So who else has been seeing a pattern of alternating good/bad days since mid Feb?
Because I sure seem to have that going.
It's not as visible in my "number of sales graph". Some of those "good" (mediocre) days I sell 5 items to make the total, other days 10, but Ebay seems to be doing some sort of rationing here since mid-Feb based on how many dollars they think I should be making per day.
I can't see any other way to get such a clearly inorganic pattern. Suspect there is code that looks at day 1's sales and if they seem 'excessive' it clamps down somehow on day 2. And the reverse, if they seem 'insufficient'. And I think that whatever constants they are using, are turned up too high, which is making this visible as an alternating overshoot / undershoot.
Now, some of you are going to look at the daily average and think, well, that seems pretty good. But in fact it's terrible. Because my livelihood is running a full on curio shop with a good proportion of my inventory listed, 6000+ items.
But regardless of what level sales should be, they should NOT be so obviously alternating like that.
THAT is not organic. That is not recession. That is clear manipulation by the platform.
And counterproductive to themselves too, because they get a percentage of sales.
For goodness sake Ebay, TAKE your fees. But let my customers shop!
clown_car_driver
·3 years agoI have owned and managed a LOT of B&M stores.
There is not rhyme or reason to sales/traffic.
I've tried for YEARS to figure out a predictable pattern.
(To that, and the lottery and my wife's drifting moods)
I spent three days once .. THREE DAYS and saw nobody walk into my store.
Scary as hell.
Then ... it was like a tourist bus pulled up in front, and I did three days worth of sales in six hours.
Reason? Ha ... I dunno.
I remember asking one of the customers in the store "which one of you is the bus driver?"
But, look at what's been going on recently.
The weather in this country has been AWFUL.
Does that have an effect? On mood? Shopping patterns?
We'll know in a few weeks - the weather will change.
The economy has been worsening .. people are tightening belts.
Does that have an effect? On mood? Shopping patterns?
We'll know in a few months - the current socialist regime will leave the White House and us evil Capitalists will come back.
Till then, we can sit and wonder.
an-57470
·3 years agoI keep weekly stats - not enough sales to look at a daily chart even though I continually have around 950 listings spread over four accounts. What I have noticed for the past 18 months - I rarely have to go to the post office on Mondays - for me weekend sales have all but disappeared. I used to go to the post office M-W-F and sometimes Saturdays. Now I am on a T-F schedule - on days when I have one small item - I just put it in my mailbox for the carrier to pick up. Saving a lot of gas at least.
For the past couple of weeks I think unusual weather may be a factor when to comes to sales which have been down overall - I have had only one Western state sale since Feb 15, and the West would normally have accounted for 30% of my sales. Weather could be playing a part in your chart for the past 31 days.
partfinds
·3 years agoMy pattern is worse with the past week or so 60% down sales. I get 1 day sale and then at least 3 days of 0.
sextons-sweet-deals
·3 years agoPREACH IT BROTHER / SISTER!
February was a bust. Probably the worst month I ever had or at least in the top 5 since 2001.
March started the same, then all of sudden on the 4th, I had 9 sales. Nothing on the 5th or 6th. I have one sale today after sending an offer.
skincare-n-stuff
·3 years agoI'm in the belief that it's just not the right people looking for items that I have available on some days, and then on other days they find interest. It's clearly based on what you sell, but it is kind of funny how it can be a drought and then all of a sudden a deluge.
oszika
·3 years agoI bet eBay's algorithm is programmed to prioritize sellers (big & little) based on eBay's revenue interest. For our everything vintage store January was flat and low, February was 80% up, now we're 20% down. Most likely they manipulate search. Live with it, this is their business.
spreadlovelikefire
·3 years agoMine has been pretty consistent. You have to go by your monthly total, not daily. And compare that to the same month last year.
blurryrobot
OP3 years agoOh for goodness' sake, some of you people with your talk about conspiracy theories. I'm not talking about UFOs or Kennedy or whatever. I'm talking about a GRAPH of an operation which we KNOW is driven by a human-coded platform modulating interactions between a large customer population and a database. Visually revealing patterns is a major reason we graph things to begin with.
And, scoff at "pattern recognition" all you like, but I used to analyze charts of machine operations on a pretty regular basis, and I found that patterns had a way of signifying that something wasn't right. A raggedy random variation around an average? Sure, that's normal. Not ideal if the range is too broad, but natural.
But if you saw a chart where an operation was alternating hi/lo, would you scoff and say, "reddit says patterns aren't real"? Of course not. You would do a quick check to see if something was wrong. You might even ask around and say, "Hey, is anybody else having this happen on their machines?"
