eBay

rocketscollectibles · ‎11-03-2023

Anyone else has a huge drop randomly?

I usually have 1 or 2 day per month without a sale. Now i'm on a 4 days in a row without a sale. I have 500+ items and the last time i seen this is probably over one year ago when had under 100 items.

Starts to be concerning. I did not change anything in my selling pratices. Then:

marnotom! · ‎11-03-2023

Didn’t you post something a little while ago about getting hit with a wave of INR claims? Perhaps that’s had an effect on your visibility.

regs43 · ‎11-04-2023

I don't look at this page all that often but mine seems to have a few red downs at the moment. I try and look at what did I make for the week vs per day. If it averages out to be similar to the week before then thats great lol!

rocketscollectibles · ‎11-04-2023

None INR in all those returns. Contacted buyers prior and arranged shipping back. Thinking about it i indeed increased shipping to US 2-3 weeks ago because of that, i probably lost a few sales because of higher shipping on listings. I think i'll retry letterpost see if things changed.

Other than that i received a neg in september but it did not change anything. I see sellers with tons of bad feedbacks selling correctly too.

Did nothing, things just dying on ebay. Algorythm decided for whatever reason to push me down.

lotzofuniquegoodies · ‎11-04-2023

@regs43 wrote:
I don't look at this page all that often but mine seems to have a few red downs at the moment. I try and look at what did I make for the week vs per day. If it averages out to be similar to the week before then thats great lol!

My go to view for traffic is Ebay vs Externally. As of late it is floating back and forth. Things were much better when buyers found your stuff on eBay. For my most recent ad campaign (Approx 1/3 of items) sold 2 items via promoted.

-Lotz

lotzofuniquegoodies · ‎11-04-2023

As an FYI for anyone testing promoted rates, if you go from 4% to 25% your visibility jumps from 27% to 100%. Not suggesting you do that. Just advising. 🙄 Like life, with eBay there are no actual guarantees.

-Lotz

rocketscollectibles · ‎11-04-2023

Doing some analysis. I noticed a CLEAR drop starting from october in my promoted views. Especially the external views. As we see i used to have 50-100 per day external, then randomly dropped to like 10 per day from october.

My views dropping and my sales being down clearly comes from this. What i'm supposed to do!? It's so strange.

ricarmic · ‎11-04-2023

The problem with promoted rates is that it also depends on what others are doing.

Doing searches to see if your stuff comes out before or after "competitors" can help identify whether their rate is higher than yours or not.

I've been experimenting with "burst" promoted listings, ie putting a high rate on some for a short period of time. A couple weeks ago it worked, recently it has not.

Leaving a "burst" on longer, loses its effect (perhaps because others raise their rates?), ie nothing sells despite the higher rate.

I'm continuing to experiment, one has to limit the amount of experimentation at the same time otherwise one doesn't know what exact stuff works or not...

I do see that despite all my experimentation, my "promoted" sales rate as an overall percentage is LOW now, traditionally in the good old days it was 50%ish, now it's 20%ish.... and overall sales are equally lower as well

lotzofuniquegoodies · ‎11-04-2023

@ricarmic wrote:
The problem with promoted rates is that it also depends on what others are doing.

Doing searches to see if your stuff comes out before or after "competitors" can help identify whether their rate is higher than yours or not.

I've been experimenting with "burst" promoted listings, ie putting a high rate on some for a short period of time. A couple weeks ago it worked, recently it has not.

Leaving a "burst" on longer, loses its effect (perhaps because others raise their rates?), ie nothing sells despite the higher rate.

I'm continuing to experiment, one has to limit the amount of experimentation at the same time otherwise one doesn't know what exact stuff works or not...

I do see that despite all my experimentation, my "promoted" sales rate as an overall percentage is LOW now, traditionally in the good old days it was 50%ish, now it's 20%ish.... and overall sales are equally lower as well

@ricarmic

Have you done any indepth testing with promoting items that are super longtail? From my personal testing anything of mine that is super longtail(2 to 3 years), when I do a search, comes up way down the queue. Even when promoted at higher rates.

