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eBay is a lost cause - Why I'm leaving
I was selling really well for a while in the video games category. I had around 200-500 listings and would sell 5-10 items a day. Promoted listings came out and my sales and impressions tanked by around 80%. I called eBay and complained about my listings being hidden so their solution was to give me a week as if my items were promoted. I already knew at that moment it was so they could sell me on how great promoted listing was. I was not happy but my sales did boost for about a week. After that my sales continued to tank and i was only selling 1-2 items a week and only on weekends for some reason. So i bit, i tried to promote listings. I put a standard 3% promotion across all listings. My sales were back to where they were before all of this and it was going pretty well so i left it how it was. Slowly but surely my sales were tanking again to around 1-2 a week and only on weekends and eventually going to 2 weeks without a sale. I gave up and decided to try something new and ended my subscription and unlisted all my items. Good riddance.
kh-stanley1
·2 years agoHi everyone,
Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread HERE if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.
Thank you for understanding.
isaiah53-57
·2 years ago@retro_games_exchange_llc
Thank you for your show of self respect and righteous indignation. Actions like this will keep you sane and help others from being exploited in the long run - If more people did this it would quicken the demise of offensive institutions, or cause them to change their ways for the betterment of their patrons.
We gradually stopped listing before the site really ramped up promoted listings, seeing clearly where things would lead with this heinous money grab disguised as an advertising program - A program with virtually no limits or no control that feeds off the desperation and paranoia of the sites average seller - which tend to be people with little business acumen who believe they can just simply add all their costs to their already bloated items prices with no effect - or those who became deeply vested without paying attention or caring about the sites trends and path, that now simply don't feel they have a choice but to cave to what we believe is borderline extortion.
Healthy competition is good - It drives prices down and keeps quality up - The effects of this program is the opposite of that, driving prices up and quality down, running off savvy buyers and sellers on one hand, and exploiting or trapping unsophisticated buyers and sellers on the other. Eventually though all patrons have limitations or awakenings to injustice and slowly but surely this site and its patrons will continue to pay for their greed(a conundrum in itself)...
nooksandcranniesllc
·2 years agoI am right there with you, ebay policies and bowing to scammers is really out of hand, a buyer made purchases from me and then demanded refunds and discounts they saw on Mercari. They then left a negative because I would not give them the refund they demanded, did not even try to hide it in the feedback comment ,blatant extortion yet ebay refused to remove the negative. I reported the buyer several times for their behavior and ebay did nothing. This is one of the many reasons why good sellers are leaving and buyers are following them. I have since moved all of my listings to Mercari and I am doing much better there,as my buyers are following me. Mercari does not bow to scammers, if a scam is verified, the scammer is booted off the site immediately, they also only give 3 days for a return request, not 30 or more like ebay does, I have left ebay and will not be returning
mike_jayroe
·3 years agoI had 22 sales in Jan, 11 Sales in Feb. and 8 in March.
Due to a news report I saw about gas prices going up I wonder if I will sell anything in the coming months.
pls-consignments
·3 years agoBeen at this for 24 years now so I have years of data to compare. I can truly say that this downturn is legit and more extreme than the numerous times before. If you're new to the eBay selling party, I would strongly recommend a back-up plan. As it looks so far, eBay 2023 will impact many current, even long-time sellers, putting many at risk.
chapeau-noir
·3 years ago@mr_lincoln Strangely, I decided to renew a campaign I had running for some time. My sales went right into the toilet, and I usually have very steady sales 😠They're coming back again a bit, but it tells me that I can't predict much of anything these days except if I list regularly, almost daily, I sell - I think that's a reflection of being a small seller in a supersaturated market (clothing and accessories) rather than that being the only way to list - I'm like the little kid in a crowd that has to keep bouncing up and down yelling so I don't get trampled underfoot.
mr_lincoln
·3 years ago@chapeau-noir
It's like a game of Sales Whack-a-mole trying to figure out the right approach to at least maintaining sales. I am not in saturated categories and outside eBay when I acquire inventory competition is steep. It's certainly not the economy, otherwise I would have a surplus of inventory acquired at an extremely good price.
