Ebay sales are slow

[dollface18]

How is everyone doing with eBay sales, It's so slow.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@kedit-66  Interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if Halloween is oversaturated....it has become such a popular holiday that it seems everyone is pushing Halloween stuff (and Fall generally). As I said, I think this is going to be a very competitive fourth quarter, and, unfortunately, I suspect ebay will once again confine its marketing to focus categories rather than the site as a whole. In a recent interview, ebay's CEO was very clear that they expect sellers will take up some of the slack by using the new External Ads program (or whatever they are calling it at the moment.) And I also wouldn't be surprised to see them push social media more, (although I'd be enormously surprised if they finally provided the referral discount they promised us a few years ago.)

I've been sending offers, using Best Offer, and running some sales. Will be running more sales , probably starting this weekend. 

I'd be thrilled to hear some good news about ebay marketing at the upcoming ebay Open, but have no expectations of that. Hopefully they will at least do some marketing around "pre-loved fashion" generally (not just luxury or street wear), but again, can't say I'm expecting much.

[mam98031]

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@mike_jayroe wrote:

Having the worst luck since I joined 3/2022. But I recently took nearly a two week time out to deal with a problem. I am almost done dealing with it and will be making major changes with my listings soon. 

Then let's see if things improve.

Hope everyone else see's their luck improve.

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@mike_jayroe 

What kind of "major changes"?

[chapeau-noir]

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@dbfolks166mt wrote:

@dbfolks166mt wrote:

I'm up over 150% from last month, but I've been hammering away at listing and have changed up my offerings a bit. I've also been actually staying in town instead of leaving for a week here, a week there, so my work flow is more even.

     So you went from 2 sales last month to 3 this month? 

I'm not THAT bad as a seller.

         Realize that just a little attempted humor at playing with the numbers. 

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Give me a few weeks and I will be DOWN 150%. 😒

[inhawaii]

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@janet9988 wrote:

Here is someone who is overwhelmed wit h orders.... maybe you can gains some insight from them?

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Ask-a-Mentor/Orders/m-p/34674073#M749800

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Overwhelmed with 99 cent orders with free shipping.  LOL

Sorry, didn't mean to be a Debbie Downer.

[mam98031]

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@inhawaii wrote:

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@janet9988 wrote:

Here is someone who is overwhelmed wit h orders.... maybe you can gains some insight from them?

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Ask-a-Mentor/Orders/m-p/34674073#M749800

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Overwhelmed with 99 cent orders with free shipping.  LOL

Sorry, didn't mean to be a Debbie Downer.

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It is the mistake of a new seller.  I made a similar mistake when I started years ago.  Help is what the seller needs so they can learn and grow.

[reallynicestamps]

I even got a sale on my "test" account, which is so small and slow I don't even bother with a Store for it.

Normally my busy season is Boxing Day to March, but this year it's like Easter will be just before Hallowe'en.

My dead season is  November and December.

Which goes to say, not only is retail seasonal, but it varies with the category.

One thought-- while Auctions often work well with collectibles, of your nine auction sales in the past three months only two got more than one bid.

Why not aim for the impulse buyer by switching to Fixed Price listings which have the further advantage of being visible for 30 days instead of a mere seven?

Over 85% of transactions on eBay are Fixed Price, and even most auctions opt for either Buy It Now or Best Offer either of which end the auction immediately on acceptance.

[gloryglorygifts]

Well, according to ebay I'm up 30% from last month's sales. Of course I am. I was closed for 3 of the 4 weeks of July.  It's been a slow month but it has been engineered that way because of the construction chaos in my home/office. It looks like a mixed bag of responses on the thread though. Kudos to those getting amazing sales! @chapeau-noir

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@gloryglorygifts  That's a good example of why I rarely pay attention to the month over month sales. But really, it comes down to: I'm a small seller of single quantity long tail items and so my sales can vary a good bit And, because I'm a small seller, if I sell even 2 or 3 high end (for me) items in a month, and the next month just average items, the percentage ebay shows me will make it look like I had some sort of terrible decline, when the main reason for the drop is that I had unusual high end sales the month before.

A lot of ebay's data is much more useful if you sell multi quantity newer stuff, more like retail than resale. But I think many small resellers get upset about these percentage declines when they are virtually meaningless for many of us. 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@kedit-66  Some neat stuff in your store. And looks like you are getting good sales. I noticed you are running a number of discount sales events, and I see no expiration date on those...do you just let them run? And maybe add new items to the sales as time goes on? 

I've always set a time frame for my sales, but now I wonder if that's really such a great idea.

Do you mind providing a little insight into how you are doing this?

[shado-x]

How is everyone doing with eBay sales, It's so slow.

Sales are steady here, postage rates are quite high between 12oz to 1 lb.  No one is complaining about eBay fees here lately, so that is good.  LOL.  It is also the end of Back to School season with a Cackling Clown economy in decline.

[ebooksdiva]

Unfortunately my sales caught a snag for a week of disruptions in internet service as well as a hurricane yesterday I had to put my listings on time away until this afternoon. 
Hopefully things will get back to normal soon for all.

[comicscauldron]

Worst september i ever had for me .

[chapeau-noir]

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@gloryglorygifts wrote:

Well, according to ebay I'm up 30% from last month's sales. Of course I am. I was closed for 3 of the 4 weeks of July.  It's been a slow month but it has been engineered that way because of the construction chaos in my home/office. It looks like a mixed bag of responses on the thread though. Kudos to those getting amazing sales! @chapeau-noir

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The same here - I was closed for five weeks in the summer because we were tearing out about half our downstairs floor. We had to have it leveled because the back side of our house had dropped due to earthquakes (I was finally getting around to repairing the subsidence damage in our drywall) and our general sloppy wet climate and retiled. I just gave up trying to do anything. Looks great now, though.

I'll soon run out of inventory, though and I'm down to selling stuff out of the house.

[wifetrained]

Bound to happen from time to time when you go from being the only game in town to being just another place to maybe stop at. But there are other factors to be sure such as persistent inflation, too many sellers, not enough buyers, horrid customer service, competition, lousy marketing and so on. 

[sakic92710]

eBay has been slow for me going on 3 years now.  I really expected Sept. to be much better for any online sales.  It has been depressing!  Since Sept. 1, I have sold $108.  The month is almost half over!  Do we have to wait until the summer is officially over?  The end of the month is coming much too fast for me!  A large chunk of my bills are always covered.  The rest of them should be easily taken care of in the 1st part of the new month yet I've struggled to manage all summer.  Best of luck to all.   🙂