"I was interested to read that your eBay sales were the lowest of the venues you use. Sad story that I'm afraid is being repeated often..."
I had good success selling on Ebay until about 1.5 - 2 years ago when Ebay sales started to decline severely for no reason. Now I'm lucky if I get a few Ebay sales a week. I'm considering closing my store when the time comes that it makes no sense to keep it open. It seemed to really decline after Ebay put the UPC code policy in place for listings. I buy UPC codes and use them so my listings should not have decreased visibility but it hasn't worked.
With Ebay sales low, I started selling on Amazon Canada 14 months ago. My own website sales increased due to having visibility on Amazon. Amazon is a very different ballgame than Ebay and takes some getting used to. Their brand new rule that sellers need to use tracking for 95% of all orders by Feb 1 (unless your item is small and fits into standard mail or letter mail ) will see more Canadian sellers returning to Ebay shortly as our "friends" at Canada Post cannot provide that service.
I began selling on Amazon.com 2 months ago and I've never been busier. I'm very thankful as I live in Alberta which is currently ravaged by mass layoffs due to low oil prices. Normally Albertans spend a lot of money. For the first time in the 20 or so years I've been out here (originally from Manitoba), I'm seeing people ditching items at the checkout in the grocery store because they don't have enough money or they're buying very little just to get by. Auto dealers who could never keep enough fancy pick up trucks on the lot for the oilfield workers have so many promos and sales right now - annoying ads on the radio one after another - but they can't sell anything much. I'm glad that I have the opportunity to sell online and not have to sell locally as a brick and mortar store does when the local economy is poor.
