I know why my sales are down -- I sell items that people want, typically on an impulse -- clothing, shoes, even collectibles. Ebay changed the rules for listing those items -- either pay 30 cents for the BIN privilege or do an auction for free. These are not auction items, and anyone who has bid with the decision to wait for auction end for shipment has been the sole bidder.
I can't afford the listing fee gamble -- I get that 30 cents is only 30 cents. Multiply that by 200 items, and that is $60 for the privilege of no-guarantee-it-will-even-be-seen listings -- and rinse & repeat every 30 days. Ebay gets plenty of money on FVF, especially since they have that nice set-up with the shipping costs too. Unfortunately, though, they can't get any FVF on items that aren't being sold so they would be better off eliminating the category exclusions they so abruptly put into place a couple of months ago!!
Well it will be interesting to see if Ebay takes a hit from less listings in these categories. To be honest, those are the only categories I will search on Ebay for -- anything electronic or hardware has tons of other sites to shop from!!
