Once a week my sales drop as if a switch was hit. Anyone else with this problem???

[markej67]

All year I have had record sales months.  I'm a TRP, I list every day, I promote all my listings, I ship daily using    E-Bay labels.   I'm an active store.  I'm averaging $200 a day in sales.  I sell books priced $10-100 dollars. 

MY FRUSTRATIONS:  #1. Every week, the day varies, I have a $10 to $80 day.  #2.  I can have a good $200 day, but sales come in groups.   I might have several sales in the early morning hours and then nothing the rest of the day or perhaps not until late at night.  Sometimes I have no sales all day and several in the evening.   It's as if a light switch is turned on and off.   Several times a month I have $300 - $500 days.  when that happens, I get consistent sales every hour or so all day long. 

I've heard about being 'capped' but this should not apply to me.  I used to have a store with 7.500 books.  Two years ago, I downsized, delisted common books, changed my business model and began promoting.  I now only have 2.500 books on more desirable topics.   When I call E-Bay support they say there is nothing wrong and my items are visible.     IS ANYONE ELSE HAVING THIS PROBLEM???    

[selsa84]

Just wanna say kudos on your listings. You have some great books. Excellent pics and fair prices.  I buy books and am glad I ran across your posting here. Hope things get better for you. 

[12345jamesstamps]

I have the same problem. Its strange. I'll have no sales for a day or two....then a few days with only International buyers and then the rest of the days with only domestic buyers. 

And of course, the fee is higher on an International sale vs. a domestic sale.

I had a great August.....but the last week of August like 2 sales. So strange.

Thankfully, I have repeat buyers who keep buying from me.

And yea, not promoting anything lately. I know if I promoted more would sell but then my profit margin would be rather low. So, I up to listing all the time.

[markej67]

I hear you, I have 700 repeat buyers and they keep me going.  I send them offers and that helps a lot with sales.  I promote at 4%    I have few international sales.  This week  I saw on YouTube a Canadian guy said he paid all the international fees at purchase but when he went to get his items they made him pay the duty fees again.  It's a hassle to get reimbursed so he stopped buying on e-bay.  

[markej67]

Thanks,  my repeat buyers save me on bad sales days!!!

[yuzuha]

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@markej67 wrote:

MY FRUSTRATIONS:  #1. Every week, the day varies, I have a $10 to $80 day.  #2.  I can have a good $200 day, but sales come in groups.   I might have several sales in the early morning hours and then nothing the rest of the day or perhaps not until late at night.  Sometimes I have no sales all day and several in the evening.   It's as if a light switch is turned on and off.   Several times a month I have $300 - $500 days.  when that happens, I get consistent sales every hour or so all day long.   

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As someone who has worked retail sales for more than 10 years, that's completely normal. You can have a $15,000 day followed by a $3,000 day in retail. The running joke in my store is that as soon as the supervisor says "I'm going on break" because things have been slow for the past hour, we'll suddenly have 15 people walk into the store at once. Things can be dead all day and then suddenly you get a crazy rush at the end of the day.

Anyone who expects any sort of consistency in sales doesn't actually know anything about sales.

[byrd69er]

Having sales just abruptly stop is not uncommon at all. Sometimes it's followed by a spike that outweighs the drop. It's been that way for many years. The thing to do is take a vacation from Ebay until things seem to be somewhat back to normal again....and then flood your account with listings. List list list. You want to be ready to ride the wave that will come.  Seriously.

That's my experience.  Your results may vary, maybe even be better than mine.

[bonjourami]

Ebay has always been cyclical, but many sellers wont believe that.

[byrd69er]

I know well how that goes. I visit a friend weekly at his brick and mortar store just to catch up on things, see what's new, complain about events, have a cigarette...blah blah blah. There's dead days, and days when I step in and help customers when the traffic gets knee deep.

[angelno9]

I've heard about being 'capped' but this should not apply to m

Just because you've heard about it does not mean it is real. eBay cant stop buyers from clicking the BUY button. 

[nilis13]

Yes, all the time.

[hurryagain]

I've been in the retail business for over 30 years and there are slow months but overall day to day/week to week sales are smooth and predictable for the most part.  I do B&M and open markets and this is always the case.

The B&M store and the open market are completely different in what is sold and it's customers and STILL, overall sales are smooth and the slow months are predictable.  September through October are slow months...kids back in school and everyone had to buy all of those back to school supplies and clothing and that gets expensive especially if you have more than one child, and again in April probably because all of the people who owe the IRS gotta pay so they tend to slow their purchases.

Other than that it's very predictable more or less... yeah you get the OCCASIONAL weird slow day.

It seems that whether it's Internet sales in general or "just eBay" that seems to have these weird spikes and deep gorges all in a week's timeframe or whatever.  I seem to see a lot of people complain about this type of thing happening here so there must be something to it.

Cycling or throttling???  Or is this how internet sales roll???...who knows except eBay and I doubt that they are in the sharing mood regarding this. 😂

[chapeau-noir]

I've never, in over 20 years of selling on probably (by now) 7 or 8 different sites, had even sales come in at a regular rate. Clumps and bumps - that's the way it is, and I would not think twice about it, but look at the longer picture, how your sales are staking up over a longer term. Don't worry about when they come in, just that they DO come in.

ETA: Fat finger topys

[hurryagain]

See...it might just be an internet sales thing...

[markej67]

This week I so far have made $1000.  One day I had one sale $13.   Today (8pm) only one sale $35.   That seems a little drastic to me for a site with millions of buyers.   I've been on E-Bay 20 years.  Sales were always up n down to a degree.  The differences were much closer.   $200  $120  $225  $189 $160 etc    Not $200  $289  $350  $32  $400 etc.