An Abrupt and Complete Stop in Sales: Why? What's Going On?

[getitright1234]

An Abrupt and Complete Stop in Sales: Why? What's Going On?

The baby needs formula!

The light bill needs to be paid!

The mortgage needs to be paid!

The cupboards are getting bear!

..........................................................I do not have time for these abrupt and complete stop in sales.   Sheesh!

PS:  I am not referring to this acct. 

[sharingtheland]

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@rschissler wrote:

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@movieman630 wrote:
Another thing I've noticed is that most days that I go without sales during the day ALL my sales seem to come in between 10PM and Midnight. It doesn't make any logical sense unless Ebay is throttling sales and hiding listings. My theory is that the algorithm is set up to hide your stuff for a certain amount of time during the day but allow "open" days to disprove your theory. That would explain days when sales come in all throughout the day like normal. I also think the algorithm uses your sales amounts to tell it when to hide your stuff and when to open it. This would fit others theories that ebay only allows you to earn a certain amount and then turns you off. The only exception to that rule would be if someone buys one of your items from their watch list during your "dark" period. Mind you this is just a theory.

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If you're going to make up such crazy theories, maybe you should also explain why eBay would do all this?

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I've always accepted the thinking that items are seen at certain times in certain places; that only makes sense.  I am a firm believer in the theory that heavier items are more visible in areas where postage costs are higher; I see it in my sales constantly and - duh - ebay makes more easy peasy money by doing that.

Someone upthread said all items should be seen at all times but would good does it do a seller to have a shirt that is 193,677th listing shown in 212,754 total shirts returned in search?  Ebay does/did have to find a way to "rotate" or whatever you want to call visibility of items in search in categories with ginormous amounts of listings.

Even though I found it to be the "norm" most of the time for my sales, I've never gone along with the "ebay lets you sell only a certain amount per month."  Don't know why I don't agree, but I don't.

YMMV 

[sharingtheland]

Does anyone know why the promoted listings are seen twice?  Once as promoted; once not.  That just seems to clog the works and tick off buyers and people who are searching for other reasons.

[myjunqueyourtreasure]

Because the non sponsored listing is the "normal" listing, but the seller is paying for their listing to be "promoted" so it also shows up as "sponsored".

Seller only pays an extra fee if the buyer buys from the "sponsored" listing.

Clear as mud? Thought so.

[sharingtheland]

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@myjunqueyourtreasure wrote:

Because the non sponsored listing is the "normal" listing, but the seller is paying for their listing to be "promoted" so it also shows up as "sponsored".

Seller only pays an extra fee if the buyer buys from the "sponsored" listing.

Clear as mud? Thought so.

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Yep, I knew the fee thing.  But why show it twice?  Because no one at ebay realized this would happen?

::off to find waders::

Edit:  ::off to find waders::   not typing with a full deck here

[turquoisetulips]

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@sin-n-dex wrote:

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@turquoisetulips wrote:

That's terrible . However I'm afraid if they ever succeed in raising the minimum wage  to 15 to 20 dollars an hour  then more employees will be totally let go  and the ones allowed to stay will be doing twice the work.  Tulips 

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This is true, and it really will happen.

In my office building we have a cafeteria. When I started working in this office three years ago, there were five people working in the cafeteria, and frequently one would be on holidays. The minimum wage WAS $10.25 in Ontario.

Then Wynn, our premier raised it to $14 (I think it was somewhere in between for a while), and now our cafeteria has three employees, and during the summer there's just two. I'm friendly with one of the ladies who works there because she makes me a breakfast sandwich every morning and she told me since the minimum wage increase her employer is demanding she turn into superwoman.

I don't know if you have this in the USA (it depends how serious your shoplifting problem is in larger stores), but here in Canada you'll have one or two cashiers checking in items, and at a place like Walmart, there's 14 kiosks for you to check in your own groceries and pay for them yourself, with two people supervising. So a lot of people lost their jobs and were replaced by a machine.

Cheers, C.

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I  wish more people had better insight  to what exactly they're asking for  with these demands for  super increased minimum wages . There's going to be some serious repercussions if allowed to go through  . I suspect the negative effects  will happen too slowly for most  people to be able to  put two and two together   and realize their origin.  Tulips 

[turquoisetulips]

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@sharingtheland wrote:

Does anyone know why the promoted listings are seen twice?  Once as promoted; once not.  That just seems to clog the works and tick off buyers and people who are searching for other reasons.

