Thank you eBay.

[westernstargifts]

I have 177 pairs of copper earrings listed under that term. I am a TRS. On .com I found one pair on page 9 and had to go to page 18 of search results to find more of my listings.

Thank you eBay. You really reward your top rated sellers well.

[pjcdn2005]

I was curious to see if I would get the same results and I didn't notice any of your listings on the first 4 pages. The first 2 pages did have your adcommerce ad in first place.

[jakeeangel]

Everything is relative. Page 9 and 18 out of how many pages? 20? 100? 3500?

[recped]

17,000 listings for "copper earrings" and the first page is dominated by lower priced items than what the OP is selling.

[dipmicro]

It's not eBay, it's Hong-Kong and China.

"copper earrings" yields 6255 listings (= 250 pages or 25 items / page), 1509 auctions, approx 1.5hr on the first page. Looking at first seller, the person from USA has 8767 live listings, all auctions (auctions do not follow Best Match, but they are always shown in Ending-First even when Best Match is selected) evenly spread in 7 days - one auction ends approx. every minute and few seconds.

This is some heavy duty marketing, this person pays $2600 a week in listing fees only. This person is also seriously flooding - "BLUE TOPAZ .925 SILVER RING" search titles only gains 137 items in her store. You cannot miss this person.

WesternStarGifts - 982 listings, 61x 7-day auction. if you want to always be on the first page of "copper ring" search, you need 16 auctions with words "copper ring" ending every day spaced evenly in time.

You are in extremely competitive niche and unfortunately some sellers are flooding the keywords. It works for them, you should start doing the same of struggle.

[westernstargifts]

dipmicro...Thanks for the analysis. I appreciate your taking the time. Normally I do list auctions for "earrings" but too many have gone unsold lately. At the end of your post you switched to copper "rings". I do have lots of auctions for them and very good placement on both .com and .ca. As for the heavy duty marketing, it's probably a diamond seller who sells cheap imported jewelry. I get the rings for a very good price but not the rest of my products. I can't list them for those prices.

I agree that the problem is Hong Kong & China listings flooding the market. My beef with them is the fact that most of them are, in fact, NOT copper earrings but that is beside the point. (Some of them, if you really stretched your imagination, might have a copper colour in them).

When I did the search last night there were other sellers, not top rated, who had FP listings show up before mine. Some had great DSR's but mine aren't that bad either. I realize that auctions ending soonest are listed first but there were lots of FP in the first 17 pages too. When I did the same search on .ca I had lots of listings on the first pages.

recped & jakeeangel...I broke the listings down to the sub-categories "Fashion Jewelry" and "Earrings" which tonight yielded a result of 2152 listings on 43 pages.

pjcdn2005...Yes, my ad does show up on quite a few pages. I have so many different designs and styles, though, that 1 pair of earrings can't really represent the range of my products.

I'm just frustrated with Best Match and all of the rest of the garbage eBay has thrown at us lately. Sales dropped dramatically this month in spite of lots of auctions earlier in the month. I'm certainly not the only one who has seen a drop this month. There were plenty of posts on Auctionbytes the other day from disillusioned sellers.

Thanks for all of the posts. I would be interested to know how other sellers on this board have found sales to be this month.

[threebears63]

Hi westernstar,

I agree, sales have slowed since store listings moved to core. Which is unfortunate since it cost more to have them there. I don't like best match either. I have tried to make the best use of it, but it doesn't really seem to function like e-bay says it does.

I know that when I am searching for items to buy, I type a search in the box, and often the items that I feel best match what I am looking for show up on page 3 or 4 not page 1. It is frustrating to say the least.

It must be very difficult for you in the jewellery market since it does seem to be flooded with imports of poorer quality. I popped over to have a look at you items, they are absolutely beautiful! I love copper jewellery! I'll have to come shopping soon.

But, as it has been pointed out on other boards the total of items for sale on e-bay has gone through the roof over the last couple of years, and unfortunately the amount of buyers has not increased proportionally.

Best of luck with your sales! Heather

[westernstargifts]

Thank you Heather. The best of luck to you too. I guess we just have to keep plugging away.

Best Match algorithms seem to change weekly, or daily, anyway so....page 18 today, page 1 tomorrow.?:|

[fubydoo]

I would be interested to know how other sellers on this board have found sales to be this month.

I am just a little guy (a lot of big numbers here) but for what it is worth my sales have remained constant in numbers. What IS different is they are now coming in clumps. I won't have a sale for several days and then I can get 3 or 4 in one day.

I understand what you mean about Best Match on .com though. A lot of my listings hit page one near the top on .ca but I am buried on page 10 or more on .com and several pages are not TRS sellers. But somehow I still seem to get sales from the US so I am not really complaining.

[westernstargifts]

I still consider myself a "little guy" fubydoo.

I have found the same thing with sales clumped together. I have read the same thing on the U.S. board. This is the reason many of them think there are rolling blackouts. It is kind of strange that it is happening to so many but that is sometimes the way sales go in any retail venue.

The majority of our sales are to the U.S. so it really bugs me when sellers that are not TRS get better placement. Buyers still do manage to find us because sometimes their search terms are more specific. Not everyone uses the same search methods.

[godboma]

Thanks for all of the posts. I would be interested to know how other sellers on this board have found sales to be this month.

I have the same kind of problem as you have. My sells of dice went down (a lot) in April. What I found was just like you, my FP items were listed on page 8 (50 items per page). I am a TRS and have very good DSRs. My dice products were not in store listing before April. They were 30 FP on .com.

So most of my customers are (were) American and it is these sells that went down the drain in April. What I started to do is 7 days FP with 1 item per listing instead of multiples. I also try to list some about every days. My sells started to pickup since then from US customers (I've been doing it for 3 weeks now). They are not where they were in March but at least they stopped going down.

[femmefan1946]

I guess I am a little special since most bookbuyers don't search by Best Match as such.

They search by author and by title.

Since most of my titles are vintage, most Searches, even < spit>Best Match < /spit> will pull up my titles, if the searcher allows for Canadian locations.

I love Stores being back in Core! So far, I have dropped almost all my auctions except on a few new ephemera items to gauge interest. With a Premium Store, my costs have risen < spit> , but my sales are up about one third since April first.

I also seem to be getting more European buyers than I used to, and fewer British, but I would have to look at the spreadsheet (okay, excercise book) to check that out.

[westernstargifts]

I didn't have any store listings. Mine were all in core. I began listing more FP with fewer items in them as you did, Godboma. Actually, I started doing that as soon as they gave us the 20 cent listing special before the new prices took effect.

I also seem to be getting more European buyers than I used to, and fewer British, but I would have to look at the spreadsheet (okay, excercise book) to check that out.

That would be about my speed Femmefan...the excercise book, i.e.....lol.

I get quite a few European sales which also go in streaks. Quite often there will be a few from the same country around the same time.

You do have an advantage there with vintage books as buyers will search for specific items. That is exactly the way I shopped for a first edition of Gone With The Wind awhile ago when I bought one for my daughter for Christmas.