Has anyone else had a huge drop in sales over the last week?

[fashunu4eeuh]

Peaks and valleys are retail norms. But a drastic drop may indicate some wider issue. Wonder if the bank failures are having an impact on sales, especially for those sellers with non-essential items.

[coolections]

Yesterday was my best day in over 8 weeks.

[coolections]

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@hartungcards wrote:

eBay has been hiding listings, throttling sales and simply removing listings from search so that nothing sells.  I'm sure this is all true and any or all of the above may be happening to you.

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@hartungcards   If you are so sure it is true and not just a made-up conspiracy, tell us an item you have listed so we can make your statement a true fact, or let you know it is a completely made up wives-tell story. 

[reallynicestamps]

eBay has been hiding listings, throttling sales and simply removing listings from search so that nothing sells.

Good point.

EBay is obviously trying to reduce sales so that they make no money and can go bankrupt.

Sound business strategy.

[hartungcards]

Like I said, I'm sure it's true because I've read it here so many times.  If it were a "wives-tell story" then why would this conspiracy theory get so much airplay on here?  There's never any erroneous information on here as far as I can tell.

[ckimodog]

@coolections 

@hartungcards 

I believe hartungcards is joking...I laughed when I saw their reply. 

[hartungcards]

The sarcasm font doesn't always register, depending on what browser you're using.

[sakic92710]

It has been explained to you before.  Just because YOU can find a particular listing in your search, it does not mean all of the millions of others have certain items show up in theirs.  Some do, some don't.  It was absolutely proven to me when a friend, who lives 45 minutes away, and I did a search for a Michael Jordan insert.  Active & sold.  We both got different results!  BTW - it is called a wives' tale.

[chapeau-noir]

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@coolections wrote:

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@hartungcards wrote:

eBay has been hiding listings, throttling sales and simply removing listings from search so that nothing sells.  I'm sure this is all true and any or all of the above may be happening to you.

---

@hartungcards   If you are so sure it is true and not just a made-up conspiracy, tell us an item you have listed so we can make your statement a true fact, or let you know it is a completely made up wives-tell story. 

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@hartungcards  I thought your joking was pretty obvious, but maybe you need one of these:

 

[sfau]

I usually get a sale every other day.  But I do send offers to whoever watches something.  My offers range from 10 - 50 percent off.....

[reallynicestamps]

How do your February/March sales compare to the same period in 2019? In 2018? In 2022?

I'd skip 2020 and definitely 2021, because of the strong pandemic surge in online buying during that period.

I know I am coming to the end of my strongest sales period, because January to March have been strong since we started here in 1998. And they were also the strongest months in our B&M shop, before we retired.

A day or two without any sales is not something to worry about. A month would be.

[dirk12955]

On that subject,     I did some comparing 2020 and 2021 and 2022 were banner years for stamp selling on ebay.   For me anyway it was.

My sales have been trending downward for the last 3-4 months of 2022 and has continued that trend 

for the first 3 months of 2023

Today I'm off 23-24%  from 2020-2021-2022 levels

Covid 19 did a number on my sales and that trend apparently is drifting back to pre covid levels.

And as always,    Your mileage may vary.

[dbfolks166mt]

     As others mentioned there are ups and downs to sales. My eBay sales have been holding pretty steady over the past year but I only sell about 20% of my items on eBay although I list them all here. There are a lot of things happening at the moment which could potentially be impacting sales. It's tax time, inflation is still an issue, the bank failures and the instability of the financial markets but there is also the looming possibility of a default on the national debt. Nobody really knows what the impact would be since that has never happened before but it would probably not be good. 

     We are also in the middle of March madness. 😀

[reallynicestamps]

My offers range from 10 - 50 percent off.....

A Canadian seller has been experimenting with Promoted Listings vs Offers. (@ricarmic).

So far, emphasizing that anecdote is not data and that his testing is far from complete, he seems to be seeing that using PL at a low rate, and paying that fee to eBay, is much more productive than discount offers to buyers, and accepting a lower price for product. 

I've been doing my own experiment, sending 10% offers to Watchers on items that do not have PL. (Most of my PL listings are at the minimum 2%).  Results are basically no results, except for one Watcher who Messaged that my price was still too high.

About 10% of my sales have PL enabled. About 35% of my Listings have PL enabled.

EBay is not our friend, eBay is our landlord, and we all hate to pay the landlord.

But it seems that PL works better at getting sales than discount offers.

YMMV.

[dirk12955]

Ups and downs.    Amazon is laying off another 9,000 tech employees.