-Lotz

flipistics · ‎11-04-2023

It's hard when we can't look at your eBay store. It's also hard when we don't have more information to go on. For example, how much are you listing? Have you changed anything regarding what markets you sell to? Have you filled in all the required information (and at least some optional) ? Are the products listed in the correct categories, which may have recently changed? Have you searched for your listings to see where they appear in search and what price and shipping competitors are selling the items for (if applicable)? Are the items you're selling in any way seasonal items? What is the price point of the items you're selling? I'm sure there's more, that's just what I can think of off the top of my head.

For whatever it's worth, my media store (which hasn't seen much listing love recently) has been down maybe 10%. My book store, which has been increasing in listings a little bit, is up noticably. My general store, where the listing counts are probably up about 50%, is up very significantly.

rocketscollectibles · ‎11-04-2023

Would not change much if you could see my things. It's about algorythm. As shown in my last post the views drop comes mainly from external views.

I did not change anything in my selling pratices. Except increasing shipping cost to US, but i mainly sell to canadians.

I'm slashing into all my prices right now and pushing very agressively. I noticed some of my competitors undercutted. Could be an accumulation from past months. But still not explaining why my listings are not shown on external sites as they was.

ricarmic · ‎11-04-2023

@lotzofuniquegoodies yes I put the 5 to 10 year old items up at a % higher than the recommended rate. A few sales of them, one really can't expect too much of course, but ALSO a bump in everything else selling (you'll have seen @femmefan1946 mention this result in other threads on this topic in the past). I didn't do search testing, I watched my promoted listing results/graph in terms of impact. This was one of the burst experiments. It worked VERY well the first time, effect dropped off after about 4 days. Repeated burst of the same items a week or so later had NO noticeable effect on sales in either the super promoted group nor the rest of the store items, the views didn't show much impact and actually at about the 4 day mark they were the lowest ever.

So as always I've got no secret formula(e) for my bag of tricks at the moment. I have another experiment running at the moment, won't know about it's impact for another day or two.

Fortunately my "regulars" have been helping a lot, both in terms of keeping sales "sovlency size" and avoiding promoted listing fees as many seem to generally search directly through my store instead of coming via promotedness.

When you put yours up to 25%, what did you see promoted and non-promoted impact wise???

lotzofuniquegoodies · ‎11-04-2023

@ricarmic wrote:
@lotzofuniquegoodies yes I put the 5 to 10 year old items up at a % higher than the recommended rate. A few sales of them, one really can't expect too much of course, but ALSO a bump in everything else selling (you'll have seen @femmefan1946 mention this result in other threads on this topic in the past). I didn't do search testing, I watched my promoted listing results/graph in terms of impact. This was one of the burst experiments. It worked VERY well the first time, effect dropped off after about 4 days. Repeated burst of the same items a week or so later had NO noticeable effect on sales in either the super promoted group nor the rest of the store items, the views didn't show much impact and actually at about the 4 day mark they were the lowest ever.

So as always I've got no secret formula(e) for my bag of tricks at the moment. I have another experiment running at the moment, won't know about it's impact for another day or two.

Fortunately my "regulars" have been helping a lot, both in terms of keeping sales "sovlency size" and avoiding promoted listing fees as many seem to generally search directly through my store instead of coming via promotedness.

When you put yours up to 25%, what did you see promoted and non-promoted impact wise???

@ricarmic

In going through my listings oldest any are displaying is 2.5 years. Most was relisted along the way with sell similar. Views and watchers are so well hidden now. As for the 25% that was just a test to see how much it would affect. I've tested higher percentages. Have yet to see a spike in sales. May be just type of items I am using with. Trying to rationalize how anything works on eBay is getting to be a lost cause.

-Lotz

ricarmic · ‎11-04-2023

It looks like the "advertising" world here is more fluid at the moment. Doesn't mean there isn't a way.

"Advertising" has always required evolution to stay in front.

