Sales are Horrible Scarce. Practically no buyers this year. What is wrong with eBay?

[belle-treasures-n-gifts]

Sales are Horrible Scarce. Practically no buyers this year. What is wrong with eBay?

Is it just me or has anyone else had issues with incredibly slow sales this Christmas Season? 

I have seen no TV Commercials for eBay.

Etsy, on the other hand, I see TV ads throughout the day including several Prime Time Commercials and Ads on several different networks.

This year's sales have been the worst we have experienced in the past 10 years of selling on eBay.

"Is", or "was" there a method we missed out on?

One would think that after 10 yrs we would have this pretty much figured out.

Thanks for any input.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone!!!!

[reallynicestamps]

I've read that AZ makes more money from Prime memberships (now $129Cdn a year here) than from  profits on actual sales.

[pburn]

---

@moondogblues wrote:

"Ebay has all types of security programs in place and I've never heard of it being hacked."

eBay was HORRIBLY hacked a number of years ago...google it.

---

As suggested, I Googled the 2014 eBay hacking incident:

“There is no evidence of impact on any eBay customers,” Miller said. “We don’t know that they decrypted the passwords because it would not be easy to do.”

She said the hackers gained access to 145 million records of which they copied “a large part”. Those records contained passwords as well as email addresses, birth dates, mailing addresses and other personal information, but not financial data such as credit card numbers.

Still, eBay said it had not seen any indication of increased fraudulent activity on its flagship site and that there was no evidence its PayPal online payment service had been breached.

[tobaccocardyahoo]

In any place you decide to sell,  what you decide to offer and the appropriateness of it to the site defines how well you do.

My 22 year old Ebay account is now well stocked with collectible items selected in my own idiosyncratic manner. It was minimally used when I had a huge inventory active on The River. That site was preferred because it brought higher sales prices, higher sales and a higher quality buyer.

It is no longer my preferred site because it does not bring the above, and is now higher hassle if you are selling collectible items.

I do not list products which lots of other Ebay sellers are offering, and which are priced below my set limits.

This Christmas Season has exceeded past seasons in sales for me. I have had merchandise enough people want, and back up stock when it sells. Prices are higher because my competitors for specific categories have clearly had problems finding desirable items to sell.

Some of my competitors seem to be buying from me for sale elsewhere or later sales here.

I am not one of those people who always look on the bright side. I am a crabby old man.

Merry Christmas.

[northernsurplus50]

  Ever since the divorce of  Paypal and the introduction of Managed Payments , my sales have dropped off drastically .  A lot of my buyers were also sellers and only spent the money they had made on ebay , to make purchases , using Paypal .  I know with Paypal gone ; I may of made 5 purchases over 2 years , no longer 2-3  purchases  per week .

[blurryrobot]

Yeah, my Christmas sales were really bad too.   Hope you do better soon. 

[gail5176]

How were your sales in 2023?

[frecklesfinery88]

Exactly! My phone went off on Christmas eve and I jumped. 

Hang in and Hang on. That is all we can do.

Merry Christmas

[5594shelleys]

It will never be "like it used to be", and in fact never was.

 Au contraire, it used to be like that, and in fact always was.... until 2017 and forward.

 -eBayer since 1997.

[mindeyefirestorm.2]

This place.. in the current way of ebay thinking of sales and shareholders

priority .. Will come back and haunt them.. 

Sadly they are only beholden to shareholder..

Yes, Without Sellers and Buyers.. Stocks in ebay  will be just toilet paper..

Sellers are mistreated buyers at times are mistreated..

Pushing payment policys without sellers knowledge or buyers.

Just push the button and change everything..

Both sellers and buyers should have a voice.

Ebay , must have positive management that cares.

Other wise this place will end like vhs no longer needed.

[gloryglorygifts]

Ebay is not the only marketplace that they have infiltrated. I bought items from Bed Bath and Beyond and was really po'ed when I got the tracking notice that one of the items was coming from China. Ordered it on the 5th and it got here on the 23rd. THANK GOD, it came via DHL in the U.S. because it went thru Georgia and their post offices are a complete and utter disaster. They do lie and use U.S. addresses to sign up for a site and then ship from China. It is beyond ridiculous.

[gloryglorygifts]

I'm sorry that your sales are down this year. What worked 10 years ago on here will not work now. Competition is stiff and search engines have been tweaked to death to no avail, but I am a firm believer in self-promoting off ebay. Just about the only coupon I will use on here is sending a small savings on watched items. Other than that, I do not do promoted listings, nor send out any other coupons to use later. I have a Google business listing, YELP, Merchant Circle, Pinterest, Facebook and I use my personal Twitter and LinkedIn pages as well and all have links either to this store or the website. Use social media, and free listings, to bring your beautiful products to people's attention. It's not ebay's job to sell your products. That's on you. Ebay is just a place to list your items to make it easy for people to purchase them but you have to promote them.

Good luck to you and may 2024 be a banner year for you! 

[deltilogical]

"It's not ebay's job to sell your products."

Agree 100% but when Ebay basically blocks my listings with layers of ads, that doesn't help me.  Sellers should be getting a piece of the revenue from sales linked from their ad pages, I mean listings, it might make up for some of the lost sales.  It gets tiring to wade through all that noise again and again.  It is not fun to shop.  As a buyer.  i get tired quickly.

[jasoheat_0]

you forgot customer / buyer retention 

i believe they have lost well over 25% to date , from 179 million down to 132 million ... no signs of stopping 

[drbriliant]

My sales were good to very good for 18 years consistently  up until The beginning of April of 2024.  Ive had no sales for 4 weeks! Unheard of.   Ebay changed the listing format so that we sellers could not see individual "the pay to promote your listing button" on the seller listing page anymore and all we could see were NO SALES and other peoples listings which clogged up my own page.    I know theres a lot of data mining going on and graphs and charts and selling of information to other advertisers.   I am constantly getting unwanted ads from being "tracked" all over.    We're being FEE-D to death too.   I mean when I "made money" once upon a time this year, the final value fees I paid to ebay at the end were big.  Ebay was makin good money from my sales and so they are actually losing money now by not allowing sellers to make money.  I don't see any good business desicions being made at the top, do you?  Ruining long standing loyal ebay sellers businesses is not lucrative for anyone.   If you want to be another disatrous "Google Ads" type of chaotic ad campaign world well you're doing great but thats not what the majority of YOUR CUSTOMERS, WE THE SELLERS WANT AND PAY FOR.   Sellers are leaving ebay in droves you know.   AND AMAZON is AMAZON.  We don't need another one.  We want the unique, successful, old fashioned ebay collectibles, antique online auction back with our freedom to be individuals who offer items that people look for at competitive prices.  STOP the behind our backs selling of our data and ad trackers to other big corporations .   WE NEED SALES AGAIN PLEASE!

[kh-shakhib]

Hi everyone,

Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.

Thank you for understanding.