Is eBay Pushing Out Small Sellers?

[maimaimai90]

First off, I'm not trying to start a b*tch-fest about slow sales, I'm just trying to figure out what happened to my store and see if it's happened to others. 

In my case, sales have declined month-over-month by an average of 15-20% since February.  The strange thing is that the decline is a clean straight line down. Nothing cyclical, nothing seasonal, nothing random and very consistent. I thought there was a practical limit as to how far sales could decline - you have to bottom out somewhere - but I was wrong. This month I'm down 12% again.

The absolute bottom - zero - is now within sight, and probably just a few months off. Well, I have a few regular customers and there are always a few random sales, but I'll be doing less than $25 in sales per day soon. After selling for nearly 3 years on eBay and having ups and downs but overall success, that's a point I never thought I'd reach. 

Yes, yes, I've worked overtime to try to stem the decline. You name it, I did it. No need to make a list. It's been 8 months of trying now, but the effort is all in vain. As best as I can tell, eBay 'de-ranks' accounts, and down you go.  Straight down. Like, in a perfectly straight and very non-random line down.

Whatever, my energy is now on the other platforms. While each has its advantages, eBay was my first selling platform and the sentimental favorite. For small sellers with ambition, it was pretty much the ideal place to start and grow. When people ask me these days for advice on how to start selling, it's hard to say that eBay is the place to go.  Actually, it feels like eBay has told me where to go. 

We know they are trying to become Amazon-lite - FBE, the public catalog model etc. - so are they trying to push out the smaller sellers and cede that market to the 'other platforms' that shall remain nameless, and skew eBay toward the heavy hitters that sell on Amazon?  

Who knows. There's obviously turmoil at the top. Life at the eBay bottom hasn't been so great either. Well, movin' on.

[monstertoybox]

The answer to your question is 100% YES! You'll find many, many posts on the board. In fact the top 3 right now are:

[niftyandthrifty50]

AMEN! eBay is severely broken and getting worse by the day!

[hurryagain]

I cannot imagine what eBay's angle could be with this.  I would think the more sellers, the more variety, the more variety, the more buyers, the more buyers the MORE SALES!  It does not make any sense to me why eBay wants to push out the small sellers...they provide products in a niche area that usually does not affect the big box retailers anyway.

One of the things I thought about regarding this was their shareholders...Many of our large companys are now shareholder owned by China investors.  Given how eBay has bent over backwards for China sellers, it makes me wonder if they don't have a large shareholder percentage in this company.

It would be nice if they (or someone) branched off this site and made an eBay classic site where you could find the unique, the antique,  the handmade, the second hand items.  One would think that there is a market for such things or am I really that out of touch?

And it's not just the small sellers like you who are having a hard time.  Believe it or not, some of the medium (1K or more a day in sales) are also saying very similar things that you have posted here.

Even good sized sellers from eBay motors are seeing this downward trend...eBay motors has always been a bullet proof - can't lose area...not anymore...

I really can't see eBay going toe to toe with the big A...good luck to that idea.

[lex-talon]

I really can't see eBay going toe to toe with the big A...good luck to that idea.

I don't either. 

[luckythewinner]

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@maimaimai90 wrote:

Yes, yes, I've worked overtime to try to stem the decline. You name it, I did it. No need to make a list.

---

I can't resist making a list anyway.

For instance, have you tried fundamentally changing what it is you sell?

[m60driver]

You are selling clothing, arguably the most over saturated market on Ebay.  Many small sell-anything sellers like myself have seriously cut back on purchasing clothing items for sale.  The good news for you is that there are other online options that specialize in clothing.  But I for one would not want to be selling clothing for a living on Ebay.  And that is coming from someone who was in the brick and mortar garment business for decades attending a number of the major clothing trade shows each year.

Also the former CEO Wenig noted that Ebay was working with Chinese manufacturers to relay to them what were hot sellers.  Clothing has to be close to number one on that list with Ebay getting a cut of those sales above and beyond the basic FVF.

[slippinjimmy]

Is eBay Pushing Out Small Sellers?

Of course they are! That's why they give low volume sellers free listings, more lenient performance metrics  and why I constantly get bombarded on my non-selling id's with offers to start selling with reduced fees and other incentives.

eBay doesn't need to push out small sellers, some of those sellers are quite capable of failing all on their own.

[yuzuha]

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@luckythewinner wrote:

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@maimaimai90 wrote:

Yes, yes, I've worked overtime to try to stem the decline. You name it, I did it. No need to make a list.

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I can't resist making a list anyway.

For instance, have you tried fundamentally changing what it is you sell?

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It 100% comes down to what you're selling.  I listed some souvenirs from the Aladdin musical the other day and they've been getting nonstop views and watchers ever since I put them up, which isn't a surprise-- they have very limited availability (you could only purchase them at the musical itself) and clearly a great deal of demand.

