Is Managed Payments Responsible for No Sales?

[2nd-time-around-jewelry]

I have had consistant sales since March of this year 2020. But after I was switched over to Managed Payments at the beginning of this month November, things have drastically changed. Since then I have had large gaps of no sales. Had 5 days with no sales, then a few days with sales. Now I have gone over a week with not one sale.

I have well over 1000 items listed. I regularly list some new items almost each day. I use promoted listings (1%) on my higher priced items & accept offers. I used to have lots of watchers to send offers to daily. That has dwindled too. I am slowly adding item specifics to some of my listings, even though these are just recommended & not manditory. This also should be the time of year that people do a lot of buying with Black Friday.

Has anyone else seen a big drop in sales since switching to Managed Payments? I have heard other people from the US & UK complain about it too.

[mrdutch1001]

Not in MP, but hardly could see that sales would be affected by MP, since buyers still pay the same ways as always; in fact buyers have more options for paying.

but no matter, over my many years of selling on line, have seen sellers blame anything & everything for slow/decline/lack of sales. If there is something to blame it on, sellers will., no matter how illogical it may be...

Online selling is about the product, its uniqueness, quality, supply & demand, price points, target market, etc...

Trends change, buying habits change, 2020- Covid may have affected some of that...

buyers are not necessarily buying "wants", maybe more of "needs"; buyers may be focusing on other things in life besides purchasing non-essential items...

 eBay is not the go-to-place for buying anymore...eBay fell out of favor a long time ago...

and at this time of year, eBay won't have a hope in H--L, compared to the other site!

[2nd-time-around-jewelry]

Everything you say is true but it seems very coincidental that my sales should suddenly drop off only this month after having great sales since March. I think the transistion to Managed Payments is not going as smooth as eBay expected & it is affecting other things. But that is only my opinion.

[femmefan1946]

I've been avoiding MP since August, but my sales under all my IDs have dropped since June.

On the other hand, March to June was crazy busy. I guess all those isolated, work from home, quarantined  people were turning to online shopping particularly for collectibles.

Then mid-June /early July that stopped dead for a week or so, and then returned to 'summer normal' which is to say, slow.

But that is the normal sales cycle for me.

November /December is normally so slow that I don't even list-- I've closed the Store some years.

Boxing Day to May is my busy season.

Since customers can't see which sellers are in MP, I can't see any reason why that would change Views or Purchases.

And it would be incredibly stupid for eBay to 'throttle' sellers who are in MP since they pay more to eBay in fees than those of us who are still with Paypal.

I've noticed Ruby Lane has been doing a lot of promoting of discounts recently. They specialize in your categories, so their sellers  may be having low sales too.

Are you listing on several venues? Are the others also slow?

[ricarmic]

I would say my sales for the last couple weeks are running about half of what they were in the weeks before, more like my sales volumes before COVID which caused my sales volumes to almost double.

I have very very slow days, then bursts (which are often repeat customers so the would have happened "anyway").

I recall that around the US "black friday" season it has been traditionally weak for me (remember I'm in the stamps world).

I'm with MrD I cannot imagine MP is causing it, I would be more inclined to think the specter of the US election and COVID wave 2 has diverted folks attention away from "non essential" stuff like what I sell - do I buy some stamps or 40 more rolls of toilet paper? 

[kawartha-ephemera]

Have you compared your November traffic post activation to prior periods? I would think if MP is somehow responsible you'd see lower impressions and views. If PL impressions have fallen off maybe the competition as a group have increased the rate they're willing to pay.

[ricarmic]

As a note, I watch my views clicks etc for my promoted listings (I have almost 3,000 promoted items).

The impressions and clicks have been HIGHER in the last bit, however the sales are slower. This tells me more people are "browsing" lately, which perhaps supports my earlier comments that people are being more cautious around actually spending?

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

@2nd-time-around-jewelry 

One other little something that "may" be affecting sales could be the 983 Kazillion freebie listings that have been offered to many sellers. Makes the haystack much larger to look through when searching for this's and that's. I refuse to try to think about eBay search engine logarithms. Doing so just gives my headache a headache.