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In case they  missed it the first time  would be my guess  . However that  would be an unlikely scenario with this type of platform . I think the reasoning behind it  is like what they do with TV commercials  . Show the ad , then show a different ad  and then show the first ad again.  This is because a lot of people  get up and leave the room when  the very first commercial comes on  but are back in time to see the third . However as I mentioned  that method is pretty much useless  here . Tulips 

[getitright1234]

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@movieman630 wrote:
Another thing I've noticed is that most days that I go without sales during the day ALL my sales seem to come in between 10PM and Midnight. It doesn't make any logical sense unless Ebay is throttling sales and hiding listings. My theory is that the algorithm is set up to hide your stuff for a certain amount of time during the day but allow "open" days to disprove your theory. That would explain days when sales come in all throughout the day like normal. I also think the algorithm uses your sales amounts to tell it when to hide your stuff and when to open it. This would fit others theories that ebay only allows you to earn a certain amount and then turns you off. The only exception to that rule would be if someone buys one of your items from their watch list during your "dark" period. Mind you this is just a theory.

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I believe we as Sellers are being cycled in and out of time frames when your product is being shown.  This explains why sales are not coming in throughout the entire day.  I feel my listings are being blacked out all other times than the current cycled in time frame of 10pm-4am and it sucks.  

I have a very eclectic list of 1,200 items, I Facebook and Tweet 25-30% of my items every day,  I have a sale on,  accept best offer, and I pay for promotion and yet my very few cluster sales on come in 10pm-4am.  This is when you feel the most helpless as a Seller and without a doubt you know there is Nothing you can do during this cycling off time frame to improve your sales. 

 We as full-time devoted Sellers at all other times than this cycled off period are able to proactively generate sales by:  having Sales, Accepting Best Offers, and Paying for Promotions.  So it is not a matter of us having undesirable merchandise, poor pricing, and or lack marketing skills.   

[zamo-zuan]

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@sharingtheland wrote:

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@rschissler wrote:

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@movieman630 wrote:
Another thing I've noticed is that most days that I go without sales during the day ALL my sales seem to come in between 10PM and Midnight. It doesn't make any logical sense unless Ebay is throttling sales and hiding listings. My theory is that the algorithm is set up to hide your stuff for a certain amount of time during the day but allow "open" days to disprove your theory. That would explain days when sales come in all throughout the day like normal. I also think the algorithm uses your sales amounts to tell it when to hide your stuff and when to open it. This would fit others theories that ebay only allows you to earn a certain amount and then turns you off. The only exception to that rule would be if someone buys one of your items from their watch list during your "dark" period. Mind you this is just a theory.

---

If you're going to make up such crazy theories, maybe you should also explain why eBay would do all this?

---

I've always accepted the thinking that items are seen at certain times in certain places; that only makes sense.  I am a firm believer in the theory that heavier items are more visible in areas where postage costs are higher; I see it in my sales constantly and - duh - ebay makes more easy peasy money by doing that.

Someone upthread said all items should be seen at all times but would good does it do a seller to have a shirt that is 193,677th listing shown in 212,754 total shirts returned in search?  Ebay does/did have to find a way to "rotate" or whatever you want to call visibility of items in search in categories with ginormous amounts of listings.

Even though I found it to be the "norm" most of the time for my sales, I've never gone along with the "ebay lets you sell only a certain amount per month."  Don't know why I don't agree, but I don't.

YMMV 

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Maybe not per month, but if they see a fast day, it's followed by slower sales the next few days. This has been a very noticable pattern for the last few months. Every time we passed "+10%" from last month, suddenly sales slow down, and then come in many per hour rather than spread through the day.

The most noticable time this happened? The 4th of July. In the auto parts business we know the 4th and Christmas week are the slowest weeks of the year. Also weekends have about 3/5 of the sales of a normal day.

This year, 4th had absolutely no slowdown. And the weekend after the 4th actually had MORE traffic/sales than the weekdays?

Yeah... that does not happen in this industry. They were obviously allowing us sales to a certain point, and then once we reached that point things slowed again. Which was a multi-month pattern. 

