Could this be the reason for slow sales?

[myestate-treasures4u]

I don't think I've ever seen so many sellers complaining about slow sales as I have in the last couple months. Anybody who has been selling for even a few years can see it.  Why is it happening? Well, there may be a legitimate reason for it.

Perhaps if you're a larger seller, you may have noticed an unusual number of nightly slow/shut downs by eBay, where sales completely turn off until the next morning. Several Youtubers have mentioned it. I personally have noticed the same pattern in two of my larger stores where nightly sales have fallen by the wayside. 

Could this be part of eBay's "improved" Promoted Listings "tool"? After all, we have watched this "tool" morph into what I like to call a gladiator arena, where sellers now have to fight each other to stay alive. In fact, it would be naïve to think that eBay isn't aware of the fact that when sales are "unusually slow" for an extended period of time, sellers will try to bid up their visibility against their competitors with PLS or now with PLA. I'm not saying that they are doing this on purpose in order to get more sellers on board with PL. However, what I will say is that eBay has made a great effort to NOT be transparent about all the glitches, shut downs and slow sales. No emails, no explanations, no effort, no concern. That is what concerns me as a 24-yr seller. Yet, what we do receive from eBay is an extensive marketing campaign aimed at sellers in an effort to convince them that these are beneficial "tools" or "assets" for sellers.  Are sellers really that stupid? 

Remember when individual sellers were the lifeblood of eBay? It's what made eBay so unique.  Sadly, eBay is now just another marketplace that happens to have the same name as they did 28-yrs ago. 

[vintagecraze50]

They want it to be the place people buy ultra expensive items now. That’s the main focus with the high end merch and authentication programs.

[toomuchstuffagain35]

Remember when ebay would be mentioned on tv shows & movies, along the lines of "where on earth did you get that?" "Found it on ebay".

Or when a character has found some weird, obscure item - "you should sell that on ebay".

[jabel_3414]

Inflationary economy and people not purchasing robustly as before. Friends tell me same as too many of us sell different items. 

[thegardenstatepicker]

I’m not going to say it’s not partially the economy, but I have over 1400 listings of vintage toys, clothing and other hot selling (recession proof) items. There are days in my traffic where I have “0” visitors… every other day it’s at least 35, up to 85. When I ask why certain days, sometimes 2 in a row I have no traffic, they say it’s the economy. That’s impossible. I used to get the bulk of my sales Sunday evening which is when people generally shop online the most. I went from 30+ orders to 12 the entire weekend. Desirable items I see selling for others with no problem. Not trying to start a conspiracy, or fuel one… but something has been up with eBay over the past year with algorithms. I should note I end and sell similar daily and list 20 new items a day, every day. 

[thegardenstatepicker]

Yup! The only eBay ads I ever see is for eBay auto. Personally, I don’t know anyone who got a car off of eBay or parts. 

[masterblasterplanet]

eBay's direct competition which are online marketplaces, are doing tv advertising: Amazon, Etsy, Poshmark, Walmart, Dealdash, Mercari, The RealReal, StockX, etc they're all doing tv advertising aggressively. Amazon has it's own streaming service to run ads down your throat. eBay does not. Amazon has trucks in my neighborhood 5 times per day to remind me about them. eBay does not. Amazon is in your face all the time. eBay is not.

Who else sells "socks and bedliners"? Amazon. Amazon also spent 13.5 billion U.S. dollars on advertising in the United States in 2022. Amazon is the largest U.S. advertiser in terms of spending for the fourth consecutive year. Amazon’s ad expenditure increased by nearly 30 percent compared to 2021. That year, the online retailer invested around 10.4 billion dollars to advertise in the U.S. market.

Comparatively in 2022, eBay invested only 1.2 billion U.S. dollars in advertising. The spending has been relatively stable, oscillating between one billion and 1.3 billion dollars across the presented period.

Not sure where you're getting your statement "TV broadcast or cable appeals to the elderly 45-75 up" is an incredibly vague statement and would depend directly on the channel/network being watched. As for tv Sporting events, currently NFL and colege football games get a large amount of attention in terms of viewers specifically among 18-54 year olds. Notable channel-level viewership shifts in September include: Broadcast viewing among 12-17 year-olds increased 26%.

Beyond tv there's other online related ways to advertise effectively.  Online advertising, including social media ads, podcasts, Yelp Ads, search engine ads, and others is particularly crucial for customer acquisition.

eBay needs to advertise more. TV, online, Google searches, whatever! As sellers we don't get much in return for the increased fees outside of a blank canvas and a system that's on autopilot for the most part. We source the items, take the photos, type all of the info, then package and ship as well as do any and all customer service responses to questions. Sellers do it all.

eBay needs to be more aggressive with advertising and remind people exactly what eBay is and how it's different from other online marketplaces.

[masterblasterplanet]

Amazon spent 13.5 billion U.S. dollars on advertising in the United States in 2022. Amazon is the largest U.S. advertiser in terms of spending for the fourth consecutive year. Amazon’s ad expenditure increased by nearly 30 percent in 2022 compared to 2021 where they spent 10.4 billion dollars to advertise in the U.S. market.

Comparatively in 2022, eBay spent only 1.2 billion U.S. dollars in advertising. eBay spent aprox 1 billion dollars in 2022.

The last two years Amazon spent 23.9 BILLION DOLLARS in ADVERTISING vs eBay spent only 2.2 billion dollars.

[mcd1886]

Well I’m in Ireland and have had no sales listing now for 2 weeks every day and nothing! Ireland must be the worst for selling, you can’t send offers you can’t promote and you can’t check your impressions.. and can’t get any answers for this:(

[hotpopculturegemshop]

drink some more kool aid -- every last thing .. every last market in this country is being manipulated and controlled -  including gold - silver - the stock market - you think they would tell you the truth about poor retail ?  in some areas theft is higher than sales these days 😞  this is the worse retail environment since the Obama years and its worse this time. said i never wanted to go thru that again and here we are ... hold on.. its gets worse- way worse before it gets better if ever  .... sorry the truth hurts .. 

[carolynnq]

amazon net revenue 2022 $514 billion

3%  ($14 billion) spent on advertising

ebay net revenue 2022 $10 billion

10% ($1 billion) spent on advertising

Hope I did the math right.

[buzzapparel]

The fact that eBay has a 10% off promotion up to $100 on basically all clothing and luxury items over $200 and still little to no sales speaks volumes. 

[vintagecraze50]

So here we are at the busiest time of the year and the reports say that consumers WILL BE cutting back this Holiday season, and THIS being the biggest part of the problem everywhere.

[nyczoo]

Much agreed!!!  After all of these years I wonder why I am even on here any more.  I have always had other work to supplement selling…but now I had  to get a second “second job”

[cool.jewels.by.jeff]

They are purposely doing it to force sellers to give more of their profits away. Pay to play scheme. Unless ebay is the only platform affected by the economy. I remember when hard work was rewarded on ebay. 

[onefootflippers]

Those youtubers are terrible at ebay, have terrible prices and don't know what they are talking about and are just whining for views. The one with the biggest following analyzes his sales on an hourly basis and expects them to be smooth not just day to day but hour to hour, when they have NEVER been smooth.

People aren't up in the middle of the night buying media from overpriced sellers.  Zero to few sales when most Americans are sleeping is a very normal thing for pretty much every account out there.  When I worked at a large internet retailer that had their own website it was not all that weird to not have a single order come in from midnight to 6 am. That is when people are asleep.

Sales are bad because we have more sellers than buyers as we are still riding a huge wave of full time and serious part time sellers who cropped up during covid.