eBay

newfieron · ‎11-21-2015

Every year around mid October, when I expect sales to start picking up for Christmas, my sales actually drop drastically and pick up again in January.

This year is the worst ever. My 30 day sales are only 1/3 of my August and September sales. I have over 5000 listing in an Anchor store and have sold 55 items in the past 30 days.

I've called Customer Service in previous years and was told there was no issue with my account, "must be no one wants your stuff now"

Are other Canadian Sellers being put on the back burner for Christmas as well?

pinetreecottage · ‎11-21-2015

I find the same is happening to me. I don't know how it's possible, but it seems my items are invisible. I just finally sold a leather coat, after listing it several times. For the longest time, it didn't show, when I searched it, then all of a sudden, there it was, among other leather coats, where it was supposed to be, and it sold, so I have to wonder, what did I do, to make it visible?

After I list my items, I immediately have between 1-4 viewers, that's just the bots, after that, absolutely nobody. When I search other like items, they are sold, with several bids, or "buy it now". My items are priced well below the sold ones and I offer free shipping, so I'm thinking, it's not that nobody wants my stuff, maybe the searchengine isn't showing all items. I find it odd that currently I have several identical listings, one has many viewers, the others have each 1 viewer. The titles are all the same, with the exception of numbers 1-5. These listings were created Nov.19, with the new promo. I appreciate the promos, but when many of us seem to be invisible, it's really a non starter.

There are all kinds of theories, some being the economy, mobile device use and competition from other on line sites. Since there's no way to know, all we can do is to keep doing what we're doing.

momcqueen · ‎11-21-2015

There was an announcement somewhere about six months ago that ebay was planning to drop visibility for sellers who appear to have too many similar items for sale simultaneously. (It may not have been an announcement per se but part of another announcement.) This was being done to address bulk drop-shipper-types from overseas but if yours look too much alike, you will fall into the same suppression placement (or lack thereof) as theirs. The takeaway is that ebay issues no warning this is being done, they just do it.

I don't know that this is the problem you face right now but if you want to do more research, you'll have to search Community for threads about it, as well as industry blogs. I'm thinking this was sometime in the spring where it was being discussed and top of mind.

pinetreecottage · ‎11-21-2015

Thanks for that. It always boggles my mind, that we're constantly being thwarted with selling. The ultimate goal, is to sell as much as possible, so ebay gets their fees. Every time a potential sale is lost, due to inane rules and site issues, it's a revenue loss to ebay. If I was the "beancounter", I would have serious concerns. Every corporation must, at the end of the day, look at the bottom line. To discourage or prevent sales, is just not good business.

rose-dee · ‎11-21-2015

@newfieron wrote:
Every year around mid October, when I expect sales to start picking up for Christmas, my sales actually drop drastically and pick up again in January.

This year is the worst ever. My 30 day sales are only 1/3 of my August and September sales. I have over 5000 listing in an Anchor store and have sold 55 items in the past 30 days.

I've called Customer Service in previous years and was told there was no issue with my account, "must be no one wants your stuff now"

Are other Canadian Sellers being put on the back burner for Christmas as well?

Yes, I'm experiencing the same thing and seeing a lot of reports from sellers on turnover rates of less than 3% per month (yours is barely over 1%). It has become especially acute this year.

There are many theories, but I suspect only eBay would be able to provide the true answers (if at all). I'm simply going to hang on as long as I can still feasibly make money, since there is nothing more I can do in terms of seller status or listings that I haven't already tried in order to actually improve sales. I really am having a hard time believing eBay isn't at least partly to blame, but they'll never disclose what it is they do in the background.

zee-chan · ‎11-21-2015

I did have slower sale with October and November (my summer was pretty good). And I just found out yesterday that eBay has somehow nuked my item descriptions of my older (started listing 2+ years ago) items. How I found out? I sold two of these books yesterday and checked the item descriptions (I wanted to know how much they weigh since I was at work). The buyer apparently bought them only based on the photos I had in the listings. I checked back my sale history and I sold two similar older books back in September and their item description were intact. So something must have happened during the relists with promos that nuked the item descriptions... Fortunately not the photos as it'd be a major pain to find those old photos and reupload them. Don't know if that has to do with slow sales, though. I haven't had a chance to check and fix my listings since I have a few paper due in a week. School and work is more important... Then I'll have to look into each listings in December and fix them if needed.

reallynicestamps · ‎11-21-2015

Every year around mid October, when I expect sales to start picking up for Christmas, my sales actually drop

We had a B&M store on Ottawa's Sparks St Mall for over 30 years, a prime shopping area, one block from Parliament Hill.

And every year our worst period was the 'Christmas shopping' period from mid-November to late December.

We tried dropping prices during that period. All that happened was that our take was lower; we had the same number of sales.

We tried advertising in hobby papers and in the daily newspaper. All that happened was that our costs were higher: we had the same number of sales.

Finally, we decided not to worry about it.

We moved to a promotion, just to our customer list, that gave a premium with sales .(This was a percentage of purchase in trade dollars - think Canadian Tire money-- that could be traded for goods later.)

We didn't lower prices.

Our sales both in number and in profitability, soared from Boxing Day to mid-January, and stayed high as our customers came back to spend their trade dollars and more.

