Thanks western,
Well now after reading that 5800-post thread, I did get a few ideas on the reasons for the drop in sales, but the more I read it, the more I realized that everybody was at the complete mercy of eBay and we as sellers have yet to find strategies to improve our sales after this recent changes. Of course, building up presence elsewhere is now something we sellers probably must do.
Having spent hours reading the many posts in that thread (MAN we sellers are chatty when we have time now, thanks to the next-to-none sales XD), please allow me to summarize some other posters' key ideas on the recent drastic drop in sales, just in case someone else wondered the same as I did. Some are just thoughts, guesses, and rumors.
1.
eBay make changes, which takes places on new servers and isn't search-engine-friendly at all, as search engines have to re-index all your listings on the new ebay server IPs, which leads to hefty drop in traffic. And traffic is everything we ever needed.
2.
Increased competition from eBay integrating store listings into the best match results.
a. Store listings used to have little exposure as eBay used to prioritize auctions and BIN listings, but now they have been poured in.
b. I also saw people mentioned that eBay China doesn't charge fees for listing, which is why there are thousands of flooding listings of the same items from Chinese/HK sellers. If this is true, it's rather unfair for us north american sellers, nothing can beat free, and we cannot afford to compete by further increasing number of listings which don't sell through.
c. when you have 30-50% more listings (which is what happened to my niche), your exposure is bound to decrease, not to mention the already decreased exposure from search engines.
3.
Maybe the economy and summer time play some part, but the effect can be ignored, because some of the other major marketplaces are doing just well with increased sales and traffic. Not happening here on ebay, unfortunately. Sellers who compare year-to-year same month sales can immediately see this. They expect slow sales, but not sales that drop by 80-90%.
4.
There are glitches here and there. Buyers mentioned items disappearing from their watch list. NOW we sellers finally know why items with like 5 watchers still don't sell anymore.
5.
There's also conspiracy theory that eBay is trying to get rid of small sellers with all these changes. It is true that small sellers are taking on larger portion of the hit, which can be vital to their business. But I personally think the big sellers are facing all the same problems as well.
And the only winner, in the short term, is eBay with the increased fees from integrating store listings into regular BIN listings.
However, in the long run, this is frankly as stupid as it can be. I see many posters saying that they're closing down and have to quit eBay. If a large portion of the small sellers do leave, buyers won't find what they want, what's in it for eBay?
Plus, sellers are usually buyers too because we spent so much of our time on ebay, we know we used to be find deals on just about anything here. Maybe now we and other buyers won't be able to anymore, or at least we will find it difficult to find what we want, because of the flooded, clustered listings.
I have been spending a lot of time building up my own online store since last time I experienced the same pain with eBay's "improvements" and "rules". It didn't bring in as much income as eBay did, but I'm more than ever determined to put effort there than here. Some sellers mentioned they actually saw rise in traffic with some of their other ventures and own websites. Well it makes sense to me, if prospecting customers do not come to eBay anymore, the other places are bound to have more traffic.
Please share your thoughts, especially in that 5800-post thread with the title 5 DAYS STRAIGHT, NOT 1 SALES. SELLING FOR 10 YRS.WHAT THE IS GOING ON HERE!
Let me try the link
.
!t83BLsDEZ(UwQ~~_7.JPG "enjoygadgets_store"){kind=avatar}
