Massive decline in sales -73%

[tech*knowledge]

Sales down 73% vs last 30 days (and prior 30 days not impressive either). I did not think this was even possible. Impressions are UP, I have already increased promoted ad rate % with no results.

Have asked ebay about this twice now, no real help to be had. They did say many sellers are experiencing poor sales.. but 73% is absurd.

I have a near perfect account and anchor store + 17 years on ebay. There is no reason to target my account but it feels that way given how poor things have become.

Is anyone else experiencing this magnitude of decline?? (I sell computers, I am aware of the poor market for PC's, this is beyond that and beyond earlier this year). I've tried more aggressive pricing, new listings, more advertising, nothing changes. It feels targeted. I also have had perhaps 2 interested customers message me in several weeks, that is VERY odd as well.

I thought last year was the worst possible scenario with the macro economy and geopolitics. I understand the economy is very poor now, but this is vs 30 days, however 90 days are also down, up to midsummer sales were outpacing last year moderately well, so this is entirely weird.

Sure it will get better into the holidays, but in the meantime this is very bad, this is the WORST month I have EVER had in 17 years of selling. That makes no sense.

[tech*knowledge]

I know it is an ebay issue because I have an Amazon account with only 5% as many listings and nowhere near 100% feedback there.. yet have sold more units on Amazon on that tiny account than I have on Ebay in the last 30 days, that has also never happened.

[siamjane8]

There is nothing natural about the sudden and drastic declines that sellers are reporting. I just does not happen in the real world unless there was a sudden and extensive economic motivator like a massive market crash or depression.  No... these issues are squarely with ebay. Perhaps algorithm changes, tweaking to fix search in one way destroys it in another way, almost everyone is reporting issues and dissatisfaction with the promoted listing program, constant site updates and glitches caused by no testing and underqualified programming companies ( cheapest bidder is never the best way to do business). One hand at ebay has no idea what the other is doing etc..   Whatever it is- believe me- nothing in this world acts like what we see on a day to day basis at ebay.

  73% sales swings are not heard of in any industry- it only happens here at ebay.

sales come in unnatural batches all clumped together within an hour or so - then nothing for the next 20 hours.  Then you will have sales all from one state or another while the other 49 go with no sales for 2 days.  Last week all of the sudden we had sales and questions from Germany out of the blue. International sales have been down 80% ever since EIS took over for the GSP!.....  We get messages all the time asking why we don't ship to this country or that country now-   yes ebay has screwed up sales for sure. of course there are other factors but it cant be denied that all the other platforms are doing well and sales are up while ebay sales are down consistently. 

   Look-I love ebay and being able to make a full time living by selling here- but it could be way better if they fixed all the problems

[ci1000]

Personally, I'm totally exhausted with trying to figure out what works and what doesn't work.  There is no way to understand anything that eBay does or changes because there is zero transparency and zero explanations.

How can anyone survive?  The promoted listings program blatantly uses our listings to advertise other sellers products... seriously... two rows of other peoples items before anyone can even look at my description!

My sales are down 60% to 75% and that is in comparison to the last 30 days.  When I look at my accounting for the same period last year my sales are down 80% to 90%.

Do we actually have any hope for a good holiday season? 

[retro_entertainment_collectibles]

PC Sales slump has been going on all year and continues to decline, that might not explain 70%+ over a month but it is a completely dying market.  The industry as a whole saw double digit percentile drops first quarter, second quarter 30% w/ Apple at near 40% and likely going to continue.  Mobile is rapidly becoming the only game in town and towards that end I'd not be surprised at all if eBay is attempting to get very focal on the limited real-estate on mobile devices.  Trying to support millions atop millions of sellers when the physical visible real-estate is so finite is definitely a formidable challenge.  Both Amazon, Apple, Walmart on and on have been blowing up PC's & Laptops at "Wow" pricing since August towards college students etc.

There are high power PC's all over Facebook Marketplace as well, months back I bought a Core i9 w/ 32 GB, 1 TB SSD, 4TB HD, nVidia 3080 like new, not scratch on it or piece of dust inside it for $1200, that was a $2700 rig bit over a year ago.

I think ya' be better off listing PC's as complete vs variations as well, if it's got a 3060, 3080 etc list it that way, separate listings.  If I'm searching for a PC with the basic's that I know I want that's what I search on and variant where I need select ANYTHING is likely to not place in search in compare to those who do list the complete machine.  If anything, make the cases the variants.

[dirk12955]

Tagging on:

I've seen a 56%  drop in sales in the last 90 days.    Been selling for 23 years 

and have 3 selling accounts.    I've seen it bad,    But this........

