Do I have to bite the bullet to get sales to increase?

[kathys_impressions]

I'm not on the forums very much, so I wanted to get your valued opinions. I've been a seller on eBay for 23 years. My sales have been declining in the last year especially. I read someone say that you have to be modifying or adding listings frequently or your store won't get "indexed" by Google. I also read someone said listings older than 9 months should be ended and restarted with "Sell Similar".  So I've been doing that on some older listings for the past 2 months. But it hasn't helped one bit!!! Because of the extreme drop in sales, I'm no longer TRS due to less than 100 transactions in a year. So that doesn't help my listings visibility.  My question is:  I have quite a few listings that are very old (6-11 years!). But they have an extreme amount of watchers. Should I just bite the bullet and end them and restart, and lose all those watchers?  Or will it hurt my overall shop stats?  Ugh!!  

[boomersbiz46]

 Watchers are people with similar items and want to see what yours sell for  so they can list theirs or they are just curious as they had the same item at one time and it sold for far less than yours. (LOL).    OR

Watchers can also be people waiting for you to mark your item down, then they will buy it. 

Who Knows!!!!!!

[kathys_impressions]

Mam98031, I've been a TRS all my years until a couple of months ago. I had to change my handling time to 1 day a long time ago to qualify for TRS I thought? But you change your handling time to 2 days to refresh the listings and that works?

[she-sells]

IN THE TOILET TANK..  This use to be the best time of year to sell DOA now

[she-sells]

I find that watchers are just other sellers watching to see if a like wise item that i have for sale sells.

[selsa84]

The most eBay response I've ever seen

[mam98031]

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@kathys_impressions wrote:

Mam98031, I've been a TRS all my years until a couple of months ago. I had to change my handling time to 1 day a long time ago to qualify for TRS I thought? But you change your handling time to 2 days to refresh the listings and that works?

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@kathys_impressions 

You don't have to have 1 day handling to qualify for TRS.  I too have been TRS since the program started.

You are thinking of the qualifications for TRS+, which is a listing level designation that allows the seller to get a 10% discount on their FVFs.  For each listing that you have with a 1 day handling and Free Returns, you qualify for the discount.  But you don't have to have any listings qualify for this to have your seller level to be Top Rated.

[kathys_impressions]

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@mam98031 wrote:

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@kathys_impressions wrote:

Mam98031, I've been a TRS all my years until a couple of months ago. I had to change my handling time to 1 day a long time ago to qualify for TRS I thought? But you change your handling time to 2 days to refresh the listings and that works?

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@kathys_impressions 

You don't have to have 1 day handling to qualify for TRS.  I too have been TRS since the program started.

You are thinking of the qualifications for TRS+, which is a listing level designation that allows the seller to get a 10% discount on their FVFs.  For each listing that you have with a 1 day handling and Free Returns, you qualify for the discount.  But you don't have to have any listings qualify for this to have your seller level to be Top Rated.

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Okay, yes I was TRS+ with the discount on FVF.  That makes sense, thanks! 

[mam98031]

So the TRS+ isn't saving you much right now until you get your sales up.  For example.

$100 in sales x 13.25% = $13.25 x 10% TRS discount = $1.33 TRS discount on FVFs.

By the way, There use to be a TRS badge on listings that qualify for TRS+.  I don't see that on your listings and they do qualify.  Did they change this rule recently?  Or is there a technical issue?  Or did it move somewhere that I'm just not seeing it?

[kathys_impressions]

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@mam98031 wrote:

So the TRS+ isn't saving you much right now until you get your sales up.  For example.

$100 in sales x 13.25% = $13.25 x 10% TRS discount = $1.33 TRS discount on FVFs.

By the way, There use to be a TRS badge on listings that qualify for TRS+.  I don't see that on your listings and they do qualify.  Did they change this rule recently?  Or is there a technical issue?  Or did it move somewhere that I'm just not seeing it?

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Yes, they took away my TRS a few months ago when my yearly transactions dropped below 100. I had to close my store for the first time ever for 3 weeks last November due to surgery- so I had 0 transactions that month. I didn't have a choice. I think that really impacted me, even though it's especially these last 4 months that things have declined so much. Doing the offers for watchers has helped me get 2 sales so far. Small but better than what was happening! Hope it will keep "waking up" my store!!  🙂

[gwens*4saleitems*]

Just don't bite down too hard, you might chip a tooth. 🙂

[mam98031]

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@kathys_impressions wrote:

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@mam98031 wrote:

So the TRS+ isn't saving you much right now until you get your sales up.  For example.

$100 in sales x 13.25% = $13.25 x 10% TRS discount = $1.33 TRS discount on FVFs.

By the way, There use to be a TRS badge on listings that qualify for TRS+.  I don't see that on your listings and they do qualify.  Did they change this rule recently?  Or is there a technical issue?  Or did it move somewhere that I'm just not seeing it?

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Yes, they took away my TRS a few months ago when my yearly transactions dropped below 100. I had to close my store for the first time ever for 3 weeks last November due to surgery- so I had 0 transactions that month. I didn't have a choice. I think that really impacted me, even though it's especially these last 4 months that things have declined so much. Doing the offers for watchers has helped me get 2 sales so far. Small but better than what was happening! Hope it will keep "waking up" my store!!  🙂

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You may be holding TRS in too high of a regard.  It is unlikely that the loss of that caused you any downturn in sales.

Try running a Markdown Sale in order to bring buyers in and introduce them to the pretty stuff you have for sale.