[nuclearomen]

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@hurryagain wrote:

It would be nice if they (or someone) branched off this site and made an eBay classic site where you could find the unique, the antique,  the handmade, the second hand items.  One would think that there is a market for such things or am I really that out of touch?

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no, but in order to do this one has to have investors and that isn't easy for an online marketplace without a thoroughly thought out and presented work model for investors to even decide if they want to invest or not. The .Com boom was easier to pitch some years ago when investors were basically dumping money in anyones lap (even banks) but after few years of proven low success rates with them investors aren't as eager these days.  Can it happen, sure absolutely, it's how all these other newer platforms have emerged and likely not just Ebay but Amazon ex-sellers have played role in that. Just saying it's not something that is easy where someone just says "I'm going to start a new site that is like ebay but better" and magically it's up and running.  

[southern*sweet*tea]

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@hurryagain wrote:

It would be nice if they (or someone) branched off this site and made an eBay classic site where you could find the unique, the antique,  the handmade, the second hand items.  One would think that there is a market for such things or am I really that out of touch?

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They did that a few years ago. It failed.

Well, actually they branched off the NEW stuff...Ebay Express I think it was called.

And yes, there IS a market for secondhand, a lot larger than most pointed heads at boardroom tables think.

BUT...it's all a numbers game. Ebay would much rather have one million $1 sales than 10,000 $100 sales or 1000 $1000 sales.  Selling a million dollars worth of cheap junk pulls in better sales numbers and activity than a million dollars worth of quality vintage and antiques.  Makes the place look really busy I guess. 

Anyway, that's my take on it.

Who was it that said that Ebay wanted to attract people who had more time than money?? I don't know about y'all, but I'd rather attract folks with money lol

[hurryagain]

@nuclearomen 

It would be great if they could just make a sub-site and somehow keep it somewhat connected so that when people logged into eBay, they could go to either site.

Wishful thinking I know but it would seem to be a win/win situation.

[hurryagain]

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@southern*sweet*tea wrote:

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@hurryagain wrote:

It would be nice if they (or someone) branched off this site and made an eBay classic site where you could find the unique, the antique,  the handmade, the second hand items.  One would think that there is a market for such things or am I really that out of touch?

---

They did that a few years ago. It failed.

Well, actually they branched off the NEW stuff...Ebay Express I think it was called.

And yes, there IS a market for secondhand, a lot larger than most pointed heads at boardroom tables think.

BUT...it's all a numbers game. Ebay would much rather have one million $1 sales than 10,000 $100 sales or 1000 $1000 sales.  Selling a million dollars worth of cheap junk pulls in better sales numbers and activity than a million dollars worth of quality vintage and antiques.  Makes the place look really busy I guess. 

Anyway, that's my take on it.

Who was it that said that Ebay wanted to attract people who had more time than money?? I don't know about y'all, but I'd rather attract folks with money lol

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@southern*sweet*tea 

Too bad that it failed.  Maybe it just wasn't the right time for such a spin off...it's looking pretty ripe now.

"Who was it that said that Ebay wanted to attract people who had more time than money?"

Well, if it was an eBay exec who said that, they would have been extremely shortsighted & foolish. 

Definitely want ones with more $ than time...speaking of which...TIME to fix that broken search engine so that those with more money than time will shop here.  No one in that situation is going to put up with a broken search engine.

[nuclearomen]

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@hurryagain wrote:

@nuclearomen 

It would be great if they could just make a sub-site and somehow keep it somewhat connected so that when people logged into eBay, they could go to either site.

Wishful thinking I know but it would seem to be a win/win situation.

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it's wishful thinking but in the overall it would still be ebay and ebay's policies/practices... I fail to see how it would be any different from ebay(dot)com as it is now. Best wishful thinking is things start taking a large twist towards the better end of the spectrum over next (year?.. guess we'll see) with the entrance of new CEO. Though in regard to totally new platform - it happens, been happening a lot past couple of years, the issue? None of them are really like ebay, they all have niche focus and some of them you have to accepted into (such as Walmart(dot)com)...even Amazon you can't just jump on and sell anything. In the end any brand new platform will have their own issues + much less buyer traffic. 

[vintagecraze50]

No, not as far as I can tell from listening to the pod cast with the new VP Jordan Sweetnam, sorry if I misspelled this. He discussed his vision for Ebay on this podcast. He envisions ebay as being very distinct from Amazon and Walmart where he worked for several years. He expressed that retail revival with small sellers should be one of the goals. He discussed how Ebay is still the most fantastic site to find so many things that cannot be found elsewhere and at good prices. Listen to the podcast.