How low can you go eBay?

[stockjedi]

After 10 years of selling $30k a month (average 1000+ per day with another account) sales dropped 50% starting October, then dropped 75% in November, and as of today we are at 90% drop for the first 4 days of December. What's really the point of having an eBay store anymore? Should we take bets on how much sales will drop after they switch the payment system? I hope Google blacklist eBay once for all so we can be done with this place.

[18704d]

I don't sell automotive parts but

interesting link, goodluckselling.

Lynn

[stockjedi]

Thanks for the link I did check and there are no changes to the categories we use so all good, thanks for the help!

[gregrena]

I agree they seem to allow more rule breaking by Chinese companies. Those companies claim to be from the US and then when you do not recieve your item within a resonable time you find out they are Chinese or Malaysian or something. When I buy US I expect US. I buy because I want the shipping time to be decent and I like supporting US companies. When Ebay lets them lie about where they are from it ruins gift giving for special occasions. Things which do not arrive in the time you need them to are useless. There are other companies who DO NOT allow the Chinese to lie on their sites.

[coffeebean832]

@stockjedi

What does your impressions page say? Some of the P&A sellers had a problem with impressions. If you see a dramatic drop in that area call your anchor support (I'm assuming at your volume you have an anchor store)

Did you compare your pricing to your competitors? Did you visit the product pages for your items and see where you fall in the list?

The catalog promotes race to the bottom pricing and automotive is a huge category to get hit by the catalog. I haven't studied these sellers but I wonder if race to the bottom pricing is a big factor here.

[goodluckselling]

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@18704d wrote:

I don't sell automotive parts but

interesting link, goodluckselling.

Lynn

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Yea this is where most of the problems we read in the fourm stems from.  I do not know if this is the OP's problem or not but I just wanted to let them know about the changes.  But since they know all, I will assume they know this info as well.

These category changes will continue for about another year and the same issues will raise up in more seller categories as these changes become active.

Good Luck Selling!

[doubledz-a2z]

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@stockjedi wrote:

We sell automotive parts since 2009 on eBay. Tens of thousands of 100% feedback, been here since 1998 and know the ins and outs of eBay. If you read similar posts, you will see that there seems to be a serious problem since early October.

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I have been on ebay since Feb 1998 as well and know the ins and outs of ebay and adapted to every change.   I used to be a consistent Silver seller but I am now retired and just piddle around here with a few listings.   I think that the biggest detriment to ebay in the past year has been the uptick in FB selling groups.   Porch PickUp with cash tucked under the mat.  Perfect.  Easy.  LOCAL.

I visit the flea market every weekend sometimes as a seller and folks now are buying NEW items they can run home and list somewhere online.   The novelty of using Ebay is over.  Everyone seems to be a seller.   I have never tried another selling site other than CList or FB.    Lots of folks finding a way to make money other than 8-5.

[deepnyc]

That day they decided to side with the customer no matter what, I decided to quit eBay. I was also selling for more than 10 years, but I was also an everyday buyer. When they started to change things and go 101% corporate, we small sellers didn't stand a chance to compete with big companies. For me, last moment was when 30% of sold merchandise was returned just because they can.  And now they can even more to screw you, buyer is the king here and we used to have option to rate buyers just like they rate sellers. When that option was canceled, we started to go downhill. It takes 10 years to screw something that was build 20.

[stockjedi]

Will look into this and report back thanks

[coffeebean832]

No prob. It's important to study your listings compared to your competitors and how your listings are showing on product pages since this is a huge change for your category.

[calntom]

 Would be great if you nailed the problem and his ebay employee gets to keep his job. He would have his work cut out for him

[stockjedi]

Funny thing is that we're in a niche automotive parts market and most of the competitor steal all our listings because we have the best description, best pictures and accurate fitment info. The average profit on auto parts is 15-20% max we all have pretty much same pricing from wholesalers. eBay takes 8-12%, PayPal takes 3% and we are left with maybe 3%. Not even enough to buy chewing gum unless you do a million in sales a month. eBay has always been for exposure for us nothing more there's no money to be made here. But those days are coming to an end very quickly as I prefer to pay 1/2 the money we pay to eBay fees to a automotive forum as sponsor and get 10x the exposure and sales. So no we won't miss eBay very much, it was fun in the 90's as a buyer, it was somewhat fun a few years ago to become a top 10 or 20 seller on eBay but now it's way too much stress dealing with the idiot scammers on eBay for making no money and now seeing sales go down to $2 a day from $1000. They can keep their Chinese sellers who will sell a million iPhone cases for $3.99 and make $0.05 on each good for them if that's what eBay wants to do with their business model.

[coffeebean832]

See if you can figure this out and make eBay work for you again, and if it doesn't work out at least you have a plan B for your business.

[annadryl]

You call them twice a day?(!) If it's always useless then why the effort? There are hints in the forums that CS might keep a sort of "troublemaker" list that could lead to... trouble. Kind of like when a buyer contacts a seller too many times for comfort.

I'm sorry I can't help with sales advice but I've heard of it a lot in Auto Parts lately. I'm also thinking it might be category-related somehow. It's all pretty recent. Good luck~

[stockjedi]

Agreed they do blacklist you after a while, same with posts on the forums they keep track of who says what. When your sales go from $1k a day down to a dollar does it really matter though? Might as well vent since we're on our way out of this platform anyway maybe it will help others in a similar situation 🙂

Thanks Mr eBay CEO for everything you've done for seller!

[coolections]

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@stockjedi wrote:

We sell automotive parts. 

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That explains alot. Not many buy automotive parts on Ebay. It is just not the venue in which most would not consider looking for parts. They use B$W stores and dealerships. I could only imagine the competition you have which makes it 5x worse. It is nothing Ebay is doing, other than the lower best match and for the reasons I explained. You have to share the pie with all those others sellers. On other venues you would probably do better. Maybe use more than one source.