Reminds me of a funny experience of mine "before the internet". A competitor copied almost the exact same wording as one of my classified ads. The newspaper put the classified ads in "alphabetical" order based on the first word of the ad. So I took my ad and changed the first word to place a version in front and after their ad for the same duration as their ad had. I don't recall what they did after that, but they didn't copy my ads anymore....

I'll just continue to experiment as I've done in the past, had too relaxing of a time enjoying the 1%/2% long time winning strategy....

flipistics · ‎11-04-2023

@rocketscollectibles wrote:
Would not change much if you could see my things. It's about algorythm. As shown in my last post the views drop comes mainly from external views.

I did not change anything in my selling pratices. Except increasing shipping cost to US, but i mainly sell to canadians.

I'm slashing into all my prices right now and pushing very agressively. I noticed some of my competitors undercutted. Could be an accumulation from past months. But still not explaining why my listings are not shown on external sites as they was.

Why I mentioned required information is that eBay has just made the condition on things like sports cards mandatory (I noticed it show up in missing condition details required a few days ago). I *think* it kicked in for the US site before it did for us, and would likely cause those listings to not be shown by external search engines. Assuming that's true and it kicked in a month ago or so for the USA, that would correspond exactly with what you are seeing. I don't know if you sell other things as well as sports cards, but you've mentioned sports cards specifically in the past.

I know for me, if I don't list regularly I see a big drop in views and sales. When I list regularly, sales go up (it's often not the newly listed stuff either). eBay really, really likes activity. I also suspect they give a bump to listings with more pictures, although I don't have proof of that.

marnotom! · ‎11-04-2023

@rocketscollectibles wrote:

None INR in all those returns. Contacted buyers prior and arranged shipping back. Thinking about it i indeed increased shipping to US 2-3 weeks ago because of that, i probably lost a few sales because of higher shipping on listings. I think i'll retry letterpost see if things changed.

Other than that i received a neg in september but it did not change anything. I see sellers with tons of bad feedbacks selling correctly too.

Did nothing, things just dying on ebay. Algorythm decided for whatever reason to push me down.

I may have confused the returned item thread with this one:

https://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/American-claiming-refund-Once-again/td-p/498888

rocketscollectibles · ‎11-05-2023

So after slashing into my prices and doing a lot of price revision/relisting, i suddently sold $50. I truly think my pricing had an impact. People undercut a lot in my market and if i'm not checking that for a few weeks, i end with hundred items being undercutted.

Thinking about it too. I started using a new background at the beginning of october! There's a skelleton on it and i wonder if the IA could stop promoting on external links because the bot see it as innapropriated!?

rocketscollectibles · ‎11-05-2023

Why I mentioned required information is that eBay has just made the condition on things like sports cards mandatory (I noticed it show up in missing condition details required a few days ago). I *think* it kicked in for the US site before it did for us, and would likely cause those listings to not be shown by external search engines.

I indeed did not fix that. It's such a mess. Could be a theory tho it doesnt match with dates, they forced us to add condition from around october 20th, and my drop came at the beginning of october. I see many of my competitors selling correctly too who still did not touch that neither. But that's something i'll work on.

I may have confused the returned item thread with this one:

https://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/American-claiming-refund-Once-again/td-p/498888

I had a rush of IRNs during a few weeks/months past summer but it's been a few months without one now.

38e_avenue · ‎11-05-2023

Impressions up, page views down, sales up.

regs43 · ‎11-05-2023

@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:
@regs43 wrote:
I don't look at this page all that often but mine seems to have a few red downs at the moment. I try and look at what did I make for the week vs per day. If it averages out to be similar to the week before then thats great lol!

My go to view for traffic is Ebay vs Externally. As of late it is floating back and forth. Things were much better when buyers found your stuff on eBay. For my most recent ad campaign (Approx 1/3 of items) sold 2 items via promoted.

-Lotz

I don't look at any of that either LOL, and if I do its so infrequent the data means nothing to me as I have no concept of what it usually is lol!

I look at what i sold in the last 7 days/31days usually just to see how things are going. Currently up 7% for the last 31days compared to last year I guess at this time so thats good.