eBay

musicyouneed · ‎06-08-2017

Ebay turned on my lights and I got three sales in a little over a half hour, just seems weird. I'll go 24 hours or sometimes a couple of days with no sales and then bang, 3 sales in a row.

esclyons · ‎06-08-2017

there was talk on the us boards, about ebay using rolling black outs, on sellers. would never be able to prove it, but the longer i am selling, the more i tend to believe it.

ypdc_dennis · ‎06-08-2017

The feast or famine way of the online selling world.

Last 3 days no sales on any of the selling venues I use (not just eBay).

Compared to last week when I had almost a month of sales over 3 days.

I want last week back...

ricarmic · ‎06-08-2017

In an alternate, optimistic perspective to blackouts, it is possible that something featured you/r store/items and that is what caused the burst of sales...

For example, all the sudden I get a burst of sales in Germany. Who knows why. The next day it is almost all Canadians. Who knows why. Then I have 2 Albanians......who knows why.....

On a different site I had a wee burst of sales which was very surprising as that never happens. I just perchance happened to discover that my store there got made relatively visible in a mass email sent out....... I don't know what all visibility things happen behind the scenes in eBay, but I do think sometimes something happens that makes my stuff more visible to buyers in certain locations.

As another example, I have (remember I sell on .COM) a number of promoted listings running. On a normal day they get about 2,000 impressions and generally when the impressions rise my overall sales rise, when they fall so does overall sales. 2 times in the last month there have been 1 day bursts, one day was 12,500 impressions, the other day was 9,000. What caused that? Overall sales did not reflect those bursts. When the first one happened I assumed it was a glitch, and it could be, or it could be something that makes my promoted listings show up an awful lot more.....

I've always believed there is a randomizing factor in the visibility, and I agree with it, if a buyer comes and sees the same stuff from the same guys all the time, they'll start going to look at other sites for something new.....

pierrelebel · ‎06-08-2017

June 25th, 2009 - nearly eight years ago - and I still remember!

Starting around 6:00pm - 71 sales - to different buyers - in 50 minutes!

In those days I had my email program check for mail on the server every two minutes and ring the bell if there was mail. As we started dinner, the bell kept on ringing. Not that unusual. But it kept on ringing... every two minutes as new email messages were coming in (eBay sales confirmations and PayPal payment notifications).

We changed the tv station to the news and found out why! Michael Jackson had just passed away.

I had over seventy stamp sets featuring Michael Jackson issued by St-Vincent for sale in my eBay store. Collectors rushed to buy them. Sold out in 50 minutes!

2nd-time-around-jewelry · ‎06-08-2017

Something strange like this is happening to me for awhile now. Usually I have steady sales & then 1 week with nothing. Well it has just gotten worse. I sold only 1 item in over 2 weeks. I sell vintage jewelry & have over 1000 items listed. Somehow my listings are not getting the exposure they should. Very frustrating after opening a store last year & paying all the extra fees. And all the changes eBay is supposedly implementing to make our sales grow. My experience is just the opposite.

recped · ‎06-08-2017

I've been in retail for more than 40 years. What you describe is common and has always been common in my experience and for other people I know involved in retail.

Big or small, dramatic variations from "normal" happen all the time.

I try to do my grocery shopping during the slow part of the day on the slow days of the week, usually it's as expected but sometimes there are hordes of shoppers when I expect there to be none and sometimes there are no shoppers when I expect it to be busy.

I just got back from doing an emissions test at **bleep**py tire, usually that's about an hour long procedure, today I was in and out in under 15 minutes.

"What else could I do? I had no trade so I became a peddler" - Lazarus Greenberg 1915
- answering Trolls is voluntary, my policy is not to participate.

hlmacdon · ‎06-08-2017

@esclyons wrote:
there was talk on the us boards, about ebay using rolling black outs, on sellers. would never be able to prove it, but the longer i am selling, the more i tend to believe it.

The only evidence I have seen of anything remotely like this is some of the search ranking criteria for best match and how that can push your listings way, way down a dark hole. Like any other seller I get extended periods of slowness, but whenever I dig into it the same basic things are found: I haven't had anything new listed for an extended period of time, bulk of my 30 day GTC are not in a high visibility position for buyers sorting for new listings, and it generally tracks with historical periods of seasonality for me once new listings/releases are factored out. In the absence of market leading prices, consistency is not necessarily something you can count on.

hlmacdon · ‎06-08-2017

@recped wrote:
I've been in retail for more than 40 years. What you describe is common and has always been common in my experience and for other people I know involved in retail.

Big or small, dramatic variations from "normal" happen all the time.

