Dramatic Drop in Sales/Very Slow October 2018

[delawareoutdoordecor]

Hi everyone, I have been having a regrettable October, with sales from 10/1 to 10/6 as abnormally slow, then a small spike in sales 10/7-10/9, then a sheer dive to 1 sale over the past 42 hours. I started a sale in all 4 of my eBay stores on 10/11 at 8:30am EST, with one purchase on 10/11 at 5:36pm EST. Yes I have 4 eBay stores, near 3000 total listings, close to 125,000 total available inventory items....and I’ve had a total of 4 sales in 3 days (including the 1 purchase in the past 42 hours). I’ve contacted eBay twice (once today and once yesterday) because this has not happened to my stores before. I generally have 6-12 sales a day as an average (all 4 stores combined), and I have followed slow times and higher selling times as usual ebbs and flows. Every promotion/sale I’ve started (10% off usually with combined shipping) has purchases being made with some consistency everyday. It’s now 2:30pm EST on 10/12, and again no purchases across all 4 stores. 

I feel like I seeing a deficit on eBay’s part here. They’ve assured me that my listings are visiable, I’m using the correct key words, I’m running promotions....and yet there is no explanation for the stunning drop in sales. 

Is anyone else seeing something similar? I’m very concerned....

[stockjedi]

eBay is done for smaller sellers. If you're selling used items where you can make a few bucks that's one thing but new items no margin left when competing with China and the giant corporations who dump databases of 500k listings. Been here since 1998 and we have a fairly large automotive parts (not this account) since 2007. Average around 1k per day in sales, sales have been so bad since Oct that we do now maybe $100 a day in sales. We laid off all workers and only 2 of us left running the eBay store. We are $15k behind in sales just to pay our bills so we are going to shut down the eBay operations after 12 years and focus strictly on our own web site. There is no future left here, their executives are crooks, they take most of the profits anyway via their never ending fees plus having to deal with their buyers threats non stop to leave negative feedback etc is just not worth the headache anymore.
It was fine for a few years to get exposure even though all the profit went to eBay fees but no longers works now that sales are down 90%. When they roll out their payment system it will be a disaster and I expect sales to plunge even more. 

We have tens of thousands of positive reviews (100% positive), work around the clock 7 days a week on listings, but it's no longer working and we are sick and tired of their broken system that caters only to China sellers or mega sellers. eBay executives managed to destroy something that was pretty cool back in the days.

But we are done with your non sense and the lack of sales. 

Best of luck everyone!

[discounts4holidays]

The worst ever!  I dont know why and what to do.  I refuse to give things away. 

[joesoucie22012]

Teacup poodle

The evil cheese ball never sold. Thanks eBay! Look what it did to my teacup poodle...... 

[joesoucie22012]

No

No, but I still have the thing 

[ads.ink]

SOME suggestions i have received put in item condition fill out item specifics make your description at most 2 lines fill out the specifics box under everything and put everything you want people to see under your title on the search page in it. 1 day handle, from what i hear feedback no longer carries the weight it used to  just suggestions I'm trying them only problem is how do you bulk edit 7,000 listings? i've tried find and replace and it just keeps adding duplicate html to my listings. pathetic.  good luck,. i think we are all going to need it.

[musthaveitdesigns]

I sympathize with your drop in sales.  Here is something I recently discovered, you might find of interest!

You put in a search and ebay pulls up their "best match" results.  If there have been multiple sales of a certain item, the search will favor that listing and prioritze it.  Sometimes that listing will stay within the first five results for months.

Sellers are getting wise to this.  What some are now doing is listing an item for say $100.00 and then purchasing this item with another of their accounts (ebay says this is OK).  However, they will drop the purchase amount to say $5.00 and purchase 10 of them at once at this price.  Hence ebay will prioritize this listing because it shows multiple sales.

They then change the listing back to the original $100.  People think that there has been 10 purchases of $100 for this item.  Unless you go back to the purchase history of the item  - which of course will show price $5.00 quantity 10 date of purchase (will be all on the same day) you will not realize this.

Check out item #  202482048640 to see what I am talking about!

