Best regards,
That is for sure got thousands of old books here.
First day out there in first 2 hours increment (I am old haven’t strength for longer time period!)
I sold $90. Easy Peasy…
It's hard to fight City Hall is the best way I can describe what I have observed, tested and proven over the last 2 years. I have watched a slow steady decline in sales since early 2022 when they fully launched PLA, the new Views counting and jacked up their Suggested rates on PLS.
To quantify the losses: 2023 is $ 10K behind last year and $ 12K behind the previous year ... that my friends is not chump change. The slow but steady increase in sales from 2015 when I started to 2019 has reversed itself.
-I used to run one 30 day PLS /campaign each quarter, prior to 2022 that boosted sales, increased traffic and my Follower count would increase a little after each Campaign. In 2022 that changed, PLS resulted in almost 1/2 the sales they used to bring and in between PLS campaigns BIN listings would fall of the face of the earth, most sales during those periods would come from Auctions or the Send offers eligible feature.
-I did a test on PLS a few months ago, ran a 17 day TEST PLS Campaign, I jacked up my ad rates at or above the inflated eBay "Suggested" rates (12%) and guess what, sales shot back up to the results I got prior to 2022 ... like magic. No, not magic, try manipulation ...
-What I believe has happened is that eBay's AI programming builds a sales profile for Sellers with the intent of having them panic in to doing "something" to try and boost sales. After learning what I did about PLS I have decided to STOP using Promoted Listings so I did not run my normal 4th quarter campaign which usually started mid-November thru mid-December to cover the holiday shopping peak. Well guess what happened? Yep I got not one but TWO of these messages about PLS starting with "We've missed you" ...
-Now, let me say it is not that things don't sell, they just no longer sell fast enough. Sell through rate has doubled and tripled which has forced me to move inventory off eBay to other venues. I have done more of that in the last year and a half then at any other time. The trend that has emerged is that if something doesn't sell in the first 2-3 weeks after listing then it just gets buried, hidden, etc.
-For my categories it is not the economy. I acquire inventory from numerous other sources but competition is extremely tough and if I can't acquire it at a price to hit my target profit margin I don't buy.
-I have to see sales recover and increase naturally and I think that will be the biggest challenge moving forward because eBay wants to see higher Fees on every transaction via some type of promotion. I think AI finally got the message that Mr Lincoln has caught on the PLS trap and is not running PLS so go bug somebody else LOL!
-If you want numbers on Views counting I have monitored that too for over a year and a have ... on average 30-35% of my items have (0) Views (in the last 30 days) at any one time and a TOTAL of my listings with 2 or fewer Views runs between 50%-60%. My sweet spot for listings and growth prior to 2022 was to have over 400 items for sale ... now I would have to have like 2 to 3 times that many listings to hope to hit the same sales numbers I previously enjoyed ... and that's a problem due to acquisition cost.
-So, eBay is no longer looking like the nice additional cash stream for retirement years that it once did. 2023 is ending with less inventory then previous years and replenishment will not happen until sometime in first quarter next year.
