness, but you aren't selling that item to buy a Ferrari, you are selling it to buy a customer and to buy a signal.
The signal to the algorithm.
Correct.
Let's look at the data from the the strategy we're breaking down.
8:06
There was a a simple household item selling for $13.95 on eBay.
We sourced it for $8.98 after fees.
The profit was literally $1.88.
My soul hurts hearing that number.
But wait, that item sold 15 times in seven days.
8:23
That changes the perspective a little.
Bit that is 15 successful transactions, that is 15 happy customers who might leave positive feedback.
But most importantly, that is 15 distinct pings to the eBay algorithm in one week saying this store is hot, this store fulfills orders fast, send more people here.
8:40
It's priming the pump.
So you need the flow to get the water moving for the bigger stuff.
OK, where are we getting these traffic products?
Because if I'm selling cheap I can't afford any problems.
This is crucial for traffic products we are sourcing primarily from Amazon.
Amazon Why?
8:56
2 words Speed and trust.
We need these items to arrive in two days.
We need the tracking to update instantly.
We are basically using Amazon's logistics to build our eBay seller metrics.
OK, this is a really important connection.
So we use Amazon for the cheap stuff because it's fast, but we aren't drop shipping everything from Amazon, right because the margins are terrible.
9:18
Correct.
And this is the bridge that makes the whole strategy work.
You use the fast, low margin Amazon items to build a shield of perfect metrics, a shield.
And that shield allows you to sell the high profit items which we usually source from places like Aliexpress.
Oh OK, because Aliexpress takes longer to ship.
9:35
Exactly, if you only sold items from China that takes say 2 weeks to arrive, your store metrics would suffer. eBay might flag you for slow shipping right?
But if 30% of your sales are arriving in 48 hours because of the Amazon traffic products, your average shipping time looks amazing.
9:51
You are buying the grace to sell the high function slow stuff.
That is smart.
It's like, it's like eating your vegetables so you can have dessert.
The Amazon items and the broccoli and the Aliexpress items are the cake.
That's actually a perfect analogy.
The golden ratio we use is 30% traffic products, the broccoli to feed the algorithm and 70% high profit products the cake to feed your bank account.
10:15
OK, I'm hungry now, but let's talk about that 70%.
We need to make actual money.
How do we scale this up to $20,000 a month?
Because you can't do that manually.
No, absolutely not.
We need to talk about the fishing rod theory.
The ocean is the market.
Your products are your fishing rods.
If you want to catch more fish, make more sales.
10:32
You don't just stare at the water and pray you put more rods in.
And in Q1, we are talking about a lot of rods.
We are talking about scaling from maybe 60 listings a day in Q4 to 120 listings a day in Q1A. 120 listings a day?
That is physically impossible for a human being.
10:50
Yeah, you'd be glued to your computer for 12 hours.
Your eyes would bleed.
It is impossible to do well manually.
This is where automation isn't a luxury, it's a requirement.
You need AI tools like the autopilot systems we used to find and list them.
You just set the criteria, click scan, and it finds 120 products that match your metrics in seconds, right?
11:11
It frees you up to be the CEO, not the data entry clerk.
So we have the volume, but what are we actually selling in that 70% bucket?
It's winter.
People are, you know, they're depressed.
What are they buying?
You have to look at what people actually need in January and February.
11:27
The gift mindset is gone.
Now it's the reality mindset.
That means home improvement, fitness.
Everyone has a New Year's resolution they'll keep for three weeks, Storage and pets.
Pets are always huge.
People will stop buying lunch for themselves before they stop buying treats for their dog.
It is recession proof.
11:44
Let's look at a case study we ran on winter clothing sourcing from Aliexpress to sell on eBay.
Since we have our Amazon Shield protecting our metrics, we can do this safely.
OK, we found a dog vest.
Simple winter dog clothing.
OK, give me the numbers on.
It it's sold 33 times in 30 days, that is huge volume for a single listing.
12:04
And the strategy here isn't just to list one vest, it's to find the winner and then list the valuations, the colors, the sizes, the related styles.
If the green XXL vest is selling, list the red one, list the blue one.
Don't reinvent the wheel, just make the wheel bigger.
12:20
Exactly.
Another example, balaclavas.
You know, the full face masks for skiing.
Now you have to be careful with those, right?
Some of them are branded big time.
You do.
You have to watch out for Vero verified rights owner brands, but there are plenty of generic high quality options.
Sure.
12:35
We found one selling on eBay for about 1999.
We could source the exact same generic item on Aliexpress for about $6 plus shipping.
So you're looking at what about 8 bucks profit per sale?
Around $8 profit.
Yeah.
