Regarding listings seem invisible

[pinetreecottage]

Just looked at some posts from 2014, regarding listings seem invisible.  It was suggested to try searching without signing in, to see where the listings are placed.  The only way they were shown, was if I sorted to look for items within closest distance to my location.  The old posts talked about Canadian sellers, regardless of sales volume and performance was many pages into the category.  There doesn't seem to be any changes from then, so how does anyone get to the front pages?

I currently have 7 listings with buy it now, best offer, most with  free shipping.  They have 1 - 5 views after several days.

I know, I've been whining about this for a while now, but I'm thinking, I can't be the only one.  If anyone has any fresh ideas, I'd love to hear them.  Cheers.

[ricarmic]

I looked at the fur hat.

That item is competing in a category with 291, 293 other items.

The front pages (as they always will) are overwhelmed with the multi item listings of other sellers. Ebay has/is always going to favour multi item listings with lots of sales against someone selling one item.

Ebay is also going to favour sellers with higher item counts, sale volumes etc. 

You aren't doing anything wrong, you're just competing against an awful lot of other sellers, and enough of them are doing things that eBay favours ahead of you that your items will be harder to find.

[pinetreecottage]

Thanks, I was just wondering how I was able to sell so successfully in the past.  Listings would have multiple visits and sales right off the hop.  It now seems impossible to  sell at all, if nobody is even looking.  Maybe this is no longer a viable marketplace for small sellers with used, vintage and collectible items, since the categories and searches are not specific enough to unique items.   

I tried a few searches just to see what came up.  Some show a completely different result from what I looked for.  

Well, so long as the Chinese market can flog the junk here, that's good for ebay, so long as buyers choose to order from China,

instead of going to Walmart or the $ store, wait for months to get their order, if it arrives at all.  (Just referring to the many posts about this).

End of rant.  Cheers.

[ricarmic]

If it's any consolation, I'm running over 3,000 items and generally my stuff is only getting a few views early on. My sell rate is about 5% each month (I sell in the postage stamps categories).

Virtually everywhere has lots more sellers and stuff than in the good old days.

I'm playing the long game, everything is BIN, some stuff has been running for over 8 years before it has sold.

I do think that if you have stuff that nobody else has, that is good, but one has to count on people finding it via specific searches.... not by being put in front of everyone..... very very few people enjoy that anymore....or so it seems to me....

[pinetreecottage]

Thanks for the support.  I'll just hang in there and keep plugging.  Maybe I'll get lucky and searchers will stumble over my listings by chance.  

[amcdc79]

The days of just simply browsing ebay are imho gone. The number of repeats after only a few pages, makes it very hard, and not worth your time.

In order to find what I'm looking for, I have to type in exactly what I want, rather then search page after page of the same type of listings.

I often wonder, when ebay says there are 10,000 listings, is it really only 2-3.000, with a ton of repeats, just to make it look like more, than it really is.

I do agree, that the search function, does not favour the small sellers.

Good luck!