drastic drop in activity

[timoffit_0]

I've seen a drastic drop in views , watchers and starting to affect sales ever since the latest changes to ebay , All these new item specifics requirements are more of a nusence than anything , Is anyone else seeing the same drop ? I'm starting to wonder how many buyers & sellers have closed their accounts since the latest changes , I know i'm seriously considering it . 

[reallynicestamps · Accepted solution]

There have been a lot of posts about this in the past month, and every month since October 1995.

It helps to take a long term look.

October is never like September or August. But it can be compared to October 2019 or October 2018. (2020 was such an outlier in terms of sales with the pandemic surge in online commerce, that we probably should ignore it.)

Most sellers see a uptick in sales starting in late October as the holiday season approaches. OTOH, it's been my experience (both online since 1998 and in our B&M store from 1979 to 2014) that our sales dive in those months and soar back on Boxing Day.

Is it happening? Yes.  Certainly.

What is happening? Only you can tell if this is a natural ebb and flow or if something has changed.

Is the downturn in number of sales or in value of sales?

One useful suggestion is not to put all your eggs in one basket. Add a couple more online sites to your selling. (Be careful of your inventory. Every time I sell a book on eBay, I have to remember to pull it from my AZ store.)

[eyegotwhatuwant]

It has happened to me too! Watched many outube videos of other sellers and they are all saying the same thing. This is awful. But they are now charging more fees. eBay start calling yourself "Feebay" because this is getting ridiculous and I bet they will not even show my listings just for voicing my opinion. I'm extremely dissappointed and been a part of ebay since 2003. My store costs a fortune but no sale or views or watchers. over $1000 items and tried everything. Even 60% discount. It was a test and not one sale.  Come on!!!

[lady.stark]

Granted, I do not have many items (although 145 is quite a lot of listings for me). But my last sale in 2021 was made October 25. After that, not a single sale until January 17 (non paying customer) and February 2.

I did and do not understand why... 3 months without a sale when usually, the holidays is a busy period for me.

Hopefully, sales will pick up again...

[reallynicestamps]

@eyegotwhatuwant 

The Winter Update should be helpful.

It looks like the number of "free"  listings in a Store subscription will be rising.

I suspect the number of Promotional Free Listings will drop though, especially now that Managed Payments are mostly in place.

And you do know that you can effectively double the number of listings in your subcription by listing on both dotCA and dotCOM, right?

It looks like you did not realize that.

There are quirks to doing this, the most important ones involving shipping.

But that is the subject of a different post.

[rocketscollectibles]

My personal experience since mid january: raised my listings by 25%, sold for 40% less. I personally don't think its because of holidays, since the previous 31 days is like dec 10 to jan 10, and my listings are not really adapted for christmas gifts. eBay is like a wheel spinning, less you sell, less you'll sell. More you sell, more you'll sell. My sales literally are always in waves, and always been a bit suspcisious to me. I have 250 listings, when i look at my competition who have 4000 listings and i compare, i have 10 positives in my last month, they have 500. So approximately they have 15x my listings, but sell 50x more. You clearly see an exponential factor. I always had the feeling it had something to do with the algorythm

[kurtiseskorner]

Yup. But that's not why I'm leaving. I'm leaving because ebay hates its sellers and treats us like garbage. They side with the buyer every time. So I'm done with this place, and it didn't take long to catch on to their bull**bleep** either. This place needs to be sued.