eBay

movieman630 · ‎07-26-2024

I looked at a chart of the past few months with my impressions and what I see is shocking.

I update my existing listings frequently. For the past 6 months I've been updating my listings using PL's and I've been setting the rate at .01% higher than the "suggested rate".

My question is this. If ebay is using PL's to show your listings to people and I'm rewarding ebay with a higher than their "suggested rate" wouldn't you think that the impressions should be going UP not DOWN?

I'd like to know what's going on. This is not right. I've been working so hard to keep my store updated and running. I have a new baby born in March. 3 kids to feed now. I need my business to be allowed to grow, NOT SHRINK!

Is this manipulation to try and get people to use their PL Advanced? If so, it's morally and ethically wrong. If I'm using PL's and giving ebay upwards of 13% more in fees I should see an increase in sales, not a decrease with 13% more fees!

Here's the image:

Impressions going down despite 13% PL rates on most of my items added during this same period. Impressions going down despite 13% PL rates on most of my items added during this same period.

zamo-zuan · ‎07-30-2024

@penny_sioux wrote:
i mean there's other variables like the general economy, seasonality of the item, other sellers going into your space and undercutting you by a dollar or promoting at a high % than you. the last two are harder to prove but easier to rationalize. i also wonder if late shipping and all those secret seller metrics affect what traffic you are given as well.

This is what eBay would like you to believe, and it is honestly one of the hardest thing to deal with when people on here try to pass the problems off as that.

But those of us who take eBay as a serious business have taken all of this in to consideration. There's simply far too much evidence to share in a single post. I can try to explain it to you, but to truly give you the full picture, I would have to give a presentation that would last multiple hours.

Which, btw, I've even given eBay a presentation of the problems when they visited us on site. But most of those reps aren't with the company anymore, and it has been proven that as much as the reps would like to solve the problems, nobody at the company has the power to change anything.

I would be glad to put together and give a presentation about it if given a platform where eBay would actually listen. I'd even prefer it to be at least (somewhat) public, that way others can see the truth, and eBay's responses. And if their responses are bunk, misleading, easily proven as false, or if they ghost and never respond? Everyone can see it. They can also see in plain sight, what they acknowledge, and what they deny.

I've spent far too many hours of my life over the last 7 years trying to solve eBay's problems, when they can care less, and fellow sellers go on having no idea how bad things truly are.

zamo-zuan · ‎07-30-2024

@penny_sioux wrote:
i feel like this is true. i don't quite understand it, but once you start PL then you're a slave to it. i can also see my impression traffic is like 70%+ promoted but clicks are 70%+ organic, and yet 70%+ of sales are charged as promoted. so how does that make sense when most of my clicks are organic (you gotta click on the thing to buy it, right?) but don't remotely correlate to organic sales if the theory is they are charged a PL surcharge

This is what I was referring to in my other post. I've actually made spreadsheets of our statistics, and have the same as you.

There's a few issues with this. First off, there's far too much 'consistency' in the statistics. Traffic fluctuates. And things like clicks/conversion rate are less controlled. These traffic patterns resemble a variance algorithm. Because if you do the math, you will see EVERYTHING sits between a certain amount of variance, and there will be 0 outliers.

Second, as I have shown back in 2022, they have had MAJOR issues with their traffic page that exposed the truth. If you look at the raw data and compared that to the charts on the traffic page, they did NOT match. This one was eventually fixed, but it exposed several things.

I believe a screenshot will be best to show this, and you can make sense and come to the conclusions on your own:

I ask that you please take the time to look at that and try to piece together what is going on.

Problem with these types of issues is that these numbers are the ones being used in the algorithms, and when the numbers don't add up properly , that means the algorithms do not act properly either.

And now that leads to what was exposed in their errors when their system had an issue where promoted impressions were not being retrieved.

Here is an article covering it with screenshots:

https://www.valueaddedresource.net/what-happened-to-ebay-promoted-listings-impressions-views/

The issue here must be emphasized. Once promoted impressions were being read again, the system literally redistributed clicks based upon how many impressions there were! Like magic, Organic views turned in to Promoted views.

How is this possible? Well we can look at the total views. In the example above, there was 1940 views in both cases. But the existence of Promoted Impressions turned a percentage of those 1940 views in to Organic impressions.

