ebay. Pulse Check. No sales, no traffic.

[yousave2005]

 Ten years on ebay. This is th first time our store and listing fees are higher than final value fees on sales. Not good.  We still have plenty of beautiful things that were selling like hot cakes just a few years ago. The inventory is amazing but no traffic is so down.  It's like a ghost town. The sales are 95% down comparing to 2012.

What is going on? 

[coolections]

@themagicmountain

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@themagicmountain wrote:

No matter how you feel about Ebay, people like Carl Icahn are some of the reason for the problems in many businesses. He and his fellow criminal WALL STREET FRIENDS are raiders, business destroyers, and inside traders. They lie so they can ruin businesses and bring them down for profit or buy them cheap and deplete them and people like everyone posting here, and that means the little guys that get brought down too. They have the advantage of friends in the media to lie for them and promote their activities.  Never trust a media that works for people like this. They are spinning tales to trick people into supporting their crimes.

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Wow. That is some good insider info you have to spread. You must be friends with some of the top execs to know all that. You should take your story to the news, they would love to share it.

[tenbigdogs]

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@coolections wrote:

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Wow. That is some good insider info you have to spread.

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Hi again @coolections, It's great we're getting to be such good friends.  But bummer, these boards aren't really an insult free for all.  There are rules.  The eBay Community staff take them pretty seriously.  Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the Community Rules of Engagement, particularly Rule 4.   Again, good luck!

eBay Community Rules of Engagement

https://community.ebay.com/t5/About-the-Community/Rules-of-Engagement/m-p/26164369?nobounce

[thatsallfolks]

I have a question. How is this response:

“Wow. That is some good insider info you have to spread. You must be friends with some of the top execs to know all that. You should take your story to the news, they would love to share it.”

any different in tone from this one:

”You're so very welcome. Always a pleasure to encounter someone with so much opinion. And I'm sure your buyers pay in more ways than one.”

?

[coolections]

tenbigdogs wrote:

Hi @coolections, Are all of your 1.5 starter posts so amusing?  One so rarely encounters someone with such a wide range of authoritative information at their fingertips, one who knows it all. 

Oh, ps -- when Victor states something, no one here, well, no one respected here, calls him a liar.  Good luck!

@tenbigdogs

Or this one ? Please tenbigdogs, keep the topic on topic.

[rschissler]

"if all the sellers stopped listing"

You make it sound like that is a possibility, well it's not, it's a fantasy pipe dream, not going to happen. It's more like one seller leaves, two more take its place.  There are so many sellers selling the same thing, that buyers never have a problem buying what they want.

I know you don't want to hear it, but if there were more buyers, sellers would make more money, and so would eBay.  It really is buyers that control eBay's destiny.  More listings don't mean more sales.  If all the buyers stopped buying, how much money would sellers make? 

[jasperrocky]

Yep, our shop went from 3 to 4 sales per day to 3 to 4 sale per week overnight during this latests update this October, frankly we are pretty fed up. Did all the dances they requiring for the ads and even had to pay a tech consultant to help comply with all the gobbledygook they now are requiring. This was a highly regressive update. What is really going on here?

[thatsallfolks]

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@nawlinsron2 wrote:
Nice try...sellers as a WHOLE. Not individual sellers.
Reading comprehension is a gift.

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No need to insult when your point is expressed poorly.

And you’re still wrong. If half of eBay’s sellers disappeared, their revenue might drop 10%, because most of those “lost” sales would just be picked up by the remaining sellers. In fact, the remaining sellers might get better prices for their items. If half of the buyers disappeared, revenue would drop by 30-40%, because there are no “replacement” buyers waiting to take their place. Some stuff would still sell, but at a lower price, and other listings wouldn’t sell at all.

eBay’s success is buyer-driven. Any seller who thinks otherwise is delusional.

[nawlinsron2]

Sounds like ebay should sell stuff on their own ala The Big A.
Cut out the middleman...keep ALL the profit.

[dcintennessee]

Count me a member of the @victorjunkman55 fan club. Your posts have helped me many times. On the other hand, @coolections brings up an interesting sort of chicken:egg debate. I agree that eBay will never run out of sellers OR buyers, no matter which is considered more responsible for revenue. Let's call sellers the chickens. Buyers AND the items for sale are the eggs, since without chickens you've got no eggs. It's my clunky analogy, so I'll just set it up the way I want to...

Those currently guarding the hen house have far different production goals from those that made eBay great to begin with. eBay's (d)evolving procedures and marketing practices have resulted in a coop full of lower-quality chickens (sellers) and a bunch of bad eggs (buyers & products). Those good, faithful chickens? Often left out in the cold, and understandably heading off to roost elsewhere. There will always be more chickens & more eggs, but "more" doesn't mean better.

The eBay farm IS changing, and has gotten kinda stinky, especially for those who have been here a long time. I was away from eBay for several years, and Lordy mercy, the culture shock upon my return! For now, I'm learning my way around again, while trying to stay out of the poo. Following this forum is like putting on my hip boots, to stay as clean as possible in the process.

[yousave2005]

The last two weeks since the end of October not a single sale..........the traffic completely faded too.  Paying listing and store fees on no sales fenture. 

[nowthatsjustducky]

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@coolections wrote:

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@victorjunkman55 wrote:

my sales on other venues are booming.

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They all say that.

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Just out of idle curiosity last night, I ran some numbers comparing my eBay activity with my Etsy activity.

Now here on the 'bay, I actually have 5 different Basic stores, and 2 non store accounts, which gives me a grand total of 1350 listings each month with no insertion fees.  Over there, I will list no more than 100 per month; and that is only after I have had a net earnings of $20 for that month already.  Otherwise, I initially limit myself to 50 listings per month, just so that the insertion fees don't sneak up on me; so $10 per month at 20 cents for a listing that is live for up to 4 months, and up to an additional $10 worth after I have netted at least $20.

The past few months, with just assorted vintage items (toys, electronics, video games, and anything else that is from 1997 or earlier that I feel is worth listing), my Etsy sales on just the one single account I have there have been making up at least 1/3 or more of my monthly profits.

I mean, although I am okay with the slow but still steady sales I get here, it still says a lot about a venue when a site with less than 1/10 of the amount of product by the same seller is responsible for 1/3 or more of the earnings.

[getzappy]

I have been on eBay as a seller on and off for a long time

but I have noticed a reduction in traffic 

i like eBay and want ebay to succeed because I have shopped and sold on eBay since the beginning 

Use anything but Amazon

Amazon is the enemy of every American business and every working class American

Bozo reminds me of Rent and Stimpy wanting to rule the world

[311revolution]

Net neutrality/Corporate take over of small business

https://youtu.be/ibHCenqCvKA

[nowthatsjustducky]

huh.  I don't remember them trying to rule the world (unless you mean Stimpy's dream of being the world leader in Rubber Nipple sales).  Now if it was Pinky and the Brain you were talking about instead...  NARF!!!

[311revolution]

"...prohibit ISPs from blocking, throttling, or prioritizing Internet websites and applications in exchange for payment."

CORPORATE TAKE OVER OF NET NEUTRALITY

https://youtu.be/ibHCenqCvKA