I am on day 7 of NO BIN sales ... all sales have come from Auctions. The last time this happened was right after the GTC mandate was rolled out ... Sellers notice this kind of stuff. So I have been switching stuff to Auction format that I normally never would try selling that way ... yep, and some of those items already have bids.
Here's the problem with the agenda to have most Sellers engaged in the Pay to Play game ... once they are all willing to pay the extra fees the advantage of promoted (sponsored) listings almost becomes null and void meaning nobody has a real advantage because everyone is doing it. So, in basic terms eBay enjoys an across the board higher FVF on the vast majority of sales regardless of what they are.
I commented earlier that it's almost like there is too much for sale on the venue so having a large amount of items buried in search doesn't affect the bottom line for them like it would have with fewer items for sale on the site.
IMHO there is definitely some intentional manipulation going on ...
chapeau-noir
·3 years ago@mr_lincoln - there's no doubt that there will be an end-point to promoted listings - it happened with Google when it became too expensive to bid on clicks, and it happened here with the old Featured Listings campaign in the early oughts when the featured listings became so cluttered that the only way to search on anything was to ignore them.
People who keep comparing eBay now with eBay 20 years ago are definitely missing the point that there is so much on this site now that many searches will bring up impossible numbers of listings - you can't get "fair and equal visibility" because it's impossible to put 65,000 listings on page one.
mr_lincoln
·3 years ago@chapeau-noir You are right, this isn't your father's eBay LOL! Or maybe even grandfather's in some cases.
So here it is, many Sellers talking about this new era on eBay and how it is Fee based ontheir approach to Selling and Sellers have to Pay to Play ... so the new PLA Promoted listing campaigns are not for the categories I sell in because they are not saturated in many aspects ... but again today I get the flash page ad for PLA with my categories listed.
The agenda is pretty clear at this point ...
yuzuha
·3 years agoHeck, I remember when I used to be able to look through the entire category I used to collect in in under half an hour! There's absolutely no way I could do that now.
mr_lincoln
·3 years ago@yuzuha Job ONE of course would be finding the category ... good luck.
nuclearomen
·3 years agoGTC sales has dropped since they did the quarterly update, literally (again - since this happens EVERY quarterly "update" when they change things) - not by a few sale from every day to 1-2 every 2 day to 1 every 2-4 days and thus the current week 4 sales. I ended and created a new campaign (as often is needed after their Q updates), nothing, run coupon sales, nothing, sent coupons (with no proof any one actually gets them) - nothing, raised PLS elections - nothing.
The GTC sales especially have been affected. I have talks with several other members privately and ALL have experienced the EXACT same results with their GTC listing. Some are having some luck with auctions (which I don't do). This is about algorithms not buyers, visibility not how many listings.
retro_games_exchange_llc
OP3 years agoI used to get sales like crazy amy time I sent a small price drop to watchers. It would usually be around 5-10% and with only a few items being watched, I'd get some bites. Now, I had around 100 watchers on about 50 items and sent out the deals, not a single sale. There is something going on and it smells fishy.
nuclearomen
·3 years ago@retro_games_exchange_llc yeah...to make that even more trivial (lol), I not only did coupons/markdowns but I also sent those coupons out privately via "Send Coupon" link on Orders page and Groups (approx reach was suppose to be 418) - then sent one out on Newseltter that has 240+ followers/subscribers - and - nothing... not a sale... which leads to believe they never got them. Usually I get sales from that not last week.
glasser
·3 years agoeBay was the original internet disruptor. Back in 1995, people thought no one will make money on the internet. Ads were horrible and no one had a business model. eBay came along and figured out how to make money on the transaction not advertising. That changed everything. Now eBay has become and ad company.
How sad 😞
redlinear
·3 years agoPromotions are an issue. They seem to create a short term "boost", but thats about it.