Anyone with a substantial bulk of sales can see it in their graphs. 

[hioctane62]

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@zamo-zuan wrote:

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@sharingtheland wrote:

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@rschissler wrote:

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@movieman630 wrote:
Another thing I've noticed is that most days that I go without sales during the day ALL my sales seem to come in between 10PM and Midnight. It doesn't make any logical sense unless Ebay is throttling sales and hiding listings. My theory is that the algorithm is set up to hide your stuff for a certain amount of time during the day but allow "open" days to disprove your theory. That would explain days when sales come in all throughout the day like normal. I also think the algorithm uses your sales amounts to tell it when to hide your stuff and when to open it. This would fit others theories that ebay only allows you to earn a certain amount and then turns you off. The only exception to that rule would be if someone buys one of your items from their watch list during your "dark" period. Mind you this is just a theory.

---

If you're going to make up such crazy theories, maybe you should also explain why eBay would do all this?

---

I've always accepted the thinking that items are seen at certain times in certain places; that only makes sense.  I am a firm believer in the theory that heavier items are more visible in areas where postage costs are higher; I see it in my sales constantly and - duh - ebay makes more easy peasy money by doing that.

Someone upthread said all items should be seen at all times but would good does it do a seller to have a shirt that is 193,677th listing shown in 212,754 total shirts returned in search?  Ebay does/did have to find a way to "rotate" or whatever you want to call visibility of items in search in categories with ginormous amounts of listings.

Even though I found it to be the "norm" most of the time for my sales, I've never gone along with the "ebay lets you sell only a certain amount per month."  Don't know why I don't agree, but I don't.

YMMV 

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Maybe not per month, but if they see a fast day, it's followed by slower sales the next few days. This has been a very noticable pattern for the last few months. Every time we passed "+10%" from last month, suddenly sales slow down, and then come in many per hour rather than spread through the day.

The most noticable time this happened? The 4th of July. In the auto parts business we know the 4th and Christmas week are the slowest weeks of the year. Also weekends have about 3/5 of the sales of a normal day.

This year, 4th had absolutely no slowdown. And the weekend after the 4th actually had MORE traffic/sales than the weekdays?

Yeah... that does not happen in this industry. They were obviously allowing us sales to a certain point, and then once we reached that point things slowed again. Which was a multi-month pattern. 

Anyone with a substantial bulk of sales can see it in their graphs. 

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I get your point, but I'd like to point out that many people, myself included, took advantage of the long 4th of July holiday weekend to take care of some much needed car repair projects, and ordered parts when they discovered they needed them.

[jojitsusensei]

Sales tax is also helping to kill eBay sales.

[sharingtheland]

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@jojitsusensei wrote:
Sales tax is also helping to kill eBay sales.

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I asked this question earlier.   Why do you think that is the case, when Amazon has been charging it for over two years and I don't think it's killed Amazon's sales.

[mam98031]

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@jojitsusensei wrote:
Sales tax is also helping to kill eBay sales.

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This will change with time.  As buyers get use to having to pay the sales tax.  Ebay isn't the only site that has to charge it.  They will run into the same issues on Amazon, Etsy, etc.  So if they like shopping via these sites, it is just part of the cost now and there is nothing any of us can do about that at this time.

I've already seen more acceptance of this within my customers.  Of course many don't like it, but they also know they have no choice if they want the products on these sites.

@jojitsusensei 

[zamo-zuan]

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@hioctane62 wrote:

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@zamo-zuan wrote:

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@sharingtheland wrote:

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@rschissler wrote:

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@movieman630 wrote:
Another thing I've noticed is that most days that I go without sales during the day ALL my sales seem to come in between 10PM and Midnight. It doesn't make any logical sense unless Ebay is throttling sales and hiding listings. My theory is that the algorithm is set up to hide your stuff for a certain amount of time during the day but allow "open" days to disprove your theory. That would explain days when sales come in all throughout the day like normal. I also think the algorithm uses your sales amounts to tell it when to hide your stuff and when to open it. This would fit others theories that ebay only allows you to earn a certain amount and then turns you off. The only exception to that rule would be if someone buys one of your items from their watch list during your "dark" period. Mind you this is just a theory.

---

If you're going to make up such crazy theories, maybe you should also explain why eBay would do all this?