-Lotz

[kawartha-ephemera]

Impressions today are abnormally high, the organic number is normal but there's a really big increase in the PL number. As you mentioned, I'm not seeing a corresponding increase in views either.
According to the 3 month chart, my impressions yesterday and today are roughly 20% above previous peak days even ... I don't know why. I've made no PL changes lately. Surely Americans are not getting an early jump on holiday shopping by browsing Canadian themed postcards? Made no sales today, the weekend was about average.

Edited to add that ebay.com PL impressions show no spike today or over the weekend. Those are mostly USA themed subjects too, go figure.  

[femmefan1946]

Maybe this year Americans won't be travelling to meet relations all this week and next.

Or if they do.... we'll see it in infection rates two weeks down the road, just in time for Christmas.

With the news a few minutes ago that Biden will be "allowed" to get his transition briefings, perhaps the US can get a sigh of relief and feel more confident in their future.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

---

@kawartha-ephemera wrote:

Have you compared your November traffic post activation to prior periods? I would think if MP is somehow responsible you'd see lower impressions and views. If PL impressions have fallen off maybe the competition as a group have increased the rate they're willing to pay.

---

Is this what you mean by impressions?

Total sales that day? 1. Had to find my stamps to post.  😉 You just can't make this stuff up!!!

-Lotz

[kawartha-ephemera]

That's bizarre! What would cause a I day jump like that ... double key tap set rate to 11 instead of 1% or maybe it was bogus data?

A couple months back my .ca impressions behaved like that only they continued high for at least a week before gradually correcting. The really strange bit was that the sky high data recorded a week previous was corrected retroactively.

[ricarmic]

It is possible that it (or a burst) is accurate. At one time a couple years ago I had similar jumps and I happened to notice they coincided with large advertisement bursts eBay was sending through a philatelic organization that happened to have my stuff showing as well as others.

I don't know what stuff they do these days but it is possible something similar happened, although in my case sales also increased so the glitch theory is likely more accurate....

[2nd-time-around-jewelry]

Just an update. It has now been 10 days & counting without a sale. Don't think this has ever happened to me before.  Not sure what is causing it. Only thing I can figure out is that I am being penalized for not adding item specifics to all my listings. Most of them don't apply to vintage jewelry anyways. My titles pretty much contain every item specific you need. Anyways, hopefully the lights come back on soon.

[ricarmic]

I have the same problem regarding item specifics because the bulk of items I sell are bulk lots, which means things like "Certifcation" and "Grade" are not applicable and/or aren't actually possible.

However luckily I'm allowed to pick "uncertified" and "ungraded" which is what I pick to keep the relistings/sell similar's happy.....

[ricarmic]

As a note, some of your stuff might be hard to find using searches,  I tried finding this lot:

20 Pc. Vintage Rhinestone Jewelry Lot For Repair Or Parts - Many Designer Signed 

The only way I could bring it up was to search "20 vintage rhinestone jewelry".

If I tried "vintage rhinestone jewelry" it did not come up anywhere near the top, which is unfortunate because nobody is going to search "20 vintage rhinestone jewelry".

I suggest you move the most important words to the front (always make the first 5 the most important, likely to be searched words)..... for this specific example I would change the title to:

Vintage Rhinestone Jewelry lot for repair or parts, 20 pc Many designer signed.

[2nd-time-around-jewelry]

You may be right. I guess a lot of the newer generation shop on their smart phones or other mobile devices. I never have . My cell phone is only used to text friends. I use my laptop or computer to do everything else. I guess I am old school.

[ricarmic]

Ok, but I'm old school too and I was trying to find your item from my computer..... "Vintage Rhinestone Jewelry" brings back 67,584 results, "vintage rhinestone jewelry lot brings back 1,745 - it comes back first for me now because it knows I looked at it earlier and I've got best match on

[femmefan1946]

It would be interesting to know what percentage of browsing customers ever change from the default Best Match.

I would guess that the second choice would be Lowest Price, perhaps followed by Lowest Price plus Shipping.

Then About to Close with a side order of Auctions- these being more serious and sophisticated buyers.

Have there ever been statistics released about this?  I can understand that it might be proprietary information and kept private.

[travis7s]

I switched to MP months ago and did not have any noticeable sales drop. My sales did take a significant drop since the beginning of November though too, not to the levels you are seeing though. All I can suggest is to keep listing new things, or at least end some old items and relist them via 'sell similar'. Listing frequently is the only thing that really seems to work.