Not a single sale to the US this month, only Canada and UK? Is US blocking Canadians?

[msmaggie060]

Something very strange is happening to my sales this month. I have not had a single sale to the US and normally the majority of my sales go to the USA. My sales have all been to  Canada and the UK. September was normal with 9 put of 10 sales going to US buyers. It's almost as if US buyers are not seeing my items. Seems to be happening on both my ID's. Anyone else noticed this?

Of course, what makes it worse, is that this month Canada Post added Small Pkt Air USA to our free shipping Tuesdays and I haven't been able to use it!

[joels-retrocade]

Sales are slow right now.  There's no way anything is getting blocked its just harder to compete with US sellers when you consider Import taxes and higher shipping costs.  I consistently sell stuff to the US; just shipped something last night lol.  

[byto253]

I have been listing new stuff and sales to the US have been good.  There have been spells like you are having though.

[mephistopheles93]

I have an ebay.com account and searched a unique item of yours and the listing displayed.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@msmaggie060 wrote:

Something very strange is happening to my sales this month. I have not had a single sale to the US and normally the majority of my sales go to the USA. My sales have all been to  Canada and the UK. September was normal with 9 put of 10 sales going to US buyers. It's almost as if US buyers are not seeing my items. Seems to be happening on both my ID's. Anyone else noticed this?

Of course, what makes it worse, is that this month Canada Post added Small Pkt Air USA to our free shipping Tuesdays and I haven't been able to use it!

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Prior to IS updates majority of my orders were to the USA followed by Canada and then Intl. During the time period I like to call the Item Specific Epidemic of 2021/22ish majority switched to Canada, rare 1 to USA and even more rare internationally. As of late it's back to majority of parcels are USA, Canada is letter sized and Intl are every so often out of the blue. 0 for 3 on the Tuesday thingamahooey. Orders do tend to now show up in dribs and drabs vs being a bit more consistent in the past. And if I don't create listings for a few days, new orders basically dry up. Prior to IS my listings were found 2 to 1 on ebay vs external. During IS it flip flopped to 3 to 2 in favour of external. Now suddenly it's back to 2 to 1 found on eBay 🍾 so sales are magically starting to pick up. 

From my testing, search no longers works the same on ca as it did in the past compared to dot com. Guessing the correct word combinations to choose have become extremely important.

-Lots

Disclaimer. Anything mentioned in this post is to be taken as my personal experience. Your results may vary. From 17 years of selling on eBay everything that you try as an improvement technique, works until it suddenly stops and then you need to try something else. 

[ricarmic]

I'm not noticing anything pronouncedly different from USA, Canada or International, however things are more sporadic regionally, and for certain the average sale price is lower than last year and things have been very slow/small since the price of gas jumped a while ago.

I'm running my "full bag of tricks" which I wasn't ever able to do during covid because if I got close I had so many sales I couldn't keep the "bag of tricks" going.

Now I'm running the full bag, and at best my sales volume is the same as pre-covid days, and I expect the sales value will be about 66% of the pre covid $$$ value (I don't have stats yet to back that up but that's how I feel). Nobody enjoys a 35% pay cut, but it is consistent with my pre covid days...

I've got my head down and am listing at full blast, I've still got about 1,000 lots that need pictured and listing, getting them running won't hurt.....

[msmaggie060]

@ricarmic @lotzofuniquegoodies 
Up until this month sales have been normal in that 90% were to the USA, the rest mainly to Canada. I do list every day and have my own "bag of tricks" to help promote sales. Just thought it was really odd not to have had a single US sale this month. Last one was on the 29th of Sept. Since then, only within Canada and one to the UK. Two more to Canada today, so far.

BTW, I'm noticing that my UK sales are starting up again!

[ricarmic]

I have to be careful that what I'm listing isn't being interpreted as who's buying.

If I happen to be listing a lot of US stamps, I'll naturally have higher US sales at that time, reverse is true for Canada.

I'm also starting to enter the season where Canadian snowbirds are heading south, so I'll have Canadians with US addresses now/soon buying until spring as well.

[teenytrinkets]

I can never figure out the weird sales trends on ebay. I'm convinced it's all about search results. I see stuff sell for more than i have it listed for (same country, same listing descriptions, inexperienced seller - multiple times!) and scratch my head! 

I think the answer is ebay wants you to pay to promote listings. More fees... ughhhh!

[reallynicestamps]

Sales are four to one to USA with a couple only overseas.

This is down as a percentage from about five years ago when 90% of my sales went to the USA and Canada and overseas were about five percent each.

The drop to overseas I think might be VAT being charged on arrival. We don't have the luxury of GSP import fees paying those in advance of shipping.

But the rise in Canadian sales was just that. No drop off at the time in actual number of US sales but a rise in Canadian sales from about five percent to nearly ten percent.

[msmaggie060]

Well, some US ebayers very nicely checked and said they could see my listings. However, I almost had a panic attack when I checked two listings using my iPad on the eBay app (eBay said they needed additional item specifics) and they said "please provide shipping for your item" in the shipping section!! I was signed on as if in the US not Canada at the time, so I'm not convinced there isn't still some kind of glitch happening on the ebay app. I did check both listings on my PC and they do have shipping to the US and Canada. Guess I'll wait a few days and see, maybe just a coincidence.

[msau4301]

For myself it has been the opposite the last couple of months! I've had more US buyers than Canadian which I thought was odd but I'll take anything I can get these days! I've been lucky and able to use free Tracked Packet US Tuesdays all three weeks.

[musicyouneed]

Me too, I have noticed sales to the US this month have dropped off.  Normally it is 50% US and 50% Canada.  So far this month 10 sales to Canada and 4 to the US.  Sales all around have been extremely slow.  

[dinomitesales]

As an additional data point:

Out of about 20 sales this month I'm at ~50% Canada, 30% US, 20% Int'l. Seems fairly normal for me.

[msmaggie060]

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@dinomitesales wrote:

As an additional data point:

Out of about 20 sales this month I'm at ~50% Canada, 30% US, 20% Int'l. Seems fairly normal for me.

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Do you list on .ca or .com?

[38e_avenue]

No block, just - for some reason - slow sales. I have the TRS blue PLUS badge, always on top of all searches - and yet almost no sales! Look at the graph: 

[38e_avenue]

One more graph. The red line is my "starvation line" 😅)

[dinomitesales]

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@msmaggie060 wrote:

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@dinomitesales wrote:

As an additional data point:

Out of about 20 sales this month I'm at ~50% Canada, 30% US, 20% Int'l. Seems fairly normal for me.

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Do you list on .ca or .com?

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.ca only.

[reallynicestamps]

I'm still using LetterMail for most of my shipping which allows me to take a chance on sending Flat Rate/Free Shipping on dotCOM.

While any listing that ships to the USA will show on dotCOM, I suspect that dotCA listings are lower in Search there.

[msmaggie060]

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@reallynicestamps wrote:

I'm still using LetterMail for most of my shipping which allows me to take a chance on sending Flat Rate/Free Shipping on dotCOM.

While any listing that ships to the USA will show on dotCOM, I suspect that dotCA listings are lower in Search there.

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I list on this ID on .COM only and have hundreds of listings so really don't understand the sudden lack of sales to only the US. Especially since it doesn't seem to be affecting others who sell similar items.