Ebay Sales completely stopped in last 2 months October 2022

[ad2030]

Hello, I have been on ebay for 20 years selling off and on. I opened my ebay stores in 2013 and have been having great sales until the last 2 1/2 years. Sales have been declining slowly and steady for the last year and a half. 2021 and 2022 have been horrible nothing but a downward spiral..

I have done updating, relisting, sell similar, new listings, new pics, updated coded listings, added promo, having sales 10%-15% off. new titles Nothing is giving. 

I know my listings are not being found on the search results. I'm pretty much ghosted even though i can see them myself. No page impressions.. Not to mention china sellers are always at the top of the search results because of multiple never ending new accounts from the  same seller and low prices.

This is it I'm calling it quits as the business has dwindled to $100 dollar weeks. 

I sell industrial filtering media so the demand will be there. I keep reading how online shopping  is down all around ebay, posh, mercari etc. This is an ebay issue.  Looks like they are weeding out sellers quickly.

ebay sent me a message to try the new beta marketing campaign $500 off **bleep**! to get listings at the top of search results. 

Anybody having a similar experience, I would like to hear from you. 

[ebpick1]

YES - AGREE, and it is NOT that what you are selling is not desired.

Been selling on eBay, devoutly since it began.  Yet, unlike before when I would contact them about changes, complaints about a buyer, or many times about "improvement" suggestions... only to experience a drop in sales, NOW it appears that "they" may be blaming the economy, post covid issues, fuel/food prices, or any other number of things???

BUT - that may not be the "ENTIRE" reason.  As I have been a faithful seller, and buyer, for nearly 30 years I track EVERYTHING, use it to research potential products and pricing (in some cases having my items terminated because they are not permitted - WHILE there are others offering/selling the same thing with active listings), the GREATEST thing I found is the lack of page views.

I had usually offered more than 1000 items every month, with additional new items every week.  The old days of selling 20-50% of those items every month disappeared long ago, YET page views have dropped immensely.  Just recently, with just under 1000 items, I would estimate less than 25% had at least ONE view in 30 days.   This suggests NO ONE IS WINDOW SHOPPING, which may be due to several reasons, though  the most likely is a shut down of access to my listings.... which may be proven as when I have called with issues of potential buyers, for some reason my sales would increase for a time.  Another suspicion was that their system tracks shipping and posting times, so if I was late, it appeared I was not having a sale until the item was in USPS, or other tracking system.

Now, I am cleaning house (rarely do this prior to Christmas) simply because I need to move the items I was offering below the historical sales volumes because they have been listed for more than six months - which in itself has increased, but with the new changes in fees... most buyers fail to understand sellers can not continue to offer items when the fees exceed 25% - paying a fee on shipping, which is considered "income" to sellers, which is not as it is a pass through collection for the shipping companies making tax  reporting a bit more complicated than it should be, and in all is deceptive as being done showing incorrect actual gross, and eventual net incomes of sellers.

In any case, with what may be coming... eBay and many other off shoots, and other organizations relying on Internet Access, may all be "throttled" by something, in violation of Free and Fair Trade.... leaving the little people in the cold.

[rapidvinyl]

October is down 20% from September. 2022 compared to 2021 is down 9.7%. We have been on since 1999. Usually bounces back, but as others have mentioned. eBay is making some backend changes and search + search with Ads is completely off base.

[baantiques]

Sales have come to almost a complete halt.  I'm down over 75% since this same time last month. and over 85% since this same week last year.  Not sure what to do at this point.  Last time this happened was 5 years ago and it took several months to recover, but it did start to recover right away. Over the last week I've tried new listings, updating old listings, getting rid of dead inventory, ending and selling similar, etc.  Nothing has worked so far.  I'm thinking I need to end all my listings and start over from the beginning, one listing at a time - new pictures, new descriptions, the works.  If that doesn't work it's probably time to take my remaining inventory to the dump and get a job.  The prospect of working for someone else again after 6 years is revolting.

