Getting no views, sales way down, what to do?

[buyingtimenc]

I sell a variety of motorcycle and auto parts, mostly 70s/80s parts as a part of my restoration hobby. NOTHING is moving.  Very few looks at my BINs and auctions. I assume ebay wants us to pay for more exposure with the popups they place after every listing/relisting.  

I've been an ebay seller since virtually the beginning of ebay, with always a very high rating. I'm  very particular with my listing descriptions, etc, by no means sloppy verbiage, pics.  Always strong searchable titles. Not sure what to do other than to move to FB Marketplace for selling?? 

[tweetyboyd1971]

Something has changed.    Many of my newer listings are getting zero views,  even after several days.    That has never happened before.    I even added best offer to some of my listings,  expecting insultingly low offers,  and I haven't gotten any offers either.    I can't afford to pay ebay another 15 % in promotional fees on top of the 15% in fees that they already take, if that is what this is all about

[skeletonstore]

You have 8 listings with 8 completed listings that didn't sell in the past 60 days.  Yes you've been on Ebay a long time,  long enough to know you need several hundred listings.  Being more active is worth way more than titles.  I've tried everything but listing kitchen sinks to get sales with a few items.  It really doesn't work.  deleting listings and relisting does little as well since others are well aware of being active and will bury your listings.  All 8 of your items are long tail not in high demand parts.  People who buy parts might not even use ebay.  How many items could you possibly list?  The idea is to create roll over,  the more roll over across the span of a month the better.  For example if you list 50 items a day for a month,  that means every 30 days you will have 50 items renew.  This keeps your store fresh.  If you can double up the next month then the effect will be greater.  Ebay's algorithm prefers things on sale(short sales 1-3 days max)and like pictures, especially ones with white backgrounds.  Mostly ebay wants very active accounts.  List anything you can find.  

[inhawaii]

If you had a store in your local shopping mall and nobody was coming in your store or buying your items, yet other stores were busy, what would you do?

[handsonthewatch]

Probably figure out if the mall put up a wall in front of my store? Can we stop pretending that ebay is anything like a mall? Last time I checked, malls don't direct people down specific halls. They don't block off stores that they don't like for the moment. They don't tell you you can only sell such and such amount of goods. etc etc etc ad nauseum. 

[motortown_inc]

I know this is not helpful, but you are not alone, as you can see by the other replies, and the countless replies on other posts like yours. Hang in there. 

[onefootflipper]

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@gamersbaystore wrote:

I sell video games, and my sales are totally dead here. I have close to 300 games for sale here right now, nothing is moving. I list the same games on ebay's competitors sites and do far better than I do here.

To be honest, video games are not money makers in my opinion. In fact, I stopped buying up new stock of them over 2 years ago, they aren't very profitable and with the rise of digital gaming the physical media doesn't sell.

The majority of older games are all emulated too, which decreases the value of those games on the open market. Causal gamers, which make up the majority of buyers, aren't going to pay for something that's already free. Only the collectors buy now.

I sell like 10 DVDs/Blu-Rays for every single 1 game on average. Movies sell, games not so much.

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I clicked on you, clicked on games, checked the first 3 that came up.

King Arthur, PS2 complete, your price $22.90 shipped. Competitors lowest. $10.04

Nickelodeon Party Blast Xbox complete your price $16.90 shipped. Lowest competitor $7.19 or best offer.

flushed away advance complete you, $13.90 shipped. The competition $9.50.

You can't list common items at 50 -150 percent above the competition and expect to sell anything.

I don't think emulation has anything to do with it. None of the 21st century consoles are properly emulated aside from the Nintendo ones. While the games for all those 90s consoles that are emulated are way more valuable than the average Xbox/Playstation games.

What does have a real effect is the hardware attrition of the 21st century consoles, they are basically modern computers, they break in essentially unrepairable ways over time, continually shrinking the market for the games. 

Also, rereleases on download services often with improvements are not helping the resale of those old games. Why would I buy the PS3 version of a game when I can get an improved PC version on Steam for $3.

I essentially don't look for games anymore, it is really one of the worst categories between cutthroat competition and the continual shrinking of the customer base.