And it's sold 19 times in a month.
12:52
That's nearly 150 bucks in profit from one listing.
Now imagine you have hundreds of those fishing rods in the water.
That is how you get to 60,000.
It's not one magical item, it's hundreds of base hits.
Exactly.
We saw winter hats sourcing for $15 total selling for $27.00.
13:07
That's $11.00 profit.
It adds up fast.
OK, but there is one more piece to this puzzle.
We've got the listings, we've got the niches, but sometimes, even with good SEO, you get buried on page 5.
Yeah, page 5 is the graveyard.
Nobody goes to page 5.
So how do we skip the line?
13:23
You mentioned promoted listings, but I have to be the voice of the skeptical listener here.
I am already working on tight margins, esecially with the traffic roducts.
Now you want me to pay eBay more money for ads?
It feels like I'm gambling.
I totally get that fear ads sounds like a slot machine where you put money in and just hope something happens.
13:42
But promoted listings standard on eBay is different.
That will sell.
It's a paper sale system.
OK, explain that distinction because that changes the risk profile completely.
It means you do not pay for impressions.
You do not pay if someone clicks on your item, looks at it, and then decides not to buy it.
13:58
You only pay the ad fee if the item actually sells.
So if I promote an item and nobody buys it, I owe eBay $0.00?
Zero.
The risk is virtually non existent.
You're basically telling eBay I will give you a Commission if and only if you put me on the front shelf and get me a sale.
14:15
It's like bribing the bouncer, but you only pay the bribe if he actually lets you into the club.
That is exactly what it is.
You are renting the front shelf of the busiest store in the world and if you want to hit aggressive targets like 60K and 90 days, you cannot rely on organic search alone.
14:31
You need that boost.
What kind of percentage are we talking about?
Do I have to give away half my profit?
No, no, you can cap the ad rate.
We usually recommend starting around 3%.
You just tell eBay I'll give you an extra 3% of the sale price if you promote this.
That is usually enough to get you out of the graveyard and onto the first page. 3% to get noticed by thousands of more buyers.
14:52
When you put it that way, it's a no brainer.
It separates the hobbyist from the business owners.
A business owner understands customer acquisition costs.
A hobbyist just hopes people find them.
Before we wrap up, I want to quickly hit on a secret weapon tip you mentioned earlier regarding limits because if we are scaling to 120 listings a day, we're going to hit a ceiling fast.
15:14
Yes, this is crucial for January.
Right now your metrics from Q4, that huge volume of holiday sales are still visible on your dashboard.
OK, you look like a rock star to eBay because the drop off hasn't fully registered in the long term averages yet.
15:29
So you look bigger than you actually are at this specific moment.
Right, so this is the moment to call eBay or get on live chat and request a selling limit increase.
Oh smart, lock in those higher limits while your history looks its absolute best.
If you wait until April when things have cooled off, they might say no.
15:45
Do it while you're riding high.
Such a practical tip.
OK, let's bring this all home.
We have covered a ton of ground.
Let's summarize the blueprint for the listener who is ready to execute this today.
Sure, it's 4 steps.
Step one, the cleanup.
Be ruthless.
If it hasn't sold in 30 days, delete it.
16:02
Fix that sell through rate and remove the Christmas keywords.
Step 2.
Feed the machine.
The traffic products 30% of your stores should be fast moving low margin items from Amazon to build trust and speed.
Step 3.
Scale the winners.
16:19
The profit layer 70% of your store.
Winter niches like dog vests.
Home organization sourced from places like Aliexpress for higher margins.
Use automation to hit 120 listings a day.
And Step 4 most visibility.
Promoted listings pay the 3%.
16:36
Skip the line.
It sounds so simple when you lay it out like that, but the execution is where people fall off.
Consistency is the only magic trick here.
The plan doesn't work if you do it for three days and then get distracted.
This has been incredible.
I feel like we've just handed everyone the road map for Q 12026.
I think so too, and I want to leave everyone with one final thought to Mull over.
16:54
Go for it.
Ask yourself this.
Are you running a business that relies on the calendar to make sales, waiting for Christmas, waiting for Black Friday?
Or are you building a machine that generates its own momentum?
That is the question.
Because the difference between those two mindsets is the difference between a side hustle that makes a little extra cash and a business that generates $20,000 a month every month, even in February.
17:16
A machine that generates its own momentum.
I love that.
Listen, if you are listening to this, don't just nod along.
Go open your store right now, look at your active listings and sort by time on site.
If you see stuff that's been sitting there for six months, you know what to do.
17:35
Hit that delete button.
Thanks for diving in with us today.
Let's crush Q1.
Let's get to work.
