Adios Ebay.

[ammolitehunter]

I started my shop 10 ears ago selling quality ammolite jewelry and Ebay gave me my start for which I am grateful.

The business slowly grew over the years but so did the problems-- chief of which was Ebay allowing volume junk jewelry sellers to compete in the fine jewelry space--so much so in fact that Ebay gave precedence to the volume junk sellers and put mine and other sellers of fine jewelry way in the back of their listing precedence.

I wrote in many times about this but mostly got a deaf ear and nothing was done.

So four years ago I opened my own stand alone website and paid my way in Google ad adverts--and the website grew.

Today I am marketing top quality ammolite under my ammolite jewelry from canada name world wide and sales are very good indeed.

Meanwhile back here at Ebay my shop had dwindling sales because I was being lumped in with junk sellers and things were just going from bad to worse.

I am very glad I took the initiative four years ago to diversify and not rely on Ebay.

I now have my own shop and also list at another popular site that discourages mass junk sellers.

I will be closing my shop at Ebay shortly.

Good luck to all.

[yasmin3220]

Thank you for the encouragement! I have been thinking about going alone and using another site to sell, seeing your post has made me realise that I can but try!

I could be on here complaining forever.... getting poorer and poorer! I need to act and just do it... thanks again!

[ted_200]

One thing I will mention..  I believe in their attempt to keep eBay a vibrant place for buyers to shop, they encourage and reward sellers who are continually putting up new fresh listings.

I'm strictly in that "low end settle to the bottom" you mentioned part of my market on eBay.  And I still do it with nothing but .99 start auctions.  Doesn't get much fresher than that.  Server and search doesn't get bogged down any stale dead listings from me, I never have anything less fresh than 10 days, and my STR is 99%.  There are reasons I stay constrained to that bottom end, some of which I just mentioned in the previous post.

If they're encouraging me and rewarding me, I'm just not feelin' it.  They promote awful sellers pitching garbage from China, big league sellers who are part of the "chosen" ones (and have STR close to zero anyhow)... in search, in Promoted Listings, by giving them little yellow ribbons... over me... and they charge these people approximately zero in fees, so long as they keep their STR really low!   If you land on one of their Catalog Pages, they'll usually show a "best" item that's an overpriced 3-y.o. FP listing from a "chosen" seller.  They don't do anything to support sellers like me... or anyone running a real auction..., they just charge us max. fees, turn our auctions into "buy on approval" deals, and send lots of spam suggesting we sell our cell phone here or change all our listings to "Free Shipping".

[ted_200]

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@coolections wrote:

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@mistwomandancing wrote:

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I don't think that's true at all.  Just a single example would be if you put JADE BOWL in search, and then asked to be shown highest priced first, on down.  Amazing bowls priced in the thousands!!  And that's just a single search.  You can find it all here... still.  Amazing treasures.

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Very true. The cheapos do the lowest first and of course you will get the knockoff $15 items. If you want the real deal it is easily found if doing it right.

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Glad to hear someone thinks listing jade bowls that aren't jade is "doing it right".

[castlemagicmemories]

With all due respect, OP is right when he says that starting an item at $15.55 is the best way to have it end at $15.55.  It doesn't necessarily mean that there is no interest in the item or that the item is not worth $300.00 or more.  Search may not have shown the item much or at all, and visibility being down can affect bidding for any item.  If placement in low, that will affect it as well.  

The bidding wars of years ago may or may not happen; there are many other factors that come into play as we all know.  

Ebay suggests that items start at 99 cents, how many sellers do that and come to these Boards upset because they did what Ebay said, the listing ended with one bid, what do they do now because their item was worth hundreds.  If you read the Buying Board, there is a rash of seller cancellations and relists for a higher price.  You have angy buyers and disappointed sellers.  

Possibly buyers who would want that three hundred dollar book never saw the listing.

[ted_200]

 Their main competiton is India - not China.

Yeah, they are becoming big players in the jewelry and gemstone categories, along with the Chinese.

Poor quality rings that are made from pot metal and sold as sterling or gold are not the OP's main competition.  That is essentially the complaint... that eBay has made them into their apparent competition by how they manage the site and enforce policies.  OP's customers do not want any cheap overseas junk, and they don't want to look at any cheap overseas junk.  Since that stuff isn't "fine jewelry", it shouldn't be in that category either.  Since it's not real gold or silver and is being sold as such, it shouldn't be on this site at all.  But eBay is only going to let OP's buyers filter stuff by 3 day guaranteed delivery and Best Match and Free Shipping, so there is no way to steer around all the garbage and find what they want - OOAK quality unique jewelry. 

And there are legit sellers of quality fine jewelry on eBay to be sure.  If they're big enough, eBay will promote them above the OP's listings every time.

[ammolitehunter]

Kind words--thank you.

[ammolitehunter]

Don't know what you were looking at--I have no listings--empty shop.
I offer quality at a reasonable price but I do not attempt to compete with low grade ammolite sellers.
Top quality costs me more so I charge more--and constantly get feedback that for the quality--my pricing is very fair.

[mistwomandancing]

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ammolitehunter wrote:
Don't know what you were looking at--I have no listings--empty shop.
I offer quality at a reasonable price but I do not attempt to compete with low grade ammolite sellers.
Top quality costs me more so I charge more--and constantly get feedback that for the quality--my pricing is very fair.

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You don't have any active listings running, but we can click into your completed listings and see what you sold, what didn't sell, etc.