eBay

pinetreecottage · ‎06-09-2017

This is just a comment, not a question. Yesterday for just a few hours I had a flurry of activity, with a lot of views on all my listings. This is the odd thing, I have two alike vintage bags listed. Within 3 hours, one had 103 views 8 watchers and a bid. The other same bag has 12 views for the same listing duration. Late last night everything came to a screeching halt once more. It's like someone flipped a switch, and I went dark again.

I saw on another post others had similar experiences. As someone else said, it would be impossible to know if there were blackouts.

Since this has been going on for me since xmas, I thought YES, finally something changed and it's back to "normal", but I guess not.

I've had no more views on anything since midnight last night. Unless someone switches on again, I remain dark.

hlmacdon · ‎06-09-2017

A few things to think about as it relates to your traffic. The more engagement your listing gets with buyers (ie a clickthrough from search results your listing appears in, watchers, etc) the higher It ranks in best match, which yields more traffic on the listing, and invariably more sales. Anything that is a new listing also receives an artificial boost in best match until sufficient impressions/clickthrough/sales rates are generated, at which point the listing gets deranked. and your listings get less to little visibility.

The majority of my sales tend to cluster into given easter/pacific time periods, ie: morning, end of work day, and late evening. It certainly can feel unusual when I have no sales in a day then two within a 10 minute period and it leaves you wondering what is going on. If you are feeling like your listings are in a blackout, use a VPN to change your ip (the opera browser has a free VPN built in) and run some searches on your product to confirm visibility and ranking. Personally I have never found an occasion when my listings were not visible in search, albeit some of the stale ones were ranked pretty brutally.

pjcdn2005 · ‎06-09-2017

Those 2 listings are ending tomorrow so if someone searched for that type of bag using ending soonest, they would see your listings on the first page. I find that a lot of sales I receive are 1 or 2 days before the listing is ending.

it looks like you got the distance search fixed up. 🙂

pinetreecottage · ‎06-09-2017

Thanks yes. When I moved from Nova Scotia, I had to re-do my profile, so I must have screwed that up. As I've said before, I'm technically challenged lol. I just like to source my products and sell. That was a lot simpler when I started this 15 years ago. I've always just been selling on ebay for fun. What the previous poster talks about is WAY over my head, so I'll have to move on and keep doing what I'm doing. Since my listings are 5 - 7 days nothing gets "stale". In my professional life, I was a retail store manage for a large co. where it was all about selling and customer service. No technology interference to deal with. Display the goods, advertise and drive sales. But that was then, this is now.

Thanks for the support all. Cheers

hlmacdon · ‎06-09-2017

@pinetreecottage wrote:
. What the previous poster talks about is WAY over my head, so I'll have to move on and keep doing what I'm doing.

When buyers search for a given term they get a list of results or "impressions". If they click on and then visit your listing from those results, you get a clickthrough which is considered as engaging the buyer. The higher the rate of clickthrough the better as it means the keywords you put in your item title are relevant to what a buyer is searching for. The more specific your key words are in your listing description, the more likely an impression is going to convert into a clickthrough. Similarly if someone bids early on a listing or if you get multiple watchers, ebay considers that as engaging the buyer because it shows that how you setup your listing is relevant to the buyer's interest and is more likely to garner a sale. The EBay search algorithm that determines where you place in the best match search results looks at different factors like this that measure buyer engagement and combines it with other things like price, shipping cost, shipping options, seller performance, item specifics, etc and comes up with a score for your listing which is then used to determine your placement in best match search results. When sellers complain about "blackouts" the real culprit tends to be they rank poorly in best match results and as a result few buyers are even finding their listings because they are far enough down the page or pages that nobody is scrolling to see them.

The bag that generated an early bid and multiple watchers has a higher level of buyer engagement, and as a result it ranks higher in best match than your other bag. As a result the more popular bag is more likely to get views, watchers, and bids as buyers don't have to scroll as far down to find your item. If I search for vintage hippie bag, the more popular bag ranks #6 in the top 10 results for that term, whereas the less popular one ranks further down at #20. If I broaden the search to just vintage bag, the more popular bag appears on page 2 of the best match results, and the less popular one is on the bottom of page 3. Buyers in general don't scroll too far down past the first few results (if the search is narrow enough to their interest) and rarely switch from best match. As PJ notes, if an item is ending soon (the same would hold true if newly listed) it will get more views as buyers will usually look at the newest listings and what is ending soonest when they stray from best match.