Well anyway that's what I would do.
rugerskick
·3 years agoAt least you had sales every day. 🙂 I not only have had less sales but many desert days where the switch has been turned off and no one is seeing my store or listings.
mightymouse
·3 years agoWhat is good or bad days anymore on Ebay. What I like is when a buyer check you listing and shows up as free shipping but then at check out shows up as 11.50 then complains that I'm messing with them, but it is the way Ebay promotes items to "trick buyers".
Also their new item specifics has really messed up searches. I just did a search for 1 pattern of Wedgwood "Dinner Plates" and it brought up 1400 listing but only 180 of what I was looking for, the rest were odd pattern or not plates. Do you thing this might be affecting sales???
blurryrobot
OP3 years agoVery possibly. There are some known issues with search right now. Did you search by the keyword for the pattern or did you enter it under specifics?
Specifics, honestly, are suffering in many cases from an impossibility of standardizing the seller lexicon on most goods. It's a nice idea but even in things like depression glass you have people entering American Prescut, Prescut, prescut, presscut, press cut, Prescot, etc. Which are easy enough for a human to figure out, but seem to give Ebay's search functions the vapors.
pcobra93
·3 years agoIf you really want to blow your mind, make your own graph for the last 2 years breaking each sale down to region (Northeast, Southeast, Upper Midwest, lower Midwest, West and Northwest....the regions Ebay uses in their rolling visibility Algorithms) then further break that down by date and time. You can follow and know what areas your sales will be in each day and by the hour.....or what days you won't have sales because your items are not visible in searches.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@blurryrobot
So who else has been seeing a pattern of alternating good/bad days since mid Feb?
Not me.
pcobra93
·3 years agoMy sales are bad following a day I mention FBI, CIA, NSA, ATF and Let's Go Brandon....I think they are listening to me!!!
chapeau-noir
·3 years agoDon't mention 'woke', then. 🤤
theteamsetguy
·3 years ago@pcobra93 ,
Brandon?
iamalwaysright
·3 years agoI have. But not really thinking too much into it.
coolections
·3 years agoThat is a normal event which you should accept as normal. Anything else is a wild conspiracy.
laststopgeneralstore
·3 years agoAlso, you're highlighting roughly only 2 weeks out of the past 9.5 weeks of this new year, which looks like on average you were probably down a little. Not a big deal. Show us your year to date chart or your last 6 months-year. You're going to have ups and down no matter what. eBay isn't after you.
inhawaii
·3 years agoI only now read your entire post.
Clear manipulation?
Are you kidding me?
That just blows my mind.
How long have you been in business?
gotta-have-it-collectables
·3 years agoLong Enough ...That's how Long Son!
laststopgeneralstore
·3 years agoNo, Been pretty consistent, aside from the one really low day but that day I was making some significant changes throughout my store. Yes their are days your going to be up but you're also going to have days that your down. Very rarely will have 2 days with the same sales. I wouldn't worry day to day or compare month to month. I like to compare every 120 days and/or 180 days. As long as your hitting your average for the month then what's the difference if you got it all on one day or the last day?
traditonalproducts
·3 years agoMy graph is far worse than that with the extreme highs/lows. I am 4% down compared to the previous 30 days.
nickelsanddimes2015
·3 years agoBeen this way for me. It's up and down all the time.
blingfling123
·3 years agoeBay states that they have the right to not show your listings in their UA.
Pay days are often better days.
If the moon is full and the tide is high, and it is Wednesday then sales are good. Thursday, and the tide is low, you are out of luck!!
If eBay makes changes to the system, sometimes bad things happen.
Some people have even shown where they can never go past a certain sales point each month.
There are many things that affect sales, from economy to the day of the month all the way down to eBay themselves.
I have up and down days. I just focus on the monthly totals vs looking at particular days. If I am constantly improving month over month, that means I am doing something right.
sugarnspice777
·3 years agoIt has been like this for the last 6-7 years. Ever since geeks gone wild.
In fact, on their off time they like to troll in here and dispute anything negative about the site changes, or these wacked out sales are only happening to you, or the economy, or no one wants your goods, anything but this site.
No it is not rationing. Or rolling blackouts.
This is all about the never ending site changes and the never ending testing. Congrats! Your account
has probably been selected (it happens to the real good sellers) for testing and changes. When this happens your sales will go down dramatically.
Now their is some preference, for we are in competition with employees (they sell here), china (this place has financial interest, they are partners).
The stock holders wants sales as much as we do, but none of them have ever taken a look at the dramatic drops in sales during testing and new LOOK overhauls NO ONE WANTS, and the rolling group of people implements of these changes.
