eBay

debk255 · ‎04-28-2023

Been on ebay for 18 yrs. top rated seller with 100% approval ratings. Over the course of that time, I've grown and added many new product lines & put thousands of dollars in new items online here this year alone.

This year it seems is the year that ebay has died, for in spite of discounts, and sales, I am now lucky if I get 100 dollars in sales in a week! (used to be 3-5x that much) I have 1400+ current active listings on ebay and not a single sale in 2 days now? WTH is going on here? I do price searches for similar items. Our prices are competitive, nearly always lower than others. I share several product posts daily on facebook, instagram ect. (free advertising) Still nothing. Some say its the new algorithms, but how do we counter or fix that if this is the problem? (you'd THINK ebay would be more on top of this issue) I'm not going to be able to hang on here if things don't perk up. 😢 Open to suggestions.

vannyam2012 · ‎08-20-2023

I think Temu is the culprit.

mr_lincoln · ‎08-20-2023

@crewnail wrote:
It's most likely the economy, blame Biden or whoever is making these stupid decisions. Food and gas prices have doubled since the election was stolen. People just don't have money to spend on things they collect or like, which is mainly what I sell. I'm getting way less views, watchers and sales.

@crewnail

Actually, for what I sell it is not the economy ... if it were then I would be wallowing in surplus inventory which has not happened ... the short answer is that the issue lies with eBay ...

Regards,
Mr. Lincoln - Community Mentor

aldelbertmatthew · ‎08-20-2023

We are experiencing the "new normal" for eBay right now and people need to move fast to Poshmark/Mercari. In addition, wall street investors need to be contacted about the problems regarding this site. It's broken beyond broken and I'd even go as far as to suggest it's grossly negligent for a CEO to allow the site to have fallen this far, this quickly.

There's people with thousands or even tens of thousands of items who suddenly last month (July 17th for many of them to be exact) started having the worst sales of their lives after years or even decades of good to strong sales on eBay. Despite what a few people on this forum keep saying, that is in no way or shape normal. There's been way too many complaints from long time sellers and too much evidence of bugs and other abnormal issues with eBay. Trying to claim this is just mass delusion is goofy behavior.

I've gone from $15,000+ in sales every 90 days to dropping off to $9,000 and rapidly declining all in the span of one month all while selling the same clothing brands and items that have very high sellthrough rates like LuluLemon, True Religion and On Cloud sneakers. How do brands with 80% or even 100% sellthrough drop to below 50% this quickly but are unaffected on other resale apps?

aldelbertmatthew · ‎08-20-2023

I've had a few people on this board try to suggest I should "be open to more customers" when I explained I block people for extreme lowball offers. (Something that's becoming increasingly common since the site began experiencing major problems last month.) Even after I explained accepting such offers would put me into the red on sales and engaging with people like that is always a waste of time because they simply want the item for unrealistically low prices. The VERY few times I've given in to a lowballer, they immediately turned around and tried to hit me with an "Item Not Described" full well knowing it would far more than what the item's worth to ship it back in an effort to keep it.

I can only assume advice like that is from people who are getting their inventory for free with super low overhead and shipping is either free or being heavily supplemented.

So yes, if your inventory isn't selling. Donating it for a tax write off, garage sale or even throwing it away is better than trying to do a fire sale.

selsa84 · ‎08-20-2023

When I'm working listing I do between 1200-1700 a week with the average at about 1400 a week. I'm at 850 this week with only one sale today. Weekends have always been strong for me with most of my sales being sat and sun. But not anymore. My only good sale was Sat was 150 which I usually do 2 to 3 times that on Sat. July 17th is also when things started to look weird on stats. Even when I raised my pls to 15% sales were horrendous.

aldelbertmatthew · ‎08-20-2023

In desperation, I raised my promoted listing percentages to the suggested number on all my listings about two weeks ago. This put some of them at 10-16%. A few were even above the suggested number.