In terms of how you setup your listings, you seem to have relevant item titles and you are making good use of the item specifics. You also have a good feedback record. These are helping your best match ranking. You don't offer returns. That is hurting your best match ranking. It looks like you are listing on .com and are use generic flat rate shipping options. This is also hurting your best match ranking as it inflates the ETA beyond what it actually is, and best match favors listings with shorter etas.

pinetreecottage · ‎06-09-2017

Thanks for taking the time. Looks like I'll have to make some changes. I'll wait for the listings to end, that's just a few days, then start over. Thanks again.

ypdc_dennis · ‎06-09-2017

I know eBay does send out tailored emails making suggestions of things an eBay buyer might be interested in. That can create a small burst of interest if an item of yours shows on one of those targeted emails.

-,,-

rose-dee · ‎06-10-2017

@hlmacdon wrote:
It looks like you are listing on .com and are use generic flat rate shipping options. This is also hurting your best match ranking as it inflates the ETA beyond what it actually is, and best match favors listings with shorter etas.

You gave a very concise and cogent summary. The above part caught my particular attention. It reflects a classic Catch-22 for Canadian sellers listing on .com.

Case in point: historically I've sold over 90% to U.S. buyers. When I listed in $USD on eBay.ca and set Canada Post rates, delivery estimates were (mostly) reasonably accurate. I'm now listing mainly on .com (in $USD of course), to appeal to my U.S. customers.

However, with eBay's on-time delivery policy, and with few options on the .com site to accurately reflect delivery times, what we sellers choose to protect ourselves from one problem is creating another (not only affecting best match, as you point out, but possibly also risking turning buyers away when they see the long ETAs).

You are right: this is something for Canadian sellers to consider if they choose to list on .com. Does the benefit of listing in $USD to appeal to American buyers outweigh -- for the most part -- the disadvantage of being downgraded in best match due to long ETAs? I would think that other parameters that affected the equation (e.g. seller's own status, listing qualities, number of watchers, etc.) might even multiply that effect.

The vagaries of Best Match aside, I have worried about the effect seeing an 11-23 ETA has on my prospective buyers. Many will probably not notice I'm in Canada at all. Yes, it protects me from delivery defects, but when my U.S. competitors can display 3 to 5 day delivery windows, it's a challenge. I still haven't decided what (if anything) I can do about it, short of moving lock, stock and barrel back to .ca, which has its own downsides for those of us who depend on U.S. buyers.

rose-dee · ‎06-10-2017

@ypdc_dennis wrote:

I know eBay does send out tailored emails making suggestions of things an eBay buyer might be interested in. That can create a small burst of interest if an item of yours shows on one of those targeted emails.

That's true, but these tend to be less and less the kind of items the traditional "boutique" seller like the OP offers for sale, mainly because there is less of that type of product now available, and fewer buyers looking.

EBay has done a pretty good job of driving away legions of its "traditional" sellers, for one policy reason or another, and with them no doubt a vast number of buyers. I recognize many of these sellers on other venues. EBay either didn't care to hold onto that market while it dominated the online presence and had the opportunity, or it simply didn't consider it.

It would have been smart for eBay to have split itself into two streams long ago -- new, commercial, mass-produced items, and vintage, OOAK types, with names to suit each stream. Another site I know has done just this. As it is, other companies grabbed onto that share of the market and ran away with it for good.

In my view, it's doubtful eBay would ever recapture that seller base now, even if they wanted to -- once vintage and boutique sellers leave eBay, they're unlikely to ever return, for a variety of reasons. So, with them go a whole lot of buyers to places they know will offer items of interest to them. It's no wonder those of us who are still left here are struggling to keep our sales levels steady.

hlmacdon · ‎06-10-2017

@rose-dee wrote:

You are right: this is something for Canadian sellers to consider if they choose to list on .com. Does the benefit of listing in $USD to appeal to American buyers outweigh -- for the most part -- the disadvantage of being downgraded in best match due to long ETAs? I would think that other parameters that affected the equation (e.g. seller's own status, listing qualities, number of watchers, etc.) might even multiply that effect.

