sales down since scheduling time away

Question

Hi Yall! So heres the deal.. I was very happy with my sales.. like at least one sale a day most days more. I had to be gone a few days over a weekend and scheduled time away so that people could still buy my stuff but not expect super fast shipping as they'd know when I'd return. But now its the second week since I'm back and I've had a total of 3 sales the first week... just super slow. Is this normal? Will my sales go back up?

Frustrated in KY

bonanza125 · Accepted Answer

We can't answer what is normal or not other than there is nothing wrong with Ebay at this time when it comes to buyers purchasing. Sales comes down to demand and pricing. You could also try listing more stuff as well. Maybe the stuff you are selling buyers just aren't interested in right now.

inhawaii · Answer

When you're away, potential buyers see a notice that says you are away. I would think this would highly discourage sales.

onefootflipper · Answer

You can sell similar the off-season stuff to drafts and delist it, and then use any of the many different tricks to keep drafts from expiring.

Easiest thing to do is to go in once every 2 months and bulk edit all your drafts in one shot, raise the price on all of them by 1 penny. Then 2 months later you lower the price by 1 penny. Every time you do this you reset that 75 day clock on them.

If you have never bulk edited before then it is something you need to do on a computer and not on the phone app. True store management is impossible on the phone app as it doesn't have most of the tools that the website has.

chapeau-noir · Answer

Agree. ^^

You need more in-season items - the other stuff has already been bought out. Your store is too small to have so much off-season stuff dragging everything down. I have the same situation - once my off season is done I'm pulling it down - it's taking up too much space on items pretty low in search this time of year. I think your time away and sales lag is coincidental.

onefootflipper · Answer

Lynn, you are likely missing something huge here.

Most of your inventory is off-season. We are a couple weeks off June and most of your inventory is winter, long sleeved, or childrens, all of which are pretty hard sells at the end of May.

Most parents are not buying children's clothes in May or June except for summer specific stuff. They aren't going to buy new general kids clothes until they do back to school shopping.

Once you take out all the winter, long sleeved, and children's clothes your store is suddenly, MUCH, MUCH, smaller. If you look at your 85 sale for the past 90 days you will see that you sold very little Winter, Long-Sleeved or children's clothes.

Now look at your last 6 items listed, a children's snowsuit, 2 coats, 2 other children's items and a purse.

Do you see the pattern here?

quadcitypickers · Answer

How their algorithm works is not public info, but I can tell you new listings get a bit of a search ranking prioritization.

The last time I took time off, like you I had a slow down when I returned, but it picked back up after ending/relisting a bunch of the older listings.

quadcitypickers · Answer

I can tell you there is a lot of nonsense going on behind the scenes with their algorithms and eBay is ever-so-reluctant to admit any issues to not spook investors.

I would try ending all your listings and relisting them in bulk to re-boost search rankings.

I had the same thing happen to me as well.