This means their formula for Organic Views = Total Views - Promoted Views.

We can be 100% sure that they are NOT simply reporting Organic Views and Promoted Views, because the behavior we observed would not happen.

And for those in software development, we know the only reason to calculate things this way is because you EXPECT a discrepancy, and any left over numbers will go in to organic.

There's more I could say but I don't have the time to post more right now.

selsa84 · ‎07-30-2024

As usual you bring the heat. Great post.

vintagecraze50 · ‎07-30-2024

Bingo on the using promotional rates where prices have to be steeper on ebay. That just makes the most common sense of all for some items that are staples ALL over the web. The only factor that would change that is which competitor obtained those goods at better prices to begin with. THAT is your competition always.

vintagecraze50 · ‎07-30-2024

@vintagecraze50 wrote:
Bingo on the using promotional rates where prices have to be steeper on ebay. That just makes the most common sense of all for some items that are staples ALL over the web. The only factor that would change that is which competitor obtained those goods at better prices to begin with. THAT is your competition always.

Price on same product always wins.

vintagecraze50 · ‎07-30-2024

@vintagecraze50 wrote:
Bingo on the using promotional rates where prices have to be steeper on ebay. That just makes the most common sense of all for some items that are staples ALL over the web. The only factor that would change that is which competitor obtained those goods at better prices to begin with. THAT is your competition always.

Temu plays the game quite well. I am sure they steal a lot of market share and sales of items from other websites because they are operating from the mindset of do whatever you can to grab the customer with elaborate and expensive marketing, lowest or near lowest prices and a multitude of goods. They do spend spend spend now though on advertising as a company in hopes that they will eventually gain most of the market share for their type of goods and their type of consumer. Mainly lower middle class struggling with the economy right now. They are not making big bucks now, but anticipate it later. Their sellers are not making that much either but do anticipate that to change as well. It’s an entirely different thing from the way other marketplaces operate though but they are a good example of how it can work when starting out and grabbing the lions share of the market. Not to compare this with EBay’s marketing which is an entirely different approach with sellers who set their own prices in hopes of getting Their personal share of the bucks. Temu is a conglomerate of sellers who participate in Temu’s overall mission. And Temu controls the pricing.

vintagecraze50 · ‎07-30-2024

@redlinear wrote:
@blacktopautoparts wrote:
Yup, you have it right @redlinear with that. There are times where when I search an item to see what it has sold at so I can adjust some prices or if our listers have placed the correct price, and I see one seller have sold the same item for $30-40 more. While there are many other sellers that are $30-40 less. I can't say that I am not also guilty of having some items be a bit overpriced these days as we know, the larger inventory you have, it does take a bit longer to update.

I think a lot of times people are not searching for the best prices, are just buying what the search through promoted listings from Google, Yahoo, and other search engines leads them to and they make the purchase. Then the issue comes about is that you get eBay displaying after the sale ads and people then start up some of the cancelations. For those that come to eBay and do a search, those people I say good luck to them, because the search is so fundamentally broken. You search on a specific item with refined keywords and the search will bring up other items that are not related.

Lately another thing I have noticed more often than not is where we will go anywhere from 2-5 hours in between sales. For the items that we have and priced fairly right, this should not be happening and never happened in the past. Then this past year, we started noticing this wild trend. This is the kind of stuff that has you scratching your head.

I think buyers just get tired of looking.
They are not going to page two no matter what.
They try to find the best deal and buy it. Then cancel a few minutes later because they saw a better deal as they were leaving.
Or they were going to buy your item, but clicked on one of the adds IN your listing to see what it was about, then another, then another. Now they've forgotten which one they initially wanted, or don't know how to go back to it...and end up buying one just to be done with it.

I've stopped being the cheapest. I now run a normal search and whatever the lowest price I see, I match it or top it. eBay hides the cheapest stuff and most shoppers don't know how to get there.

