eBay

maimaimai90 · ‎11-08-2018

I've been selling for just about 2 years now. I found my niche, developed my business model, refined and worked it. I was doing about 2.5k per month in sales on about 150 listed items, with the usual variation - seasonal and otherwise. I had 100% feedback and repeat customers.

Ebay wanted Free Shipping, I give 'em free shipping. Ebay wants 1-day shipping. I give 'em "epic fast shipping" to quote one customer. Ebay wants Free Returns, I give 'em free returns. Ebay wants Guaranteed Delivery, I give it to 'em. Whatever direction ebay wants to go in, I try to adapt and make it work. So far, so good.

So naturally, it was time to expand. As I sell mostly men's clothing, maybe 'summer slowdown' wasn't the best time to expand, but I increased my listings about 40 or 50 percent in July, and sales increased by about 35%. Right on target. I did the same in August, with good results. It was my best month on ebay. Now with the summer doldrums behind us and more listings than ever before in my store, September should continue the trend. Not so fast.

September saw a 25% decline in sales. October was equally bad, and November - which I anticipated as being the best month of the year - has so far been horrible. I'm currently on pace to equal my year-low January sales when I had less than half the items listed. I anticipate doing half the sales of August, or a 50% decline from that month. This is despite loading up with Christmas and winter items - the items that ebay (and common sense) - recommend.

So what gives? I went crazy trying to pin down the reason. I tried listing on a regular basis. I tried binge listing. I kept my account constantly active. I lowered prices. I raised prices. I had sales. Nothing mattered. Am I still top-rated? Yeah. Is my return-rate too high? Ah, my returns are exceptionally low, especially with all the clothing I sell. Can't be that. Unresolved cases? Nope. In three little words, **bleep**?

Looking at my sales on a graphical plot, it was easy to see exactly when things began to tank, the inflection point so to speak. But that still made no sense. Now we all know that a platform like ebay is run by computer algorithms, and these are developed and manipulated toward one end - optimizing revenue from sellers. Nothing sinister about that. We all try to optimize revenue.

Obviously, none of us know the details of how 'ebay' operates, but the generalities are there. We kinda all 'get it'. For some reason, I was dumped into a lower priority 'bucket'. Sure, they give you the occasional 'off-the-charts' day, the same way a casino strings you along until you're just ready to walk away and cut your losses, and then you hit for a few hundred. And you come right back. Until you're broke. Sometimes I get the feeling that ebay is a casino and we're all just hangin in there waiting for a jackpot.

I was going over my messages awhile back, and noticed an offer from ebay to upgrade my store to the next level up. I considered it, since I was paying for insertions each month, and it sorta made sense and I was planning on continuing the expansion. But the subscription fee was 3X what I was paying, so I had to think about it just a bit. Unfortunately, the deadline for the offer was August 28, and I didn't respond in time and the offer expired.

My sales began to decline immediately after that date. Ebay simply dumped me into the 'not worth it' bucket.

Thanks ebay. Two years of representing your company as best as I could, and winning customers with every sale. And in an instant, all that work is tossed into the 'screw you' bucket. Hey, it's your platform, if you think that's the optimum way to harvest revenue from your sellers, more power to ya. But I'm starting to agree with the naysayers - ebay is flailing around trying to compete with Amazon and the new kids, and flailing rhymes with failing, doesn't it.

ed8108 · ‎11-08-2018

Interesting & A well reasoned theory.

siamdao · ‎11-08-2018

One of the best posts I have read in a long time. eBay is drowning and I seriously doubt many sellers are in the mood to throw a lifesaver its way.

coolections · ‎11-08-2018

Interesting reading all the theories. So the new one for the day is if you do not purchase a store Ebay hides your listings. Either that or Ebay just does not let buyers buy your stuff when the do a search lowest price and see it. OK

membersinceaug2001 · ‎11-09-2018

I had an anchor store 11 years ago until fees became 100%, so it must not only be the store thing.

Shouldn't be long before someone comes along to spout the "clothing is over saturated" spiel.

I've been looking at some of the old-time sellers on here who have 20,000+ items listed and only sell a handful a day. Not even selling enough to pay listing fees.

fashunu4eeuh · ‎11-09-2018

Hi, you have been successfully selling for two years, growing your business, and hit a dry spell that cannot be explained easily. In an effort to understand the problem, you theorize that eBay would willingly forgo months of Final Value fees it would have otherwise collected from your healthy sales, in favor of a punitive response to your decision to not upgrade your store.

What would eBay gain from such an action? If you don’t do well, eBay loses your income stream. Why would they want that?

tunicaslot · ‎11-09-2018

@membersinceaug2001 wrote:
I had an anchor store 11 years ago until fees became 100%, so it must not only be the store thing.

Shouldn't be long before someone comes along to spout the "clothing is over saturated" spiel.

I've been looking at some of the old-time sellers on here who have 20,000+ items listed and only sell a handful a day. Not even selling enough to pay listing fees.

I'm the one that is going to spout that clothing is an iversaturated category! Take a look at the TH knit hat - 65 others are selling the same thing - 61 items sold - but look at the prices - OP is on the high end. Under armour is still a good seller - but many on here are now selling it and there are stores in most of the outlets as well as stores like Kohl's selling it where it's always 25% off.

The OP did well for a couple of years - but things change. As a product becomes more popular - that product is not only going to be sold by more sellers here - creating competition - they are going to lose sales to B&M stores that begin to carry the product.

