Today is 1 week with NO sales… How are you doing there?

[horologysuisse]

Hello,

Today is 1 week with no sales, I want to know how are you doing there? Only me? Or sales are down?

[worrly]

Not good. Not even many hits. I had a good streak for awhile. 

[nan*55]

Very slow so far in April!

[dvc1967]

Very Slow and not to many hits.

[westernstargifts]

March was good, April is extremely slow so far.

[ricarmic]

My categories (Stamps) changed very much on the April 9th, many changes and many new categories and eBay Automagically moved items from existing categories to the new ones as best they could..... it looks like folks are adapting or are re-figuring it out as my sales almost stopped since the categories changed....or mine moved to bad/less viewed places..... probably lots of folks with bookmarked queries etc aren't working?

Prior to that early April was ok.

This normally is a good time of year for me at least in my categories..... time will tell, every year is a new adventure!

[horologysuisse]

Yes, March was good actually since December was good… But now stopped… 

[frances74915]

Same as me.  March is good, but very low hits on April.  I assume people are going out to enjoy spring weather...

Hope sales can getting better soon.

[cumos55]

OP has 8 listings...

Expensive watches....

and if that is all OP lists,  the market has been filled..... New buyers will come but that will take time.

I list at prices ranging from about $15  to $400, and sometimes higher....

The lower priced items sell on a regular basis and pay the bills....  

In order for higher priced items to sell buyers have to find them,  think about buying and then... perhaps ... buy.

It is the higher priced items that make the profit.....

Even with 3500 listings  one gets days with no sales...

The longest period with no sales.... 4 consecutive days.

Most unusual series of days with no sales  was... no sales on Monday and Tuesday... one sale of about $18 on Wednesday... and then no sales on Thursday and Friday.

However, in both years,   sales were the same over 12 months...

[treasure.hunter.d]

I am very slow as well and that caused me to do some investigation.

Do some keyword searches for your items and I am sure you will find the same thing that I did. Where my items used to show up on the first or second page after a detailed keyword search now those same items are buried behind, in some cases, thousands of loosely related search results.

Something has changed! I called Ebay and have spent hours on the phone culminating with a call back from a gentleman.  I just completed that call a few minutes ago.

To make a long story short, if you are a small seller forget about people seeing your items easily. I was told, if you can believe how ridiculous this is, that keywords are no longer weighted as the most important thing for searches. I was told that according to Ebay data they know better what people are looking for than the people themselves and so your keywords in your title and listing aren't returning the same results they used to when people make searches. I couldn't get the guy that called me back to admit to anything else being changed but the bottom line is that small sellers are pretty much officially screwed now. There is no way to improve your results in searches except for the bologna they have been pushing for ages about including shipping in the price (has never worked for me ever) and offering a no questions asked return policy. I'm sure that even if you implemented both of those the results would not be spectacular anyway.

the day of the small seller on Ebay is over! All hail the garbage Chinese resellers that flagrantly violate policies and run rampant over rules without anything being done about it. Ebay generates so much money from them that is all they care about now, large resellers.

We, the small sellers are done I am sorry to say.

[valuestore]

My personal theory, April 1st Cassini started Individual grading of fixed listings based on defect rate.

[rose-dee]

---

@treasure.hunter.d wrote:

Do some keyword searches for your items and I am sure you will find the same thing that I did. Where my items used to show up on the first or second page after a detailed keyword search now those same items are buried behind, in some cases, thousands of loosely related search results.

Something has changed! I called Ebay and have spent hours on the phone culminating with a call back from a gentleman.  I just completed that call a few minutes ago.

To make a long story short, if you are a small seller forget about people seeing your items easily. I was told, if you can believe how ridiculous this is, that keywords are no longer weighted as the most important thing for searches. I was told that according to Ebay data they know better what people are looking for than the people themselves and so your keywords in your title and listing aren't returning the same results they used to when people make searches.

---

I tried the same thing and got similar results.  Even though I was logged onto eBay.ca, I had to go through eight (yes, 😎 pages of United States seller listings to get to the first of my items.  And many of those US sellers do not have the TRS/TRS+ rating I have.  Many, many without TRS had items listed before mine. 

This means a Canadian buyer logged onto .ca will not find my items unless they specifically check the box "Canada only".  No wonder I've had no Canadian sales for weeks.   

I don't think it has anything to do with Cassini and the new defect rates, as suggested by 'valuestore'  -- I have 0 defects at the moment, so that doesn't explain the very poor placement.  Two months ago, my listings were amongst the first 2 or 3 pages on .ca.  I think your eBay CS person was probably telling you the truth. 

[rose-dee]

OK, now I'm really intrigued.  I just did the same search, filtered for "Canada only", and in that category there were two sellers with listings above mine in the search who were fairly new, neither had TRS, one in fact had no DSR ratings at all, and neither one had better prices or terms.  One had only a single photo and limited description.  The other seller had only 2 FB (yes, 2) and a rather poor overall listing. 

What the heck is that all about?  I can't see anything that would justify putting these listings further ahead.  It seems that years of effort and "playing by the rules" means very little after all.

[art-in-the-making]

Also having a slower April after not-so-bad jan-mar.

There are always so many factors in play. I think in our case it's explainable without considering eBay search changes - but the number of people here with a similar pattern maybe suggests something.

[valuestore]

A category with say 22,000 keywords 'apple' , its not really that surprising that keywords arent the top player in search results.

[treasure.hunter.d]

---

@valuestore wrote:

A category with say 22,000 keywords 'apple' , its not really that surprising that keywords arent the top player in search results.

---

Yes but add 3 or 4 more keywords to your search and that should whittle things down substantially and it is not!

[worrly]

I'm choosing with lowest price shipping, I don't know enough of a pattern to know how this is affecting the search. What are you choosing for setting, best match?

[reallynicestamps]

Best Match is the default and I suspect most buyers don't realize there are others. Thus it is the logical Search to use.

Personally I prefer Highest Price plus Shipping in some Searches and Lowest Price in others.

[worrly]

Racked with intermittent insomnia, but woke up to a sale to Australia. For some reason, Ebay would not give a shipping price. He had to ask for invoice. Second time that happened with International. Just hope he's not scared once he sees the shipping charge.

[treasure.hunter.d]

---

@worrly wrote:

Racked with intermittent insomnia, but woke up to a sale to Australia. For some reason, Ebay would not give a shipping price. He had to ask for invoice. Second time that happened with International. Just hope he's not scared once he sees the shipping charge.

---

Ouch....From personal experience I don't know how your customer is going to be anything but scared to death when they see the shipping charges. To Australia via Canada Post there are 2 choices. pay through the nose a hugely exorbitant shipping price or send via a method with no tracking that will take literally months to get there.

I don't even bother with trying to ship there any longer after all the bad experiences I have had unless someone messages me, fully aware of the huge costs because they just have to have one of the rare pieces of glass or pottery I get in stock on occasion.

Best of luck seriously but I can't see this ending well!.