[mintquality]

I am in the $0 Zone but my eBay bill has no problem showing up. Gonna have to let my store go. Ridiculous

[goldrushfinds]

Join the crowd. Something seriously wrong with Ebay at the present time. You have to be a diehard online seller or hobbyist to want to continue. Far easier ways to make some cash out there. You may get some sales, but the time to income ratio is pretty low (at least for me).

[itsyourstorejill]

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   I am experencing the same, I to called ebay and they told me the same thing, I Have never been this slow expecially with promited listings and over 1,000 items..........

[ads.ink]

and when you tell the ebay reps you are going to lose your business, you have gone from a decent living to going into debt for the last three months, you know what they say? " oh no, we don't want to lose you as a seller!! 11 years on ebay,  we value you!!! ."

HOW ABOUT LESS TALK AND MORE ACTION  EBAY!!!

OR 

your brass will be standing in the unemployment lines, although with the dollars you made from us maybe not. But I can say with certainty, if any of you do end up in the unemployment line? we won't be there

WHY???

 cause WE don't qualify.

[oz_in_ohio]

Attention   delawareoutdoordecor

Yes, you are correct...Buyers wont buy anything unless it is listed next to nothing , shipping free

with all sorts of protection at the sellers cost so you either have to just wave the storm or simply

kill 3 of those 4 stores and only work on one to save you the overhead.   

To prove this to myself ( and my bank manager what the generation of today is really like )  I placed

up a while back a $20 banknote and purposely tore the corner off it and taped it together....I did

not tear the serial numbers. Now naturally that note can be used for $20 cash anywhere but i listed it

at 11.67 plus shipping making it a total of $15.52....

The shipping had to have  tracking but guess what...there were no bids because of the tape

on the banknote... People said it was damaged.....I would buy these all day long at earn  close to

25% profit as they would cost me just over $15.00 but i guess the average ebayer want them for 99c...

Do i really have to say anymore....  People invest money in the bank for less than 5% a YEAR but a

seller on ebay cant sell something so the buyer earns 22.5% immediately. 

Now if we do the additions, 22.5% daily on that banknote = $4.50  immediately or per day

Monthly the earn on that torn banknote would be $135.00 as it is $4.50 x 30

Yearly the earn on that torn banknote would be $1642.50 as it is $4.50 x 365 

You stated you were offering 10% off combined shipping and i was offering the above

but got no bids.

 Look what i was offering and i got no bids either so it really looks like the people using

and searching in ebay dont know a bargain  when they see it.

I only did this as an excersize to show to my bank manager what the average

person on ebay is really like.

As the saying goes, one cannot give

money away these days.

Somehow i dont think ebay is to blame but it is the buyers out there.

You work it out now delawareoutdoordecor

Have a nice day......OIO

[oz_in_ohio]

You do realize that if these sellers have multiple accounts then they have to have more computer s

to go into it and use it.... You see ebay can tell the ip adress from where the item

was listed and bid from. 

If one has 3 different ebay accounts then that = 3 different computers

Do you really think that the dramtic drop in sales would make sellers go out and purchase

multiple computer systems??...I DONT THINK SO!!!!!

By the way i looked at the pandora bracelets and most were different. They must have a large

shop and also selling on ebay.....

[kandlwil]

Hi

Yes, you are right, this seller does have multiple accounts.  We called Ebay customer service yesterday and and they confirmed this seller is PURCHASING THEIR OWN ITEMS.  All the purchases are linked to the same address for buyer/seller.  This gives them a boost in the Ebay best match search engine because the search gives preference to multiples of the same item being sold.  Ebay also confirmed this is against Ebay policy and called it search and browse manipulation.  

[clothes_whisperer]

That's exactly it, greed and even then. The fact that chitbay hasn't even had enough respect to speak out in regard, drop you inventory and bleep them! That's what I'm doing though at this rate it might take me 3 years to sell 300 popular items at a discounted great rate here on chitbay.

[clothes_whisperer]

No, it's his Chinese Conspiracy Theory.

Chitbay will die eventually. All the small folks who've they've done dirty are going to stop doing business with them, selling and buying or at least that's my plan. Perhaps that's why PayPal and Chitbay are parting ways, Chitbay's greed.