mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
Dear Zamo,
Your chart and the patterns that it shows reminds me of my chart at Christmas time. As you have stated before sellers who do well, the ceiling is not subtle, it is very noticeable.
There is obviously some kind of visibility shutdown happening once you hit a certain daily dollar amount.
We downgraded our store after our horrendous sales numbers last year. After we came back from vacation our sales were actually much better and they have been pretty steady for a January (mind you, I have changed my outlook of Ebay and my bar is much lower). Then 4 days ago we were completely dead in the water. All of the sudden our sales completely stopped, nothing no sales, no emails, no offers – NOTHING! I don’t understand why Ebay feels that it has to turn our visibility off for days at a time. It is very noticeable and not normal. I am aware of ebbs and flow, but this is something entirely different.
I can definitely tell when my visibility is off, not just by no sales, I can tell by the “send offer” button on my active listings. When my sales are steady and going well the number of offers I can send out (in other words people who have seen my item and put it on their watch list) goes up nicely. But, when my sales have stopped like they have the last 4 days, that number does not change. Which means no one is seeing my items.
2019 was our worst year in 10 years on Ebay and with as many complaining of low sales and profits falling, obviously we are not alone. It is going to take some kind of miracle to fix what is happening here.
@monstertoybox wrote:Dear Zamo,
Your chart and the patterns that it shows reminds me of my chart at Christmas time. As you have stated before sellers who do well, the ceiling is not subtle, it is very noticeable.
There is obviously some kind of visibility shutdown happening once you hit a certain daily dollar amount.
We downgraded our store after our horrendous sales numbers last year. After we came back from vacation our sales were actually much better and they have been pretty steady for a January (mind you, I have changed my outlook of Ebay and my bar is much lower). Then 4 days ago we were completely dead in the water. All of the sudden our sales completely stopped, nothing no sales, no emails, no offers – NOTHING! I don’t understand why Ebay feels that it has to turn our visibility off for days at a time. It is very noticeable and not normal. I am aware of ebbs and flow, but this is something entirely different.
I can definitely tell when my visibility is off, not just by no sales, I can tell by the “send offer” button on my active listings. When my sales are steady and going well the number of offers I can send out (in other words people who have seen my item and put it on their watch list) goes up nicely. But, when my sales have stopped like they have the last 4 days, that number does not change. Which means no one is seeing my items.
2019 was our worst year in 10 years on Ebay and with as many complaining of low sales and profits falling, obviously we are not alone. It is going to take some kind of miracle to fix what is happening here.
Yes, those days you have in the screenshot all actually ended within $50 of each other. One of them was a Saturday, and Motors traffic in our category ALWAYS decreases to approximately 1/2 on a weekend. That was one of the first things that stood out to me abnormally on the weekend; Saturday ended slightly HIGHER than Friday. That is not a trend that you see in our market.
After noticing the "Active Listing Up" message in error, this Saturday was a confirmation that yes, an algorithm update did indeed happen, and yes indeed our placement has increased in the algorithm update.
Regarding the sales increases/stopping, honestly the best way to make sense of that is keep a spreadsheet each day with your Sales/31 days amount in the morning, and at night before midnight/the new day. You can use this information to predict with good accuracy when you'll see a good or bad day in sales.
After the weekend, you might notice that you are below your usual Sales/31 day amount for the month? Suddenly your Monday will have a surge of sales. But let's say you have a really busy Friday and you end ~$2000 higher on your Sales/31 days? The next days you'll coincidentally have a slower days, until you're back down to your usual Sales/31 day amount.
All you have to do at that point is take consideration the earliest day on the chart (the one that will fall off the chart tomorrow) and factor that. And you can predict how your day will go with strong accuracy.
This indicates that eBay's algorithm is setting an ideal sales rank it expects your store to be at.
To test this further, you can compare with other sellers. Last week when our traffic suddenly started changing, other sellers experienced changes on the same day. What does this mean? It means the algorithm updated last week.
Finally, we can also factor the "Active Listings Up/Down" messages I mentioned earlier in this thread. If you notice you got "Active Listings Up 30%" suddenly, when your active listings are not different in reality? This means you "Sales/31 days" number has just increased in the algorithm update! If you get "Active Listings Down", your "Sales/31 days" number has just decreased in the algorithm update.
It's all patterns. It's all predictable. As long as you have a decent bulk of daily sales, you can see it in your graphs. All you have to do is watch 2 sections of Seller Hub: The Sales/31 days graph, and the notifications section that occasionally says "Active Listings Up/Down".
Sure, a buyer might go directly to your store and make a few big purchases, putting you ahead of your graph. But if this happens, you'll get worse placement in the algorithm until you're back down to where the algorithm placed you.
I encourage sellers to try this for yourselves if you have enough daily sales to be able to notice trends on your graph. You can take daily screenshots, and add to your spreadsheet in morning/evening. This will make it easy to see if you can start predicting how the day will go, and you will see that it is NOT the buyers that are in control, but the traffic is controlled by the algorithms.
@vintagecraze50 wrote:E-commerce bytes with Ina Steiner has an except from a CNBC interview where Mr Shenkel stated that some of the proceeds will be used for stock buy backs, dividends and Mergers and acquisitions . Cannot copy paste this to this post.
Yes I saw that. Which to me says it IS NOT an either / or situation.
While fixes around here certainly don't move as fast as many of us would like, that doesn't mean they aren't working on them nor does it mean they don't have a budget for them. It only means they don't happen as fast as lots of us would absolutely love to see.