So since the site geeks have taken control of this place this appears this will never end. they tell you your crazy, it doesn't happen to them, anything to shut you down. They do not want people to know. They hide all the negative messages from upper management and they just keep on making massive site changes. No, this does not happen on other sites. They will try to say it does. Yes other sites make small changes, but nothing like this place does, for their geeks are monitored. Not here.
I WISH that one day someone very high up seen these messages. But it hasn't happened in 7 years. So the massive site LOOK changes will just keep on a coming, and our sales will just keep on a tanking.
It's like geeks playing with toys, and they do not care about you feeding your family. Or this would have stopped long ago.
Yes, I am angry about it, and yes THESE ARE FACTS.
goldrushfinds
·3 years ago"Geeks gone wild", you know I kind of like that. Maybe a potential new music group (comprised of Ebay sellers)
chapeau-noir
·3 years agoThat's a little strange looking but I would keep tracking it - two weeks isn't much to go on. This month my sales are making regular pyramids each week but that's not always the case. I don't believe in throttling but I do believe that these odd patterns can happen simply because of how distributed search works - the sale of items brings up like items. For instance, I had a 300% increase in accessories and normally I only sell one once in a while, but someone purchased two and off to the races.
blacktopautoparts
·3 years agoWe saw these type of sales patterns from mid-February to about the last week in February. I don't care what some of these others are saying in this thread mocking you, but a store our size has also been experiencing these kind of goofy patterns of late. One day would be up, then the next day would be done, rinse and repeat for almost 1.5 weeks. This has never been a normal pattern for us and I see you had the same thing.
hartungcards
·3 years agoParanoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep.
joliztoyco
·3 years agoIt starts when you're always afraid.
Step out of line, and the men come and take you away... 🙂
gotta-have-it-collectables
·3 years agoWOW!
That's looks Just like MY sales pattern Since 2015!
I never ever see sales improvement no matter how many items I list.
Call it what you want...
I call it Fishy!
genv
·3 years agoAsk any small B&M Store what a 'typical day' is like...
blurryrobot
OP3 years agoFine, I'll ask myself, since I *run* a small brick and mortar store.
joels-retrocade
·3 years agoPatterns happen organically sometimes, it's life. Humans tend to make connections that aren't there (myself included lol). Think of it logically though. If your stuff is selling well / people are buying it; why would they clamp down on you? Every sale you make makes them more money. It's in eBay's best interest that we all do well. ebay will tend to hurt you in other ways; like by raising fees, changing up promoted sales, not advertising the site properly, making needles changes, etc.
b86fiero
·3 years agochapeau-noir
·3 years agoThere's a whole subreddit devoted to that - I had to quit reading it because I was starting to see weird patterns everywhere so can't remember the name. There were a lot of really wild images on there of everyday objects just around the house, at work, etc.
The human brain is formulated to try to make order out of chaos.
keziak
·3 years agoI am reminded of the Nicholas Cage movie "Knowing". It's been criticized but I love it's warped little heart and watch it often. He pretty rapidly detects order from a chaos of numbers on a piece of paper though his scientist colleague urges him to consider how easily one can see patterns that aren't there, or don't mean anything. But of course in the movie it DOES. Saying no more, great movie though.
toysaver
·3 years ago"So who else has been seeing a pattern of alternating good/bad days since mid Feb?"
My sales fluctuate with a one-day delay on the stock market.
dy60609
·3 years agoAnd most likely geared to Alcoa fluctuations.
Unavailable member
·3 years agoI have been selling on ebay off and on since 2004. Sales have always been up and down.
It all depends on what your selling and what the demand for what your selling is.
eBay rationing your sales ..I doubt it.
blurryrobot
OP3 years agoAnd I've been on Ebay since 2003. Changing demand I understand quite well. Seasonal variation I understand quite well. But sales numbers that flip back and forth like a switch being toggled, on a 2 day cycle, that is not seasonal variation or changing demand.
keziak
·3 years agoI saw that word "switch" coming from miles away! Does it really make since that a huge company like Ebay drills down to the individual level to parcel out sales as it sees fit?
goldrushfinds
·3 years agoThanks for at least one rational person here
luckythewinner
·3 years agoSo who else has been seeing a pattern of alternating good/bad days since mid Feb?
I have seen a pattern of alternating good and bad days since mid Feb 2000.
inhawaii
·3 years agoI've been seeing a pattern of alternating good/bad days for the last 20+ years.
traditonalproducts
·3 years agoTHAT'S THE TRUTH!!
retro_entertainment_collectibles
·3 years agovintage-camerastuff
·3 years agoDITTO!