AND, If everybody is promoting, it's basically same as it was without...just costing everybody more.
Promotion is a pretty neat concept though. For EBay of course....But, for a seller as well. IF, IF, IF it was done in a different manner.
For example, a seller could somehow earn the option for a limited day (30?) promotion....if they wanted to.
Such as...
"Hey, @stevemartin60 ! You have done such a good job at whatever, we here at eBay would like to reward you with the option to Promote 500 of your fixed price listings, that have been running on eBay for 6 months or longer, for 30 days....If you want to." "Keep up the good work and you can do this again in 6 months"
And/Or....Best Match goes hand in hand with Promotions. Get to eBay, run a search, and "best match" is what you see without filtering. (whatever "best match" means???).
It would be nice to run a search and see nothing except a short Filter Selection. (new, used, high to low, low to high, nearest). And the Filter ACTUALLY doing what it says.
stevemartin60
·3 years agoGood stuff. Definitely steps in the right direction!
joseh1445
·3 years agoGood luck to you. In my case, I removed promoted listings on all of my items. As the ebay machine continues to get more greedy. And when I thought the greed was not going to continue, ebay continues to think of more ways to get more money out of every sale.
yuzuha
·3 years agoWere you listing new items regularly, or did you just list a whole bunch of stuff and then let it sit? Because if it's the latter, the results you got aren't surprising.
When you list a whole bunch of stuff, some of the stuff is inevitably going to be more sought after than the rest. The desirable stuff sells first, and then what you're left with is the less desirable stuff that will take longer to move. That's why you need to keep adding new things on a regular basis.
mr_lincoln
·3 years ago@yuzuha
Some Sellers say you have to list everyday. While that may work for some it is not the only way to list items and make sales. I think after 8 years my listing "profile" has not changed. When I acquire inventory I list it. So figure weekly "clumps" of listings over an 8 year period and with steady growth in the early years ... since Covid results have bounced around a bit but then in 2022 I noticed a significant change in PLS results ...
I am confident eBay has listing profiles for every Seller ... BUT I think what is emerging is the "pay to play" agenda for this particular venue and algorithms reward Sellers who use PLS regularly and penalize those who don't.
I will be monitoring my BIN sales for the next few weeks ... we are nearing the end of the quarter this month so maybe sales will increase for a week, we'll see. My next PLS will be probably some time in April in to May.
retro_games_exchange_llc
OP3 years agoI would list around 40 items a week or so. I never slowed down until my sales slowed down and couldn't buy more.
mr_lincoln
·3 years ago@retro_games_exchange_llc
My observations:
-When the GTC mandate rolled out my BIN listings tanked for a period of time Auctions were selling.
-When PLS came out I worked in a system to run one PLS campaign per quarter for 30 days, until 2022 they did well. In 2022 they were horrible
-This year my 1st Quarter PLS was great like prior to 2022
-Historically after every 30 day PLS my BIN sales would tank for a week.
-Now I am concerned because I am well past the week after my PLS and for almost one solid week not a single BIN sale, all sales have been Auction since last Thursday.
-So is the trend you saw and the trends I have sees some type of algorithmic manipulation that allows visibility to increase if a PLS campaign is started? I'm sure it would be denied but at the end of the day Sellers really DO notice significant changes with the categories they sell in. Early this week I switched over 50 BINs to Auction format and oddly some have gotten bids already while the previous BIN formats were at or over a month old ...
-On a certain level there is now too much for sale on eBay which allows a large number of listings to not be seen without hurting the monthly bottom line. So not every sale is important but what is important are sales with higher fees paid to Home Office ... think about it.
isaiah53-57
·3 years agoTHANK YOU!
for putting your self-respect first - for helping to show your outrage at a program that in my humble opinion, can only perceived as a malicious attempt at extortion, whether decidedly or inadvertently. I could see the nefarious nature and endless ways of exploitation of the program as soon as it was introduced and refuse to give them a single cent toward it - I will burn my 7 figure collection before I ever do so...Good thing is, there appears to be an ever-increasing number of principled sellers like yourself who are willing to show their disdain for perceived disrespects by ending their relationship with the company - and this will allow for more eyes on new and upcoming venues that will hasten an inevitable transfer of power due to current and LONG TERM trends and policies that are hard to be perceived as anything other than a lack of user respect and usability of the site.