I've been thru this before with many items that were great sellers one year - but then tanked the next. A seller always has to be one step ahead of their competition. You enjoy the run while it's good but have to realize that the public moves onto something else every couple of years. Columbia used to be a hot item - but that spot was taken over by North Face who now faces compeition from Patagonia which is the hot item now. Columbia is pretty much relegated to the poor man's version of Patagonia.

futuretomorrow · ‎11-09-2018

@coolections

It's a rather reasonable theory actually since Bonanza used to do this openly without hiding it. eBay tends to be slower strategically so without evidence one can "assume" they may have finally looked at their store data and potential declines and determined that buyers are not the only ones that need nudging.

Were you ever on Bonanza? Did you see the way they did it? Since I've posted this here before maybe eBay got the idea to look at their seller flow from me and anyone else who may have posted the same so they just finally figured it out on their own. It's logical actually and if I owned a platform I would do the same thing if I was beholden to Wall Street. If we were private I would not do this to my sellers and let the system of buying and selling work more organically. I don't think Wenig et al has that option. Not if they want to continue to have jobs at least.

This mind you is all a huge assumption since eBay has never confessed publicly to doing this or made their site actions as transparent as Bonanza did.

The truth has few friends but many enemies.
No one is perfect, though a mirror and the right clothes may make some think otherwise.

amysncfinds · ‎11-09-2018

I have been on here for 17 years now and I can tell you Ebay unfortuantaly has gotten greedy with the sellers profits and wanted more. We use to be protected now it is all about the buyers and the buyers can lie, steal and cheat a seller out any way they want and Ebay will stand behind them. I loved Ebay at the beginning and I have given it a chance all these years with all the changes of CEO's and their brillant ideas NOT. I have carried my store over to Bonanza and Etsy also with some better results it is a shame but when I do my taxes at the end of the year I zero out with all the fees and free shipping I give out so it bumps us down to the lower tax bracket but I should be thriving and succeeding with Ebay but they can't compete with Amazon they don't have it. It is a dog eat dog world and we as sellers are being torn apart. I do hope everyone has great sales but I will not give my stuff away to make a sale. I wish you the best again in your store and everyone else.

no-plain-white-envelopes · ‎11-09-2018

I dumped my Anchor Store back at the renewal in April and received the same offer you did OP. My sales have also tanked 50% a month since then. So I can agree you may have figured it out.

tunicaslot · ‎11-09-2018

Do people realize when you make statements about how well you're doing elsewhere it's very easy to see exactly how well you are doing there ?? The only people who may be doing better are those selling on Amazon - depending on the category or on Poshmark where much more work is needed to maintain sales and it's a younger aged buyer.

orangehound · ‎11-09-2018

@tunicaslot wrote:
Do people realize when you make statements about how well you're doing elsewhere it's very easy to see exactly how well you are doing there ??

No it is not always easy to see exactly how well a seller is doing on here. If a seller is using the "out-of-stock" option on their account, you see only a fraction of their sales.

tunicaslot · ‎11-09-2018

orange - I can check the other sites as well as social media and can see exactly how well those who profess to be doing gangbuster sales on other sites are actually doing - I'm not talking about Ebay. And these are sellers selling OAK - not multiples.

orangehound · ‎11-09-2018

@maimaimai90 wrote:
I was going over my messages awhile back, and noticed an offer from ebay to upgrade my store to the next level up. I considered it, since I was paying for insertions each month, and it sorta made sense and I was planning on continuing the expansion. But the subscription fee was 3X what I was paying, so I had to think about it just a bit. Unfortunately, the deadline for the offer was August 28, and I didn't respond in time and the offer expired.

My sales began to decline immediately after that date. Ebay simply dumped me into the 'not worth it' bucket.

We've gotten those same offers, and turned them down .... our sales went up. So your theory is not true.

@maimaimai90 wrote:

So naturally, it was time to expand. As I sell mostly men's clothing, maybe 'summer slowdown' wasn't the best time to expand, but I increased my listings about 40 or 50 percent in July, and sales increased by about 35%. Right on target. I did the same in August, with good results. It was my best month on ebay. Now with the summer doldrums behind us and more listings than ever before in my store, September should continue the trend. Not so fast.

September saw a 25% decline in sales. October was equally bad, and November - which I anticipated as being the best month of the year - has so far been horrible. I'm currently on pace to equal my year-low January sales when I had less than half the items listed.

You didn't say ... were you still adding new items at the same rate in September, October and November? On eBay, if you list in-demand items with good prices, you should expect the vast majority of your sales in the first few weeks after a new listing. The longer an item sits on the eBay shelves, the less likely it will sell ... for many sellers, their inventory eventually gets clogged with these "nobody-wants-them-at-any-price" items, and they start to lament that sales are down. This is why you need a strategy of not only listing items, but purging items.

luckythewinner · ‎11-09-2018

@membersinceaug2001 wrote:
Shouldn't be long before someone comes along to spout the "clothing is over saturated" spiel.

If one person offers a theory based entirely on circumstantial evidence, why criticize people who offer another theory based entirely on circumstantial evidence?

My observations are pretty simple:

a) How does eBay accomplish all this? Are there really that many buyers who shop only by Best Match and who don't search by price?

b) If the goal was to encourage a higher store level, why decrease the seller's sales? The OP was already paying insertion fees above his store subscription - so wouldn't increasing the seller's sales make it more attractive for him to upgrade?

c) Does anyone really think that eBay would burn the bridge and destroy a seller based solely on the seller's response to a single store upgrade offer?