Downgraded store from Anchor to Premium on May 1st. Substantial drop in sales as of May 1st.

[seanhanley1978]

Can anyone confirm the relationship between store subscription level vs. visibility and traffic/sales?  We've had an Anchor Store subscription for 8 or 9 years and decided to downgrade to Premium as of May 1st.
Since then we've seen a substantial drop in traffic and sales.  We were informed by CS that there is no visibility placement relative to store subscription but I'm beginning to suspect otherwise. (Also, the previous years traffic substantially increased on May 1st, which is the day our annual renewal for our Anchor store renewed)
Anyone out there have a similar experience? (Traffic report graph below)

[funfactorychannel]

This happen to me 2 years ago. I downgraded since Premium was now 10k allotment but sales took a nose dive. I upgraded back to anchor two months after that. And it went back to previous sales. 

[gurlcat]

Which traffic graph is that?  Impressions or views?  

[chapeau-noir]

I've downgraded twice and it never made any difference.

[andreyprince]

So how do you do the blank revision?

[pls-consignments]

I don't believe it has anything to do with the downgrade. Sales have been flat since May 1st for many sellers. 

[seanhanley1978]

Impressions. 

[seanhanley1978]

Select Items > Bulk Edit > Make no changes > Save All

[tobaccocardyahoo]

IMO Impressions are the least likely metric to be affected by Ebay. They are the number of search results which include your items even if a search yields thousands of results which are never even seen by the buyers.

Many sellers are reporting sales drops and impression drops which is not surprising for many, many reasons. Different sellers are inclined to blame different external conditions for the drop and no one can prove their theories to be correct.

Are your visits also off?

Is your conversion rate off?

These metrics can point to whether the drop in impressions is causing your sales drop. I find little correlation between my impressions and visits, which would seem incongruous. But many items appear in searches which are not actually seeking that item.

[dirk12955]

Tagging On,    My sales, views,  clicks,  whatever have dropped an average of 46%  on all 

3 of my selling accounts since May 1st.

And I didn't have to do anything for that sad fact(s)  to occur.  

[seanhanley1978]

I see the conversion rate but I don't see it compared to the previous time period.

[tobaccocardyahoo]

On the performance summary page it shows the %change in conversion rate from the previous period. Mine is remarkably stable. It also shows the click through rate and it too is quite stable, even when my total sales are off.

Both are more stable than impressions which suggests that the issue is no one is looking for much of what I sell when things are slow.

I sell obscure stuff. I have a bit over half of the number of listings that you have. I am getting a little over half the impressions you get. I have never gotten continuous levels of sales without peaks and valleys until I had 10k listings on a site.

I had about 20k listings on Amazon before the pandemic and had stable sales which met my goals. I have limited my Ebay sales to a smaller number because I have not been pleased with competition and pricing on Ebay post pandemic. Among the items I do not have listed anywhere are a few thousand LPs. Almost all long tail.

[seanhanley1978]

Thank you, that seems  correct. There's essentially zero difference in the click thru conversion rate.  (Though that period incorporates the last two weeks in April in which the (Zero-decreased) traffic/sales matched previous year and previous month, and I can't isolate the May 2-week time period under the 'summary' tab)

Perhaps the drop in traffic/sales is coincidental with my store subscription, and as another user posted, apparently many sellers are seeing a May-specific drop in sales. 

[albany_sellers]

I ended up downgrading from premium since my sales have nosedived to the point that premium is useless to me. The shipping credit is also no longer worth it since eBay inflates their shipping supply prices constantly as well.

I am on the verge of just packing it in and calling it quits since I am not about to shovel half my money into promotions and ads just to get back to where I used to be before it became all about who pays the most to be seen.