Since you know this is going to be the norm, go with the flow.

Your collectible items* are like ours in one way, it is unlikely that most people would be buying them for others. And it may well be that they have a 'collecting allowance' for themselves that gets moved to 'gifts for other' at this time of year.

Do you keep a list of the email addresses of your customers from earlier in the year?

How about a single mailing, just after Christmas , with a special offer for them?

Perhaps Free Shipping-- real free shipping, not just the usual adding the shipping cost to the asking price that eBay calls and customers like fake -- with a 'bonus number' that is in the email?

It's a thought anyway.

* I think that all of the posters so far have been selling items that people are unlikely to buy as gifts for others. So the 'collecting allowance' hypothesis may be valid. Shall we move it up to 'theory'?

anguscoinshop · ‎11-21-2015

2 years ago in coins there was 45,000 listing. ebay started giving away free promotion as if it was candy. Now there's 120,000+. Sale have just plummeted over that same time period.
Listing are lost among the multitude of listing.
Don't expect a recovery anytime soon. ebay's profit are probably falling and likely trying to make it up with carpet listings.

jersey..authentix · ‎11-21-2015

Why so surprised. When was the last time you saw an advertisement on TV for Ebay. Maybe not for long, but it is Still the best form of Advertising. If your not going to advertise your business then dont expect an increase of a customer base. I think everyone is at AMAZON anyways. They advertise.

Supposedly Ebay spends 100's of thousands on advertising annually, at least this is what I hear anyways, but the only advertising I see is when I browse the web. Which only is due to Adware and Browsing cookies in my computer.

So where is it. I get American channels like most of us and I dont see it there. Maybe Europe Or Asia.

momcqueen · ‎11-21-2015

@zee-chan wrote:
I did have slower sale with October and November (my summer was pretty good). And I just found out yesterday that eBay has somehow nuked my item descriptions of my older (started listing 2+ years ago) items.....

Do you by chance use the Bulk Editor to relist and/or edit things? Specifically the version of it that splits the screen so that you can look at both titles on the left and the Item Specifics, Description etc on the right? (I think they call it the BEAR: Bulk Edit Asyncorosomething Revision tool.) The last time I did, it overwrote my descriptions with descriptions from other listings I had been working on during the same session. I won't use it again.

And, ditto. My October and November have not been at all great. I'm running at about 25 per cent to where I was at this time last year. Some of that is certainly due to the volatility of what I sell in terms of supply and demand but still.... things picked up a bit this week.

zee-chan · ‎11-21-2015

@mjwl2006 wrote:

Do you by chance use the Bulk Editor to relist and/or edit things? Specifically the version of it that splits the screen so that you can look at both titles on the left and the Item Specifics, Description etc on the right? (I think they call it the BEAR: Bulk Edit Asyncorosomething Revision tool.) The last time I did, it overwrote my descriptions with descriptions from other listings I had been working on during the same session. I won't use it again.

And, ditto. My October and November have not been at all great. I'm running at about 25 per cent to where I was at this time last year. Some of that is certainly due to the volatility of what I sell in terms of supply and demand but still.... things picked up a bit this week.

I don't remember if I have used the bulk editor the past two months... I don't think I did, and I rarely use the one that splits the screen. If I had to edit anything it's usually the price (increase by a small amount every year with CP's postage increase). Or I just edit each listing one by one.

It's still weird to me that it's only those super old listings got affected. The whole description got nuked, some had a few random alphabets / symbols left while some had absolutely nothing left. There are around 100 of them so it'll take me quite a while to fix them... unfortunately that have to wait till next month. I do have my item descriptions saved somewhere so they are tedious but easy to replace. Luckily for the 10-20 listings I checked, all of their photos were okay as that's what draws buyers in. The buyer that bought from me yesterday is a return buyer so she should have a good idea of what she's getting despite the lack of description.

bargainbookscanada · ‎11-22-2015

One word answer to explain all the problems..competition.

There are just so many more sellers, so many more venues to buy to go along side with little to no increase in demand.

I used to list and see maybe 1 or 2 of my items for sale, usually at a similar price. Now the same item might have ten different listings, all trying to undercut each other, all at a race to the bottom.

Here are things that have changed recently.

1) Ease of mobile internet.

The change here is basically how easy it is to get a cheap data plan for your smartphone. This allows newer sellers to quickly have a look at selling prices on sites like Ebay and the river. This caused a glut of new sellers. There have been a lot of new sellers in general over the past 5 years due to shows like storage wars, american pickers etc. Everyone thought you could get rich quickly on Ebay. However, the inexperienced trying to buy items on site with improper research lost their shirt.

2) Fast, cheap and unlimited internet.

This really killed certain segments like Media, Books, DVDs, Blu Rays etc. Because now it's just way cheaper to subscribe to a streaming service like Netflix than buy used media. This is also a relatively recent phenomenon. Even if your business is not associated with used media, there's an indirect side effect as these sellers go out of business, they buy less of...everything.

3) Even B&M stores want a piece of the action. I remember when it was rare for thrift stores to price things expensively unless it was a true antique. But these days a lot of things are priced on Ebay and then set aside in display cases. This takes up a lot of local business.