The shameful attempts to make this malicious program essential are becoming more evident everyday - Look at the new "DYNAMIC AD RATE" that funnels you(by adding a Large Blue "RECOMMENDED" next to it)to choose a rate modifier that allows ebay to change the current percentage to basically WHATEVER they want, by YOU allowing THEM to automatically adjust it "ebay's Daily Suggestion"!!!??? Are you kidding me????
Sad thing is I was not always as informed and cynical as I am now, and if I was a new user on ebay, I may likely go right along with all their "recommendations" that allow for me to give up 25%-30%-35%-40% and even more of my items selling price. And the sadder thing is, once again in this author's humble opinion, if you don't go along with the "recommendations"(as in "I'm gonna make you an offer you can't refuse") then you are slowly and intentionally being forced out.
stainlessenginecovers
·3 years agoAs more and more sellers join the 'internet selling' craze, there will more that will give up 10-15-20% additional to 'be on the top'. They are ok with making $1 instead of $3, but sell 10x more. All about the quantity sold.
Pay to Play has been an industry standard on Search Engines for over a decade. Using the same 'term' was $1 to be at the top (this is for a click to your site and NOT for a sale) and 5 years later, that same 'term' is $6 to be on the first page of Google.
Sad thing is you are leaving, but there will still be 100 other sellers selling what you sold.
Buyers will not go without.
eBay will not go without a sale or a fee.
eBay will be here another 25 years simply because there are WAY more sellers for every item than there was even 5 years ago (pre-pandemic, which gave Millions 'time' to figure out selling online)
isaiah53-57
·3 years agoWow - That seems like a defeatist way of looking at things...
I dont agree with it at all - In fact I believe that if the site continues its current trend forward, then it will likely be bought out at some point with the purchasers attempting to adjust for the wrong turns the company made over the last 15 years. ebay relies on word of mouth and I see sentiment changing rapidly...
Exploitation is the force driving profit in online sales right now, but it simply cannot continue - It will get to the point where the profit that venues demand will be unattainable and it will be cheaper to sell locally, especially for small sellers - This will also create an uncontrollable reduction in product and seller quality which will slow online sales even further. I believe this will force a turnaround to occur at some point - It has to if the adage of "Adjust or die" you see pointed at sellers so often on this forum has any bearing on the venue itself, which of course it does - There is no way online selling venues can keep asking for more at the expense of loss of users and the bad word of mouth that occur along the way.
I believe a portion of the slower sales you are seeing across the board are due to this happening right now...
dbfolks166mt
·3 years agoAs more and more sellers join the 'internet selling' craze, there will more that will give up 10-15-20% additional to 'be on the top'. They are ok with making $1 instead of $3, but sell 10x more. All about the quantity sold. You are 100% correct about that and that has always been the trap of promoted listings. It becomes a race to the bottom.
Pay to Play has been an industry standard on Search Engines for over a decade. Using the same 'term' was $1 to be at the top (this is for a click to your site and NOT for a sale) and 5 years later, that same 'term' is $6 to be on the first page of Google.
Sad thing is you are leaving, but there will still be 100 other sellers selling what you sold. Without a doubt as to whether they are making a profit or not only they know for sure.
Buyers will not go without. Correct again but they make seek the item elsewhere if eBay sellers cannot remain competitive in the marketplace with regards to their pricing.
eBay will not go without a sale or a fee. Maybe, maybe not.
eBay will be here another 25 years simply because there are WAY more sellers for every item than there was even 5 years ago (pre-pandemic, which gave Millions 'time' to figure out selling online) Nothing is guaranteed in that arena and several years ago people probably said the same thing about Sears, Pan-Am, Oldsmobile, K-Mart, JC Penny, Woolworth, Borders, Tower Records..............
rugerskick
·3 years ago"How can you sell it at a loss?"