[ariadne5298]

Good evening,

I have just read your post and I have to agree, I have been on eBay for seven years and I did very well I worked hard but nevertheless I sold quite regularly.  I changed over to a business seller because eBay said I would do more business so I did and I became a top rated seller.  Unfortunately it has been down hill since then.  This month is completely appalling I have no idea what is going on I do not blame covid because all through the pandemic I sold well and I averaged the same income for months and months.   However something is going on I know not what but I am selling nothing at the present time literally nothing.  
I phoned eBay and said what is going on is something wrong why is this  happening but I got no real answers.

I think I am being squeezed out for some reason or at least it feels like it.

regards

ariadne.

[blue-ocean-wave]

I do not understand why some ebay sellers are offering fantastic antiques for $.99 or $9.99 and that's all they get. What is going on? ebay was once the place to showcase great antiques and get a fantastic ending price. Alot of these ebay sellers would get more money for their items if they sold them at a local yard sale or Flea market. 

[katzrul15]

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@blue-ocean-wave wrote:

I do not understand why some ebay sellers are offering fantastic antiques for $.99 or $9.99 and that's all they get. What is going on? ebay was once the place to showcase great antiques and get a fantastic ending price. Alot of these ebay sellers would get more money for their items if they sold them at a local yard sale or Flea market. 

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They probably would get more for them locally if they are selling for the opening bid of 99 cents.  

There are some items that should only be sold fixed-price as there is not enough "demand" for them in an auction setting.  

And I agree - there are some pricing really low right now.  Guess they figure some money is better than "no" money??  😕

[blue-ocean-wave]

Selling on ebay in 2022 is not very good. So many ebay sellers are just giving away their antiques for next to nothing. WHY? I see so many sellers on ebay that have no idea what they are doing. I saw a gorgeous antique clock with key, in working condition sell for $9.99. OMG !!!! They could have sold this clock at a local yard sale for $50! 

[rugerskick]

Search has been broken and made worse in the various updates the last couple years.  Google search actually seems to produce better results than ebays onsite search.

[rugerskick]

I would be interested in your ranking/opinions of the other major online sites in terms of which ones would be a logical place to have as another place to have a presence.  For whatever reasons.  I know maybe some places may be better depending on what you sell.  Or maybe for ease of use.  Or they treat sellers well.  Etc.

[rugerskick]

I did notice as soon as 4th quarter started here this year, my top 20 impressions and other impressions went down, and are still going down, even non-search impressions have went down.

So could be the fall updates knocking down those not in promoted listings even more. Or new negative alterations to the almighty algorithm.

[rugerskick]

That is true.

The insanity is that ebay will take over and use your actual seller account in beta testing. Won't tell you at all.  But if and when they do that, that means no buyers can see your items.  So for however long they use your account for beta testing, you're not getting any orders.

This is horrible IT practice.  They should never use any real, active accounts for beta testing.  They need to have a database of offline accounts and keep all testing in a separate development area that can't touch the actual live accounts and system.  I have a background doing this kind of work, migrating apps to a live network, this is one of the worst things to ever do, to jeopardize the live system and corrupt actual user accounts and data, to the worst case scenario of the live system going down in a sitewide system failure.  And then good luck trying to get it back up and running without massive problems and data corruption remaining.

[rugerskick]

The economy has an effect yes.  But its not the sole reason in ebays case, not when other sites are experiencing increases and growing.  Ebays stats of site users are showing significant millions no longer using the platform.  In this case its the economy AND problems within ebay itself that are the reasons.  Other sites don't have ebays internal problems so they aren't suffering from their own problems like ebay is.  

[rugerskick]

There was a fall update before 4th quarter.

[ci-motorsports]

My sales are down 43% this month and ive noticed the very slow sales started around the beginning of September for me.  Historically September is always a slow month, but it carried over into October up until present.  I think the economy is worse than what we are led to believe and there are possible site issues from what i read about online. I usually sell between 15-20 items over the weekend but it's down to 5 6 if I'm lucky right now.  I hope everything picks up for everyone soon as the holiday sales season is fast approaching

[vintagecraze50]

It is hard to determine exactly what may be causing some of this. If you sell in an overly saturated category then it seems you must promote your listings to get any visibility. That also depends on how many sellers are using the promotion tactic on that particular item, if it is a rare one etc. Economy may be playing a role in this for certain items.