[luckythewinner]

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@buyingtimenc wrote:

I sell a variety of motorcycle and auto parts, mostly 70s/80s parts as a part of my restoration hobby. NOTHING is moving.   

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Is anything moving for your competition? 

[animesalesandmore]

but ebay isnt like that lol stop being a shill.

[miyasamaco]

What's happening is yet another "update" to choke us sellers and knock us out for good. Those of us who've been here for a while are considered "the old eBay" per the executive suite. 

Sadly there's nothing as far as good alternatives for us yet. The people running this site have no clue about what direction to take. Perhaps give the big social media site's marketplace a shot...

[miyasamaco]

Bonanza is terrible but Ebid is even worse. Webstore used to be good but is now completely dead. Too many incompetent people running things.

[inhawaii]

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@handsonthewatch wrote:

 Last time I checked, malls don't direct people down specific halls. They don't block off stores that they don't like for the moment. 

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Neither does ebay.

You just think they do.

[gamersbaystore]

No doubt, digital is the present and future! The major gaming platforms control the majority of the market with ease. Its as simple as a download today.

The games you noted I've had up for sale for years, the prices just keep dropping, which was exactly my point. Likewise, prices are heavily dictated by condition, and not just the title of the game. A game in poor condition that sells for $5 might sell for $25 in excellent condition. 

And yes, emulation has a lot to do with plummeting prices too. The majority of PS2 games are fully emulated today. People use PCSX2 to play these games now.

Virtually every retro console is now fully emulated. Heck, I used emulation to review hundreds of classic arcade games on youtube using MAME.

I do agree that consoles don't last forever and their numbers do shrink over time. Let's face it, the average gamer doesn't have a working original XBOX or PS2 laying around.

You can run PS2 game discs right off your computer with PCSX2 though. I prefer PCSX2 to the original hardware because of the graphics scaling capabilities.

[onefootflipper]

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@gamersbaystore wrote:

No doubt, digital is the present and future! The major gaming platforms control the majority of the market with ease. Its as simple as a download today.

The games you noted I've had up for sale for years, the prices just keep dropping, which was exactly my point. Likewise, prices are heavily dictated by condition, and not just the title of the game. A game in poor condition that sells for $5 might sell for $25 in excellent condition. 

And yes, emulation has a lot to do with plummeting prices too. The majority of PS2 games are fully emulated today. People use PCSX2 to play these games now.

Virtually every retro console is now fully emulated. Heck, I used emulation to review hundreds of classic arcade games on youtube using MAME.

I do agree that consoles don't last forever and their numbers do shrink over time. Let's face it, the average gamer doesn't have a working original XBOX or PS2 laying around.

You can run PS2 game discs right off your computer with PCSX2 though. I prefer PCSX2 to the original hardware because of the graphics scaling capabilities.

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Ah, I didn't realize they had PS2 done right now. Probably the last one they ever will manage to fully emulate. 

Yep, when that PS2, PS3, etc owned by the casual player dies he doesn't try to replace it, he just gets rids of the games. The consoles themselves have not gotten scarce to the point where collectors are having trouble affording them, but those days are absolutely coming. 

I am really familiar with Mame (I actually wrote huge chunks of Mame's history.dat, which later became an XML file).  I stopped following the updates to mame years ago though when it went off the rails trying to emulate everything on the planet.

I tend to price drop by 10 percent and relaunch my old stuff every once in a while, that is less labor intensive and thus more profitable then going back and price researching 16,000 items on even an annual basis.

[gamersbaystore]

More recently, the original XBOX is being emulated as well. xemu made that possible, though not every game works quite yet. I was able to keep the sales moving with those original XBOX games for years because there was previously no emulation for them.

As for ebay, this place is a ghost town. I get no traffic here now, its pointless to even list anything. Hundreds of the listings I made over the last few months have never even had a single view. Not kidding.

I've moved to other platforms and am getting way more traffic and sales.

I've tried running 17% and 20% off sales to push product here, but ebay destroyed my store and pretty much removed it from search results. No one can even see I have anything for sale.

I'm probably going to close my ebay store for good coming the end of this year.

[johnrj1226]

You  have a total of eight  used parts  6 for a Suzuki 1980/81 750; 1 for a Volvo  and 1 for a Kawasaki. Wouldn't think there are too many folks hanging around that need those specific parts.