---

I've always accepted the thinking that items are seen at certain times in certain places; that only makes sense.  I am a firm believer in the theory that heavier items are more visible in areas where postage costs are higher; I see it in my sales constantly and - duh - ebay makes more easy peasy money by doing that.

Someone upthread said all items should be seen at all times but would good does it do a seller to have a shirt that is 193,677th listing shown in 212,754 total shirts returned in search?  Ebay does/did have to find a way to "rotate" or whatever you want to call visibility of items in search in categories with ginormous amounts of listings.

Even though I found it to be the "norm" most of the time for my sales, I've never gone along with the "ebay lets you sell only a certain amount per month."  Don't know why I don't agree, but I don't.

YMMV 

---

Maybe not per month, but if they see a fast day, it's followed by slower sales the next few days. This has been a very noticable pattern for the last few months. Every time we passed "+10%" from last month, suddenly sales slow down, and then come in many per hour rather than spread through the day.

The most noticable time this happened? The 4th of July. In the auto parts business we know the 4th and Christmas week are the slowest weeks of the year. Also weekends have about 3/5 of the sales of a normal day.

This year, 4th had absolutely no slowdown. And the weekend after the 4th actually had MORE traffic/sales than the weekdays?

Yeah... that does not happen in this industry. They were obviously allowing us sales to a certain point, and then once we reached that point things slowed again. Which was a multi-month pattern. 

Anyone with a substantial bulk of sales can see it in their graphs. 

---

I get your point, but I'd like to point out that many people, myself included, took advantage of the long 4th of July holiday weekend to take care of some much needed car repair projects, and ordered parts when they discovered they needed them.

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Understandable, but for the record, we have years of data to show it's uncharacteristic, and without a doubt no sales decline on the 4th of July itself is very suspicious, lol.

Following that, it went in to the pattern I mention. A period of high sales, then once things improve far enough, a sudden drop. Drastic up and down sales. "Measured volatility". 

Here's an image showing the performance from the 4th of July week:

I can say with 100% certainty and years of data, that this pattern is abnormal. 4th having no decline is not natural. Weekends being more traffic than weekdays is not natural. Every single weekend of the year has a decline compared to weekdays (and you can see it in the graphs). 

You can also see the up and down patterns. Gradual build up to a certain point, and then once the high point is reached, a decline, and then repeat. Those patterns are not natural either, and for those of us in software development, the patterns are easily recognizable as control algorithms. 

Which, as mentioned, if you check the "30 days" graphs, the decline "coincidentally" started every time 10-15% above the previous month was surpassed. 

In addition to this, we have years of data which shows the majority of our sales come before 2PM PST. EBay is even aware of this data as Sellers Health employees have noted the same thing on our account. We've referenced numerous occasions where sales were suspiciously low in the daytime (under half our usual), then somehow between 8PM-midnight PST, we get a sudden surge that brings us up to our "daily average". Again, this is not a natural pattern. 

I've also discussed with other large sellers, and starting at the same time period, the other sellers suddenly had their patterns switch to a similar amount of volatility.

I'd say this is more than enough information to at least confirm that the patterns are not natural. 

[griff@ebay.com]

Hello djdaniel2015

Have you checked your listings to see if they are competitive in price? I checked one of your listings:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Iridium-Runners-Sony-PS2-Racing-Game-2008/323824429873?hash=item4b6570ab31:...

and then searched the video games category using the phrase "Iridium Runners" in a Lowest Price + Shipping sort and and I found 14 identical listings that were priced lower than yours.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/1249/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=+++Iridium+Runners&_sop=15&_dmd=2&rt=nc

Media is an extremely competitive category on eBay. I know from current first hand experience. I am selling off my CD collection on eBay and the only way I make sales is to make sure my CD listings are the lowest priced examples on the site. That means checking my listings at least once a week and lowering the prices where necessary to be the lowest price on each. And each time I do this, I make sales.

The reality of any marketplace is simple for most categories (like Media). Buyers have a choice. If your items are not the lowest priced offerings, they will not sell as quickly as those that are the lowest priced.

[gramophone-georg]

Anyone who has been paying attention knows that eBay started seriously manipulating the marketplace beginning with the holiday shopping season in about 2005- that is, to my recollection, when "cluster sales" aka "rolling blackouts" first became the "new normal".