Buyers have within a few clicks on the web to decide on whatever they want at times and that has NOTHING TO do with a promoted listing. What does matter is that you will do the best you can to get that listing seen here with whatever data you can collect. That you you know 100 percent that what you decided to do is the correct decision is a grand mystery with all the variables present. Do not mean you should not a least try to play the promoted game though. It could help a lot, some of the time.

penny_sioux · ‎07-30-2024

i've noticed this as well, but was blaming it other factors like seasonal. i tried out promoted advanced (pay per click) recently but chose a pay rate much lower than the suggested. while i still get hits, i wonder if it's leeching from my promoted standard traffic as the timeframe all kind of fits. i can also use terapeak to look at the overall market sales for my keywords and it looks about normal so not an obvious market or economic decline. i don't like playing the victim game, but i also have years and years of typical traffic data and clicks are abnormally or dare i say historically low this month.

redlinear · ‎07-31-2024

@vintagecraze50 wrote:
@vintagecraze50 wrote:
Bingo on the using promotional rates where prices have to be steeper on ebay. That just makes the most common sense of all for some items that are staples ALL over the web. The only factor that would change that is which competitor obtained those goods at better prices to begin with. THAT is your competition always.
Price on same product always wins.

Only IF, a buyer sees both items.

zamo-zuan · ‎07-31-2024

@penny_sioux wrote:
i've noticed this as well, but was blaming it other factors like seasonal. i tried out promoted advanced (pay per click) recently but chose a pay rate much lower than the suggested. while i still get hits, i wonder if it's leeching from my promoted standard traffic as the timeframe all kind of fits. i can also use terapeak to look at the overall market sales for my keywords and it looks about normal so not an obvious market or economic decline. i don't like playing the victim game, but i also have years and years of typical traffic data and clicks are abnormally or dare i say historically low this month.

That's always a legit worry, but to be honest, no matter what kind of promotions you use, it always ends up rebalancing to the same performance in the end.

That's also why "Organic Traffic" not fitting the definition of organic traffic is an alarming issue. Because you should be able to rely on your organic traffic, and promoted investment should be it's own system and the performance could be easily compared.

But when you adjust promotions and your ORGANIC traffic rebalances? That does indeed behave as if it is leeching off of your other traffic - because it is!

It becomes a situation where you're unsure if you should even spend more because all it's doing is keeping the same exact number of sales, while having you pay more.

Then combine all the issues I'd already discussed where your investment beyond a point doesn't do anything? It's discouraging.

We too have years of data, and it's always been the same yearly trend. But as of Feb of 2023, yearly trends no longer happen on eBay, while they still persist off of eBay. This, among other things, show that the throttling has become so tight that there's not even a hint of trends. eBay is also aware of these trends, in person I had met with them and they had their own data which displayed Motors building up from Feb and typically having a peak in April to where things would slow in July. That has not happened in 2023 nor 2024 on eBay. Their algorithms are effectively blocking any sales trends.

Also having historic lows. Even when eBay was having tech issues and we crashed by half our sales, it was never this low. Yearly high points would be around 250k/month, lows 150k. From 2012 onward we only went below 100k one month EVER (and that month eBay had tech issues and incorrectly gave us service metric penalties when our metrics were not below the point where we should have gotten a penalty). But since Feb of last year, we've been below 100k. Right now sitting at 80k, which is lower than we EVER were, and almost as low as 50% of what our yearly low would normally be.

During this time eBay has proven nothing that sellers do could move the bar. Competition doesn't exist.

The system is half broken, and half predatory.

redlinear · ‎07-31-2024

@zamo-zuan
I think we should voice our concerns to LKQ instead of eBay. Although, I feel they are responsible for half of the issues we are experiencing on eBay motors now.

zamo-zuan · ‎07-31-2024

@vintagecraze50 wrote:
@vintagecraze50 wrote:
Bingo on the using promotional rates where prices have to be steeper on ebay. That just makes the most common sense of all for some items that are staples ALL over the web. The only factor that would change that is which competitor obtained those goods at better prices to begin with. THAT is your competition always.
Price on same product always wins.

I'd shared data on this years ago that shows this isn't true. The conclusion was that the most important part was to find the sweet spot of ad spending, and adjust prices to compensate, and that will be your optimal level.

As a matter of fact, that's been one of the top feedbacks I share because it's a big part of the problem. I wish it was how you explain, because that would allow sellers to compete.

That's what I hope you could understand here. The people sharing this with you in this thread here are sellers who are very experienced, have a large enough bulk of sales to have a strong sample set of data, and have thoroughly tested to see if "price on the same product always wins". And it does not.

Let's just use a little bit of common sense here, as well. If it were price always winning, why on earth would anyone invest in promos?