While I haven't quite clocked the 40 years you have under your belt, I can confirm just how yo-yo like sales can be. Even working for a very high volume retailer with relatively consistent yearly revenue we saw huge swings in revenue that were not readily explainable throughout the year which always made for fun boardroom conversations when you have a VP and CEO that have visions of revenue always being in hockey stick mode (and of course profitability mirroring that). It is one of the things that will drive you absolutely nuts as it is very easy for people to convince themselves that they should expect consistency when in reality you have very little control over the consumer unless you want to start loss leading. On a long enough time-scale things average out, but when you look at specific periods don't expect consistency, especially in a marketplace where you have relatively little influence over traffic outside of your price. Ebay is at best very random.

jt-libra · ‎06-08-2017

@esclyons wrote:
there was talk on the us boards, about ebay using rolling black outs, on sellers. would never be able to prove it, but the longer i am selling, the more i tend to believe it.

I tend to agree that something is up. I've seen explanations for time of year or no new listings added, etc., but it's more than that. For instance, April started off with a bang and continued all month. I had, by far, the most sales I'd had in 11 years of selling. It was very exciting and, at times, overwhelming. And I had done nothing different with regard to listings.

May slowed down quite a bit, but since June 1st, it appears that I am invisible. I try to add a few new listings every couple of days, but nothing has changed.

There are just too many sellers with the same experience to discount some machination by eBay. If the majority of sellers experienced slow sales in the same months of the year, then we could accept that it was seasonal or something to that effect. But I've come to realize that when I have a good month, I shouldn't count on it continuing the next month.

jt-libra · ‎06-08-2017

@pierrelebel wrote:
June 25th, 2009 - nearly eight years ago - and I still remember!

Starting around 6:00pm - 71 sales - to different buyers - in 50 minutes!

In those days I had my email program check for mail on the server every two minutes and ring the bell if there was mail. As we started dinner, the bell kept on ringing. Not that unusual. But it kept on ringing... every two minutes as new email messages were coming in (eBay sales confirmations and PayPal payment notifications).

We changed the tv station to the news and found out why! Michael Jackson had just passed away.

I had over seventy stamp sets featuring Michael Jackson issued by St-Vincent for sale in my eBay store. Collectors rushed to buy them. Sold out in 50 minutes!

I remember that day as well. I sold all my Michael Jackson CD's and music DVD's.

hlmacdon · ‎06-08-2017

@jt-libra wrote:
May slowed down quite a bit, but since June 1st, it appears that I am invisible. I try to add a few new listings every couple of days, but nothing has changed.

There are just too many sellers with the same experience to discount some machination by eBay. If the majority of sellers experienced slow sales in the same months of the year, then we could accept that it was seasonal or something to that effect. But I've come to realize that when I have a good month, I shouldn't count on it continuing the next month.

If you haven't fixed any active content issues in your listings, I would suggest doing so now. I suspect ebay has deranked these heavily in search as my overall traffic increased significantly after making that change at the end of May. May was slow with poor traffic and I only saw spikes when adding new listings. June traffic is way up and sales are much more consistent than in May.

It's worth noting some of the information ebay reps have mentioned here in recent weeks. The majority of buyers aren't switching their search view from best match, so depending on where you rank in there that can have a large influence on sales. I've run into problems with this before when my sales dropped after a competitor started using the subtitle field to keyword spam brand names to push their best match ranking up.

jt-libra · ‎06-08-2017

@hlmacdon wrote:

If you haven't fixed any active content issues in your listings, I would suggest doing so now. I suspect ebay has deranked these heavily in search as my overall traffic increased significantly after making that change at the end of May. May was slow with poor traffic and I only saw spikes when adding new listings. June traffic is way up and sales are much more consistent than in May.

Before I even read your reply, I realized that I had not yet checked my listings for Active Content, so I ran the scanner and realized it was going to be a huge problem for me. I started a new thread because I don't know how to recognize or fix the affected listings.

But I believe you're right -- that those listings with active content may have slipped in search. However, having said that, the ID that had the huge sales in April but have stopped cold only had one listing with active content.

cumos55 · ‎06-08-2017

Active Content..... Wrong discussion

jt-libra · ‎06-08-2017

@cumos55 wrote:

Active Content..... Wrong discussion

Yes, cumos, I know! I started a new thread earlier this evening on this topic. I had not intended to bring this up here but was simply responding to a post from hlmacdon.

pjcdn2005 · ‎06-09-2017

It was my understanding that ebay was going to take out the active content so why would that make a difference in search standings?

hlmacdon · ‎06-09-2017

@pjcdn2005 wrote:
It was my understanding that ebay was going to take out the active content so why would that make a difference in search standings?

Depending on your template provider, the removal of active content can significantly effect the quality of descriptions, which is something best match algo has factored in the past.

tyler@ebay · ‎06-09-2017

Howdy - just wanted to step in and clarify that having active content in your listing will not impact your standing with Best Match. Removing active content from listings will improve the description quality for mobile users, and also improve standing with external search engines, but having it in a description won't impact your placement within Best Match.

Tyler,

hlmacdon · ‎06-09-2017

tyler@ebay wrote:
Howdy - just wanted to step in and clarify that having active content in your listing will not impact your standing with Best Match. Removing active content from listings will improve the description quality for mobile users, and also improve standing with external search engines, but having it in a description won't impact your placement within Best Match.

Tyler, thanks for the clarification. One less mystery to solve.