I wasn't even getting views or watchers for an an entire 24 hour period about two full days after doing so. That shouldn't be possible given the high sellthrough brands I'm selling like Lululemon. I refuse to take people seriously that say this isn't an eBay problem. The CEO is guilty of gross negligence to allow things to fail this horribly.

wilsonharborsales · ‎08-20-2023

I raised my promoted as high as 50%. It had no effect on daily gross sales volume. Some sellers like Cayleigh-Elaine post their weekly sales. In many cases their Poshmark and Etsy sales are outpacing their eBay sales.

just remember that Amazon went through some growing pains a few years back as well and they came back stronger than ever. Hopefully Q4 is strong. Many of us are hanging on by a thread.

norskmediashop · ‎08-20-2023

in the same boat exactly as you. weekends use to be the strongest, this weekend 2 sales.

it feels like ebay has jumped ship and left the site to sink. its just not working anymore, other platforms have been flowing fine, bonanza wont even start on the mess of problems over there, but others have been fine.

people have either bailed and quit using ebay, or the site has serious issues. Also inflation etc could play a bit into it, but not when other sites are performing normal. Why are many of us paying a store subscription fee anymore? And then when there are no funds to cover it or just enough to cover it, anything you made goes right back to ebay or out of your bank account, its really becoming a headache. When there is a normal or good flow of course its not so much of a worry, but this year,,,,each month has gotten harder and worse . Like many others here after years of being successful and doing fine, pretty soon decisions are going to have to be made on going forward.

vintagecraze50 · ‎08-20-2023

Yes the weekend sales have dropped quite a bit for us as well. About half of what we used to do.

mr_lincoln · ‎08-20-2023

@vintagecraze50 wrote:
Yes the weekend sales have dropped quite a bit for us as well. About half of what we used to do.

@vintagecraze50

Try the last 18 months where only 2 months set new high dollar sales (that means NO growth) ... or today when I checked my Views I am at 53.4% with 2 or fewer Views ... and oh by the way, I am in week 2 of my current 30 day PLS campaign ...

The last August that set a new high dollar record was 2021 BEFORE the launch of PLA and the new Views counting system ...

I am behind by a lot on the month ... it's really disappointing to be honest and with all my testing the issue points to the venue sorry to say ...

Regards,
Mr. Lincoln - Community Mentor

vintagecraze50 · ‎08-20-2023

I am so sorry to hear this for you. I am hoping that when Christmas comes there will be a lot of people coming back for the trains and the train set stuff you have. I really think especially during the summer months as well people are just too busy with vacations, and other outdoor type activities that they are not sitting in front of a computer shopping. With the colder weather, less vacationing etc we all might see a pick up in sales. We are always slower than normal ALWAYS during the summer for what we sell anyway and we are hoping that when the 4th quarter comes things will pick up. Hang on everybody, and my friend Mr Lincoln. We have all weathered a very distressing year as well with the cost of living still up too high for a lot of people who buy here in the past.

vintagecraze50 · ‎08-20-2023

Not only that, when is the next weather disaster going to come and disrupt millions of people lives. We live in a very very uncertain world right now.

mr_lincoln · ‎08-20-2023

@vintagecraze50 wrote:
I am so sorry to hear this for you. I am hoping that when Christmas comes there will be a lot of people coming back for the trains and the train set stuff you have. I really think especially during the summer months as well people are just too busy with vacations, and other outdoor type activities that they are not sitting in front of a computer shopping. With the colder weather, less vacationing etc we all might see a pick up in sales. We are always slower than normal ALWAYS during the summer for what we sell anyway and we are hoping that when the 4th quarter comes things will pick up. Hang on everybody, and my friend Mr Lincoln. We have all weathered a very distressing year as well with the cost of living still up too high for a lot of people who buy here in the past.

@vintagecraze50 Thank you ... the issue I face is that the venues I acquire my inventory from are not suffering from slow sales and prices are crazy ... and it's not just trains but other categories ...

Yes, trains are a lot of what I sell but the other things aren't doing much either ...

Regards,
Mr. Lincoln - Community Mentor

vintagecraze50 · ‎08-20-2023

Yes, some have no problem selling things and even at very high prices. I agree.

vintagecraze50 · ‎08-20-2023

You must have repeat buyers being on here for so Long. We have some very good one’s. Ever thought of going through your past list of great buyers and sending them a coupon? I may be doing that soon.