[mike_jayroe]

I have had only three sales this month and the last one was on 9/11. 

I am in the process (reluctantly) of relisting around a hundred items that I was NOT going to relist until the economy improved. I am offering major discounts on bulk purchases of those items. I wonder if that might help. I am willing to bet it won't help one teensy-weensy bit.

[tech*knowledge]

This is all true, I had several times over the years noted very odd patterns (or more accurately, NON PATTERNS) in sales, and noticed as well sudden groupings of sales with no explanation. I have had up to 50% decline in sales in weird timeframes, but this is far and beyond that. It is frustrating they have no answers as well, but they must know, they must pick and choose who to favor and not. It also seems ebay punishes us when the customer abuses us.

Payment dispute (not your fault) seems like a dip in sales follows

Negative feedback removed (buyer makes false statements), still a dip in results 

Ebay damages your international package (EIS), dip in sales after.

Buyer puts whatever reason they want on a return - dip in sales after.

I absolutely love ebay customer service helping with all of these things moreso than any other platform, but I think the help may come at a hidden cost. We all know about algorithms, but what did I freaking do to lose 75% of my sales!!??!?! I literally maintain near perfection.

[lawnmowerpartsstore2]

Times are changing and FAST

[tobaccocardyahoo]

Do not rule out at least part of the effect being the economy.

In my area, business continue to close. The local paper had an article on a business which closed 1 week before its 20th anniversary.

And there are indirect effects of the economy, both in the US and the world, with marked increase in the number of  people trying to meet their needs by becoming online sellers.

I am back on Ebay because I have under 5k of listings active to meet my sales goals. On Amazon it took 20k listings to meet my goals. Some merchandise does better on Ebay than Amazon, and others on Amazon than Ebay. Some times they switch.

[kiss-3]

Thank you for this helpful solution. I overlooked this option. 

[kiss-3]

Thank you for these helpful tips. I am going to be paying closer attention to the above suggestions. 

[inhawaii]

The OP's sales are down 73%.

Why does it have to be ebay's fault?

Ebay is somehow preventing 73% of the OP's sales from happening?

Ebay is losing 73% of the fees that they would normally be collecting from the OP.

Or is it possible that 73% less people want to buy what the OP is selling?

Isn't that a little more plausible?

[siamjane8]

@inhawaii everything you mentioned above is absolutely plausible in some degree but NOT 73% in 30 days..   But for those of us that have been with ebay for 20 years and seen the changes and the issues it is completely obvious that ebay intentionally or unintentionally causes these problems with their constant tinkering and screwy ideas. ( i am leaning toward unintentionally- i just dont think they have the right people with the right knowledge and understanding of the business in place)

   When i do a search for an item and ebay shows zero results or just shows unrelated promoted listings... then i go to google and google shows 8 active ebay listings......... can you not accept that ebay is responsible for buyers not being able to find and purchase our items?

   Actually ebay would be losing 100% of the fees from the lack of sales from the OP- that is why i think its just the wrong people making the wrong decisions and having the wrong people program the wrong algorithms. 

    They need to just simplify the over complicated system and go back to 100% relevancy focused search.  People cannot buy what they cannot see and people cannot see what ebay does not show them.   I dont randomly purchase a promoted items that are of no interest to me just because ebay puts them in front of me ....do you?

[retro_entertainment_collectibles]

---

@dirk12955 wrote:

Tagging on:

I've seen a 56%  drop in sales in the last 90 days.    Been selling for 23 years 

and have 3 selling accounts.    I've seen it bad,    But this........

---

Cursory look it appears you sell German and/or associated stamps, I collected when I was quite young but know little of the eBay market in that stuff... Assume there is lots of competition and staying with one general nation of stamps places you in a vertical market of stamp nations/variations.  If it were me, I'd probably tried expand that out into perhaps British and French Colonials which from what I recall was always quite a popular collectors market.  I'm basically in a vertical market too albeit PC Software was once quite mainstream.

All that said and done I've no doubts whatsoever that eBay is making concerted efforts towards mobile shoppers as that's what the world has become.  It's not even a comparison when speaking of PC's / Laptops.  Mobile is a challenge for so many venues due to the small visible real-estate but in a way eBay is unique in respect to venues.  I'll cite a non-related example whereby a friend of mine operates a Wordpress based news site and has many authors onboard and has for years on end.  All was cool w/ PC's and Laptops but as cellphones surpassed those devices he'd countless problems trying to get visibility unto authors writings and he'd tried basically everything under the sun, categorizations, sub categorizations, trying get readers navigate to interests.  Best formula he found was statistical weighting, not all that different from Google or Bing albeit far more rudimentary in algorithm logic.  You'll see the same at countless news sites, highly popular gets the visibility and the rest get linkage display within that popular articles.