The vagaries of Best Match aside, I have worried about the effect seeing an 11-23 ETA has on my prospective buyers. Many will probably not notice I'm in Canada at all. Yes, it protects me from delivery defects, but when my U.S. competitors can display 3 to 5 day delivery windows, it's a challenge. I still haven't decided what (if anything) I can do about it, short of moving lock, stock and barrel back to .ca, which has its own downsides for those of us who depend on U.S. buyers.

That has been the key area I have struggled with, trying to balance etas, potential defects, currencies, and target markets. I started off with selling in USD on .ca as my customer base, but as I transitioned to shipping via USPS I had to utilize flat rate shipping which meant not having dialed in ETAs for international or US customers. With the forced currency switch I transitioned over to .com as the majority of sales were US and International and having a stable selling price was important. Unfortunately this has meant giving up temporarily on Canadian sales as I don't have the margins to average out flat rate shipping for Canada as everything goes parcel post. The upside of this has been my US sales have grown strongly as I rank better in best match now and I routinely get net new US buyers which was less frequent when on listing on .ca. In particular dialing in the etas has been key to make it clear to US buyers I can get them product much quicker than sellers from Asia. I'm somewhat fortunate that I have multiple shipping options, but I can still only pull live rates from one or the other so the root problem remains the same.

pjcdn2005 · ‎06-10-2017

The vagaries of Best Match aside, I have worried about the effect seeing an 11-23 ETA has on my prospective buyers. Many will probably not notice I'm in Canada at all. Yes, it protects me from delivery defects, but when my U.S. competitors can display 3 to 5 day delivery windows, it's a challenge. I still haven't decided what (if anything) I can do about it, short of moving lock, stock and barrel back to .ca, which has its own downsides for those of us who depend on U.S. buyers.

Why not just change back to standard? 6-12 business days looks better than 11-23 and is realistic the majority of time. If it causes you problems, you can change back but at this point you don't know if it will cause problems or not.

rose-dee · ‎06-12-2017

@pjcdn2005 wrote:
Why not just change back to standard? 6-12 business days looks better than 11-23 and is realistic the majority of time. If it causes you problems, you can change back but at this point you don't know if it will cause problems or not.

People tend to forget that their particular situations don't necessarily apply to others.

I live in a semi-rural area of southwest Nova Scotia. I know that at the very best of times, even if I drop a parcel off the same day at my local Post Office (which isn't always possible) it takes 3 days to get anything sent via Light/Small Packet out of the province, another 1 to get through the sorting centre in Montréal, and another 1 to 2 to get out of Canada. That's 5 to 6. With 6 to 12 business days, I've used up half my allotment before I even have to start the USPS count.

If there is a 1-day delay at my end in getting an item to the P.O., or a sale happens after the 2:30 daily P.O. pick-up, plus weather issues (we get some doozies here), plus any sort of backlog due to volume, plus any delay through Customs at the U.S. border, add another 3 days. You'd be surprised how often this happens. Now I have 3 days left for USPS to deliver my item. And I get a lot of U.S. west coast buyers. Whoops, late.

The irony is that my buyers are mostly really nice, honest people. If they leave FB, they're going to answer the on-time delivery question frankly, not realizing the fallout for me as their seller.

So, no, I've considered the risks of using a shorter ETA, and I actually do know it will be likely to cause problems. Maybe not every time, but the odds aren't good in my favour. Even eBay's delivery estimates on .ca for Canada Post services are less than generous. So moving back to .ca doesn't fully resolve that issue, yet creates other concerns if a seller relies on U.S. sales.

As I said, I still haven't decided what to do about eBay. The answer may be that it's just not reasonable to continue selling on eBay anymore. I have no issues whatsoever in this regard on other venues, but eBay's current policies make it a completely different proposition here. This year will be a test for my viability on this site.

Of course, anyone living near the U.S. border or in a town or city near a major hub, or with access to USPS will have an easier time dealing with eBay's delivery rules. If you do, you're fortunate.

rose-dee · ‎06-12-2017

@hlmacdon wrote:
That has been the key area I have struggled with, trying to balance etas, potential defects, currencies, and target markets. I started off with selling in USD on .ca as my customer base, but as I transitioned to shipping via USPS I had to utilize flat rate shipping which meant not having dialed in ETAs for international or US customers.
[...] In particular dialing in the etas has been key to make it clear to US buyers I can get them product much quicker than sellers from Asia. I'm somewhat fortunate that I have multiple shipping options, but I can still only pull live rates from one or the other so the root problem remains the same.

