There's STILL some issue with either search or visibility or sales...

[obtanium_enterprises]

For example, in a 1-2 day period I'll have perhaps 20-30 sales, then in a 2-3 day period I'll have perhaps 5-10 sales, and the cycle repeats and repeats. Although that current sales volume is MUCH higher than in the first half of this year, there's obviously still a problem... I suppose eBay would suggest it's the phases of the Moon or the alignment of the stars, or that I should lower the price of my 99-cent items by 10%. Then, I receive a nice little update from eBay telling me that my sales are down 48% from this same period last year; obviously no problem here.

And by the way, the reason why I've dropped most of my prices to 99 cents is because otherwise I'd have few to no sales. Never mind that I'm not generating any profit from those sales; I'm trying to generate cash flow to pay my minimum operating costs.

So I tried a little experiment with this listing that persistently generates NO sales...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/142903255373

Instead of trying to make $1 profit offering a $30+ professional lab-quality item for $6.99, I dropped the price to below my cost ($4.99) to see what would happen...

Search on "attenuator 10db n" to see my "competition."

Then, in my listing, click on "2 sold" to see how many I actually sold.

Unfortunately I didn't make a screenshot of the view counts before ending the lsting, but the view count was very low...

I guess the Moon and stars just weren't in my favor.

Couldn't possibly be any problem with eBay.

BAD SELLER. BAD.

"Lower your price by 10% to make the sale."

"Offer FREE!!! shipping!!!"

"And FREE!!! returns!!!"

Heck, why not just give it all away for free.

But somehow last year it wasn't like this...

Hmm... Maybe it's the calendar-year, not the planets and stars!

Yeah, yeah, THAT's IT!

[dhbookds]

I don't think any retail operation on line or B  &M has consistently uniform sales ......  Have a couple of friend with B&M and they constantly bemoan figuring out what the slow days are, scheduling less people to work, and those days will be the biggest of the wk/month.....

[obtanium_enterprises]

"figuring out what the slow days are"

Except that the slow days are all seven days of the week, and the fast days are all seven days of the week. Day/night/holiday, whatever; there's no pattern other than a day or two of relatively-brisk sales and then a few days of slow sales. I've shown this to several people who are also pretty good at seeing patterns, and they all drew a blank.

[moms**art**window**]

It's called "left shoes syndrome" kinda like i went to the grocery store and they quit selling single rolls of toilet paper,well the marketing geniuses thought they could make more money making people buy the 6 pack of paper not thinking this surely meant that people like me think of how many bags do i have to carry into the house at one time and maybe when i run out (i'm going to run out more often with the single roll) i might run down there and buy some more and buy some other things while i'm there more than making up for the increased profit of the six pack of paper,these are the type of things that can't be found on data sheets or graphs but require human thought,now i noticed best match is fluctuating think it might be causing the fluctuation in sales along with some of the other changes,i now shop at a different grocer that sells single rolls because the grocer wasn't that great anyway,they only wanted my money.

[creekmint]

Yes, I believe you're not the only one experiencing this phenomenon. I'm a small seller, but am still having the exact same problems as I've had all summer with the view counter and completely bizarre numbers of views that keep revising downward, as if they've been continuously relisted and the count began again. My sales have been slower than in previous years. I've read statements about how eBay doesn't like "Good Till Cancelled" listings like mine, but I'm not concerned about their motives for not fixing these technical issues. I just think eBay's technical department is understaffed and overwhelmed, trying to find fixes for all these errors that keep cropping up while updating the entire site to entice mobile phone shoppers. Also, summer is a traditionally slower time of the year for sales, other than beach wear or back-to-school items, which I don't sell. But the bigger picture is that eBay is losing customers and sellers to Amazon, so though eBay is still a great resource for unique vintage items, there's a bigger marketplace for bulk merchandisers that's clearly taking market share from eBay sellers. EBay's appeals to sellers to spend more on increasing visibility to juice sales seems shortsighted, since WE are not the problem, and it just thins our profit margins further.  I think eBay needs to cultivate its niche as a place where folks can find lost and nearly forgotten treasures AND respect the bulk merchandisers as well by focusing on reliability and security to attract more customers. Fix the coding/software problems before dunning the sellers for extra "donations" that seem like thinly veiled warnings that without the extra payola, no one will see your listings!

[obtanium_enterprises]

THIS HAS JUST NOW HAPPENED TWICE. I posted about this before, in the spring/early summer...

As in my OP, in a 1-2 day period I'll have perhaps 20-30 sales, at which point I see THIS:

Then in a 2-3 day period I'll have perhaps 5-10 sales, after which the above changes to other recommended subjects, and the cycle repeats.

BUSTED.