"We'll make it up in volume...."
luckythewinner
·3 years agoOver a period of time, promotion is not the only variable in play. Did you check your competition to see if your prices were still competitive?
retro_games_exchange_llc
OP3 years agoI tested it and even lowered my prices on some items and saw that I had the lowest. Didn't make a difference.
the-hook-and-the-loop
·3 years agoFunny how with inflation of EVERYTHING, cost of shipping and eBay's fees and not showing items unless promoted, the only ones that can sell are thieves or buyers that were lucky enough to get items for pennies.
It's not really funny. eBay has made it so there is no margins left and if there is, the government gets it. One fraudulent return or NAD is like negative 10 sales. Not much future left here. I've watched eBay take another inch every month for years and now they have taken it all.
whatmorefabric
·3 years agoEvery platform that I sell on is having a decrease in sales. I have gone from 15 a day on Amazon to 2 and Etsy is about the same where I have gone to 2 or 3 sales a day from 10.
The only platform that has shown a gain is Ebay.
Every platform has the same pay promoted listings. Etsy forces me to participate.
You have a younger generation that does not have the money to buy extras and an older generation trying to get rid of the junk.
desertcanyon4
·3 years agoAre you trying out another platform? If so, which one(s), and how is it going?
retro_games_exchange_llc
OP3 years agoI'm doing my own thing.
inhawaii
·3 years agoI commend you.
Unlike people who come here every day to complain about ebay yet continue to sell here.
Good luck to you in the future.
stevemartin60
·3 years agoP.S. I sold nine paintings for $3600 over the first six weeks of this year, and none since. It is so obvious they threw the switch and when it happened. Thanks for letting me know pay-to-play really does nothing either. I won't ever resort to it, or become a fraudster, drop shipper, or stolen goods supplier...you know, the accounts that always seem to do just fine...lol.
retro_games_exchange_llc
OP3 years agoIt's not really that it doesn't work, it's that it works for a little while until it doesn't so you add a couple percent more to your listing fees.
stevemartin60
·3 years agoSo sorry this has happened to you. Been screaming how terrible "pay-to-play" is for all involved for a month now, FOR EVERYONE INVOVLED, including eBay stockholders. This will be the death of the platform as your post so clearly shows. Good luck with your new venture.
coolections
·3 years ago@stevemartin60 No need to scream or worry stockholders. For every item the OP stopped selling there is another seller who got the sale.
stevemartin60
·3 years agoFor every seller who quits, and mentions why on the way out, eBay takes ANOTHER dive in public opinion.
Soon, no one will want to admit they sell on eBay, and that has been the way for quite some time in fine art and valuable collectibles. Eventually, that will be true of most categories.
joliztoyco
·3 years agoYes. Because there's "millions" of sellers waiting in the Ebay seller queue? Not hardly.
According to their OWN STATISTICS, Ebay has been hemorrhaging buyers and sellers.
That's not a healthy business model...
Sellers are finding out that 13.25% of their money isn't enough to achieve sales on this platform anymore. They need to pony up 16...20...or even a higher percentage. And many are saying no.
retro_games_exchange_llc
OP3 years agoAnd people will turn away as less is offered. There may be someone else selling the same item but they all are sketchy it seems. Anyone I purchase from in an auction for video games where the listing says its good, I end up having to return it or ask for a partial refund be cause the items I get are little more than junk. Burning buyers and sellers is never a good thing. Theres a reason some people don't buy from eBay because of sketchy sellers who seem to be the only ones left.
stevemartin60
·3 years agoThere are some good ones left, and we've had it! ZERO sales in the past six weeks will get your attention, even if nothing except extortion tends to get any attention, at all, to your listings.