5 sellers, 1,754 listings and 4 sales so far today

[goldrushfinds]

I follow 5 local sellers, with a total of 1,754 active listings, and a diverse range of products for sale. As of about 1:00 pm Pacific time, a total of 4 items had sold today, with a total gross sales amount of ~ $80 (not including all costs, including cost of acquiring the items). This is typically the busiest half of the day, with less sales taking place the remainder of the day. Something is terribly wrong right now. I know some report reasonable sales, but most are suffering a similar fate. Sellers will leave in droves if things don't change and change fast. Just my thoughts. 

[18704d]

" You do understand the concept of polling, right. They take a relatively small representative sample to reflect overall trends. I am not that dim that I come to these conclusions on only that small sampling (it's an example). "

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Your samples may not be accurate.

It appears all your sellers offer lost cost items and then with free shipping, they lose a chunk on shipping?

How about lost cost sellers who charge their buyers shipping costs?

How about sellers who sell 20 dollar to 200 dollar items (whether they offer free shipping, or not?)

Thanks

Lynn

[odyssey30]

OMG! I am at my wits end! I haven't had a sale in a week and a half and I've been selling since 1999. This has NEVER happened before. I suspect that eBay has once again implemented some new updates and forgot to tell the selling community and something went wrong. I am overwhelmed with the loss of revenue right now. I have relied on eBay sales for 2 decades to help run our household and make ends meet. Does anyone have a solid answer of what is going on? Please don't reply with what I should try new or promote, etc....pretty sure I've had this selling game down pat for 20 years and now something very fishy is going on....Anyone?

[itsjustasprain]

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@goldrushfinds wrote:
Dollar amounts sold per day may vary, but nobody is making any significant amounts of money (after deducting for costs) over the long run. There are some (quite few), who in niche categories are making good amounts of money, but from what I have seen the vast majority are making peanuts for the time required. No better than a job at the golden arches. You can attack me, but it is just my observations and opinion. You are entitled to yours.

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??? 

I simply asked you in a one-sentence post what your results for those 5 sellers were over an extended period of time.

[femmefan1946]

@discountcardsandmore 

Just as with anything else, there are ebbs and flows in business.

I agree. When I was selling in B&Ms we used to try to schedule appraisals and estimates for around 2pm because that was always the quietest part of the day, whether we were selling cast iron woodstoves and installations, or collectible postage stamps.

On eBay, I could close my Stores from mid-November to Christmas Day without any noticeable drop in business, because my products are not particularly "giftable".  But from Boxing Day to late March I'm rolling hard.

It does help to keep track of what happens on a weekly, monthly and annual basis, so you can see on paper where those highs and lows are.

[membersinceaug2001]

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@odyssey30 wrote:
OMG! I am at my wits end! I haven't had a sale in a week and a half and I've been selling since 1999. This has NEVER happened before. I suspect that eBay has once again implemented some new updates and forgot to tell the selling community and something went wrong. I am overwhelmed with the loss of revenue right now. I have relied on eBay sales for 2 decades to help run our household and make ends meet. Does anyone have a solid answer of what is going on? Please don't reply with what I should try new or promote, etc....pretty sure I've had this selling game down pat for 20 years and now something very fishy is going on....Anyone?

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Sorry, I don't have any answers.  This place dumped for me 12 years ago and I haven't relied on any income from here since then.  I'm surprised some sellers have still been going all these years.  I've been a seller since 1997 on another account.

[penguins_dont_fly]

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@goldrushfinds wrote:

I follow 5 local sellers, with a total of 1,754 active listings, and a diverse range of products for sale. As of about 1:00 pm Pacific time, a total of 4 items had sold today, with a total gross sales amount of ~ $80 (not including all costs, including cost of acquiring the items). This is typically the busiest half of the day, with less sales taking place the remainder of the day. Something is terribly wrong right now. I know some report reasonable sales, but most are suffering a similar fate. Sellers will leave in droves if things don't change and change fast. Just my thoughts. 

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I'm a little late to this discussion ...

Your results may not be showing all solds.

On multi-qty and variation listings, eBay does not show "sold" until the listing sells the last widget or the seller manually ends the listing.

For sellers using the "Out of stock" option, there will be no sold transaction ... even on a OOK listing ... until the seller manually ends the listing.

I'm not saying that sales aren't down ... I'm saying that your sample may be flawed because of the way eBay handles solds in those cases.

Currently, my sales are up ... we are coming in to my "season" (dishware-tgiving).

Note: There are YouTube vloggers that advocate using the OOS option so that the competition can't see how you are doing.

[movieman630]

You're right but it's been unusually bad. I've been on here for over 10 years and this pattern is disturbing.

[onc88]

I really appreciate this thread and a couple of (recent) others-I thought maybe I was the lone ranger....  For 7-8 years I have averaged about 20% monthly sales on listings in the 350-500 range, with my store.  The percentage started dropping in early spring this year and is now running only 8% per month.  Had two percentage off "store" sales with mixed results-those sales usually pulled me out past downturns, but not this year.

Sure, summer just ended, but I don't remember a September this slow since I started in 2008.  Something must be going on.  And I don't think it is the economy-I started early on during the great recession, and sales were still better than now.  Thankfully, the ebay sales money is not needed to pay the monthly bills.

Something is going on-hope they get it fixed before Christmas comes and goes.....