But yeah, I need to emphasize, and truly if we want this fixed, we need people to truly understand... There is a lack of being able to compete on eBay. Price does NOT win, promos do NOT win, ship time does NOT win, service metrics do NOT win, return policies do NOT win, item specifics does NOT win. None of it moves the bar of sales anymore and, for us, has not since Feb 2023.

vintagecraze50 · ‎07-31-2024

@zamo-zuan wrote:
@vintagecraze50 wrote:
@vintagecraze50 wrote:
Bingo on the using promotional rates where prices have to be steeper on ebay. That just makes the most common sense of all for some items that are staples ALL over the web. The only factor that would change that is which competitor obtained those goods at better prices to begin with. THAT is your competition always.
Price on same product always wins.
I'd shared data on this years ago that shows this isn't true. The conclusion was that the most important part was to find the sweet spot of ad spending, and adjust prices to compensate, and that will be your optimal level.

As a matter of fact, that's been one of the top feedbacks I share because it's a big part of the problem. I wish it was how you explain, because that would allow sellers to compete.

That's what I hope you could understand here. The people sharing this with you in this thread here are sellers who are very experienced, have a large enough bulk of sales to have a strong sample set of data, and have thoroughly tested to see if "price on the same product always wins". And it does not.

Let's just use a little bit of common sense here, as well. If it were price always winning, why on earth would anyone invest in promos?

But yeah, I need to emphasize, and truly if we want this fixed, we need people to truly understand... There is a lack of being able to compete on eBay. Price does NOT win, promos do NOT win, ship time does NOT win, service metrics do NOT win, return policies do NOT win, item specifics does NOT win. None of it moves the bar of sales anymore and, for us, has not since Feb 2023.

I see what you mean. At some point it becomes sum zero when all the other sellers are using this approach perhaps? Or MAYBE SOMETHING ELSE.

vintagecraze50 · ‎07-31-2024

@vintagecraze50 wrote:
@zamo-zuan wrote:
@vintagecraze50 wrote:
@vintagecraze50 wrote:
Bingo on the using promotional rates where prices have to be steeper on ebay. That just makes the most common sense of all for some items that are staples ALL over the web. The only factor that would change that is which competitor obtained those goods at better prices to begin with. THAT is your competition always.
Price on same product always wins.
I'd shared data on this years ago that shows this isn't true. The conclusion was that the most important part was to find the sweet spot of ad spending, and adjust prices to compensate, and that will be your optimal level.

As a matter of fact, that's been one of the top feedbacks I share because it's a big part of the problem. I wish it was how you explain, because that would allow sellers to compete.

That's what I hope you could understand here. The people sharing this with you in this thread here are sellers who are very experienced, have a large enough bulk of sales to have a strong sample set of data, and have thoroughly tested to see if "price on the same product always wins". And it does not.

Let's just use a little bit of common sense here, as well. If it were price always winning, why on earth would anyone invest in promos?

But yeah, I need to emphasize, and truly if we want this fixed, we need people to truly understand... There is a lack of being able to compete on eBay. Price does NOT win, promos do NOT win, ship time does NOT win, service metrics do NOT win, return policies do NOT win, item specifics does NOT win. None of it moves the bar of sales anymore and, for us, has not since Feb 2023.
I see what you mean. At some point it becomes sum zero when all the other sellers are using this approach perhaps? Or MAYBE SOMETHING ELSE.

How does all this figure into the picture when Ebay has all this competition from other websites and brick and mortar. And how does customer LOYALTY figure into this picture as well. If you got a good thing going people come back all the time, or most of the time.

sweepalot · ‎08-01-2024

I have been selling on ebay full time for almost 15 years. I also sell auto parts but nowhere near as large as you guys. I have been able to make a good living on a small scale by selling items that sell quickly and for a good profit. I haven't struggled with sales like this since 2020 during covid. My average has been around 10-15 sales per day for a few years now. I have had days in June and July of only selling 1 part. My listing has stayed the same and I have tried to not raise prices too much. My impressions are down almost 20% which also has my sales down almost the same amount. 20% is only compared to last month which was way down from the previous month. I am advertising more than I ever have. This offsite google ad and "priority promoted listing" deal is ridiculous. Ebay always did that for us. I am paying almost 26% FVF and ad fees, which is insane. Even still, sales are awful, especially last month.