Now consider eBay, millions atop millions of sellers and buyers yet all the real-estate is this tiny device.  Sure, screen resolution match or better than 1080P but if anyone care remember before websites could detect mobile it was a nightmare!  Mobile device be perfect for tiny bugs like Ants to navigate but everything so small it was hellish.  One reason I say Amazon's one listing multiple offers format is obviously going to be more effective than eBays current format.  If it were "me" at the helm I'd be making a specific Apple/Android APP towards buyers that allow mobile buyers to be highly focal in drilling down to listings of prospect items they're looking for.  It'd be unique to the buying as it HAS TO BE given the gazillions of listings and millions atop millions of sellers.  Trying to do that through the eBay.com web detecting mobile will MOST ASSUREDLY impact those not on mobile, there's just too much data and so many variations thereof.  So... An App that basically speaking allows buyers to create buying maps per se so they can focalize their browsing experience to rapidly see offerings within parameters they set and save.

Additionally I'd add to the APP notification capabilities like many focal points of digital sales do.  So if I'm seeking say a specific Stamp(s) or video games, or purse I can tag that/those items and I get a notification when such item(s) come up that fit parameters I set upon the tags, such as price range, condition, this/that.

Whilst people want yip and howl about AI coming into eBay searches I've yet to see anyone come up with a solution or even decent suggestion as to HOW they would deal with that ultra finite mobile real-estate.  Make no mistake about it... Towards programming challenge for eBay its top of the list.  Those who want say "Just go back in time" are so far off base they just don't understand how things have changed across the board not to mention the huge challenges mobile brings to the table.  Frustration in trying find specific items, then trying compare, see sellers feedbacks or this/that, all an enormous challenge!  Frustration finding items atop that of things such as price, TRUST of sellers on and on is a BIG BIG BIG MOUNTAIN as it only takes one or few bad experiences for buyers to seek other options ESPECIALLY now given financial challenges.

AI IS the solution, I am a software engineer and its just a "no brainer" towards AI however, creating effective AI requires that the AI --- REALLY BE --- a BRAINER because HUMANS do not shop logically.  We're not at a point in time whereby I can take a mobile picture or snag one someplace and tell my cellphone, find it and the lowest price no matter where and show me it, order it and make sure it comes exactly as I want it.

Google has invested deep in AI in many projects and obviously search, voice search and more yet I can fool it with ease but it continues to evolve.  Now Google can afford significant testing in real life/real time, for eBay that's another enormous problem!  Can't test across four hours time and expect cleansed statistical results, just no way.  It all needs evolve and as a software engineer or corporation that evolution needs be open ended.  That is to say, not only extensible but having multiple interfaces to said AI functions which also need be extensible for at the very least external buyer/traffic aggregation.  In other words, perhaps Google's AI need interface to eBay's AI... We're talkin' formidable engineering here and STANDARDS towards AI are very very very very very much in infancy.

AI can learn how and what buyers are looking for via interactions and thus create those "Maps" I spoke of earlier and that is mission critical for buying at eBay on mobile devices.   I'd certainly bet the coffee cup that eBay Exec's are not all too thrilled about the timing of ever so many things.  Economics, competition, on and on and on whilst HAVING TO (not optional!) try evolve the platform towards a PLEASUREABLE versus frustrating experience finding and shopping for items via mobile devices.  Probably like, "Cant we go back to 2G wireless for the next five years?  Anyone?"  LOL.

All that atop not to mention governments, manufacturers, authorities and on and on and on basically wishing third party commerce venues go away no matter if selling hard goods or soft.

I've said it many a time with varied focal points of discussion...  I appreciate that eBay affords me the ability to peddle this stuff and I dont take out after them with guns blazing as I take a good look at the much broader picture.  Step out of the shoes and climb into those of an enterprise corporation that faces challenges and HAS FACED challenges for years and years on end.  eBay has expertly navigated those challenges whereby literally most others short of a handful didn't and no longer exist.

[nuclearomen]

the result is shared commonly across the board, all categories and sellers. They have hacked any ability for you to make sales and/or enjoy any growth from those sales - bare minimal. PLs have made it extremely worse, to the point I have recently canned PLS because it's not paying any return on the effort as once was. The bottom line is the company, not economy or anything else, the company in it's woke agenda aim to help to decrease the American dollar and economy, but if they dislike capitalism so much they should just close their doors.