I may not be clearly understanding what you're saying, but do you mean you're able to use USPS services (are you close to the border?), and select your own ETAs on listings?

Even if I had access to USPS services (which I don't), I'd be concerned about the very short ETAs that would be attached to U.S. domestic deliveries. I've been seeing timelines like 3 days within the continental USA. Few Canadian sellers can match that speed, shipping with Canada Post across the border.

The problem, as I see it from my perspective, is that I'd like to look like a U.S. seller on eBay, with stable prices and nothing "foreign-looking" to put my buyers off, yet still have them understand delivery may take a bit longer because they're buying from a different country. Another Catch-22. Sadly, that was perfectly possible and worked beautifully when eBay permitted $USD on .ca, and before the on-time delivery defect system. Oh, the good old days.

pjcdn2005 · ‎06-12-2017

No. I haven't forgotten your situation as you have mentioned it in the past. We each have our own challenges, yours are no more difficult or easier than mine, we just choose to look at them differently.

With that being said, I do think that the eta for standard and economy shipping from outside of the US could use some tweeks to make them more realistic.

dutchman48 · ‎06-12-2017

I have had 5 late shipping defects (which is really late delivery) for light packet from Canada to the US so it matters not what you do except live with it.

One even got held up in customs according to the buyer who still answered no to the question for 2 defects and CS said too bad, not removable.

Personally, I think it will only get worse over time.

hlmacdon · ‎06-12-2017

@rose-dee wrote:
I may not be clearly understanding what you're saying, but do you mean you're able to use USPS services (are you close to the border?), and select your own ETAs on listings?

Even if I had access to USPS services (which I don't), I'd be concerned about the very short ETAs that would be attached to U.S. domestic deliveries. I've been seeing timelines like 3 days within the continental USA. Few Canadian sellers can match that speed, shipping with Canada Post across the border.

The problem, as I see it from my perspective, is that I'd like to look like a U.S. seller on eBay, with stable prices and nothing "foreign-looking" to put my buyers off, yet still have them understand delivery may take a bit longer because they're buying from a different country. Another Catch-22. Sadly, that was perfectly possible and worked beautifully when eBay permitted $USD on .ca, and before the on-time delivery defect system. Oh, the good old days.

I am located near the border and ship regularly through USPS. The plus side is between being able to use the item location to generate regional specific rates via the shipping calculator (similar problem we face in Canada with CP) and being able to choose the appropriate USPS shipping class with flat rate options all I have do is factor in my handling time and US buyers get accurate ETAs as well as stable pricing. Everything with USPS has tracking so as long as I ship within my stated handling times there is no need to worry about defects. The negative side is the lack of calculated shipping for Canada. In hindsight I should have moved from .ca to .com sooner (dragged my heels until the currency switch forced this) as the benefits have far outweighed the inconvenience of moving all the listings over.

rose-dee · ‎06-13-2017

@hlmacdon wrote:

I am located near the border and ship regularly through USPS. The plus side is between being able to use the item location to generate regional specific rates via the shipping calculator (similar problem we face in Canada with CP) and being able to choose the appropriate USPS shipping class with flat rate options all I have do is factor in my handling time and US buyers get accurate ETAs as well as stable pricing. Everything with USPS has tracking so as long as I ship within my stated handling times there is no need to worry about defects.

Yes, that makes sense, and you're fortunate that you're close enough to the border to be able to use USPS.

I listed on .ca for quite a few years, always in $USD, but moved most of my listings over to .com a few months before the retirement of $USD on .ca. The shipping/on-time delivery policy is my biggest concern at the moment. As I said, there's really no completely satisfactory option for my situation.

I've been not only "subsidizing" my buyer's non-tracked shipping rates, and offering free shipping selectively, but also using tracked shipping strategically where I believe late delivery could be a problem (with the upgrade coming out of my own pocket). With rising CP rates, and lower sales volumes generally, I know that can't go on indefinitely. I expect a lot of Canadians selling from semi-remote or rural areas will be forced to drop off eBay for the same reasons.

The seriousness or risk associated with the choice of ETAs on .com is very much connected with sales volume -- the lower the volume, the fewer defects a seller can afford to accumulate. So you choose an option with a lower ETA, hoping for a boost in sales, then end up with defects that lower your seller status (and your sales). Catch-22 again.

I'm sure this system works well for mid- to large-size U.S. sellers though.