disneyshopper
I would be happy with one or two sales a day.
I have been selling since 2001, and currently, have made 15 sales for the month of April. That's a far cry from years ago when Paypal sent me a 1099-K (for a minimum of 200 sales totaling $20,000 or more).
Yes. I moved most of my sales off eBay years ago. Its interesting to keep up with new developments, but eBay is just one place to sell items, not the deciding marketplace that eBay management would have you believe it is.
There has been a steady decline for nearly 20 years. The first decline began with the economic downturn following the 9-11-2001 attack. This was excellerated over the years by eBay's managment decession to increasingly put in place policies designed to get rid of small time sellers in favor of big box sellers. For many years people had laughed at Amazon for only losing money, yet the reason they were losing money was because they were investing in infrastructure for long term growth.
eBay has never been a great source of new ideas. Pictures in listings, scheduled listings, listing software, even eBay' own API were all created by other people and companies. Even PayPal's overseas transactions were actually handled by the Dutch banking giant ING. None of eBay's desperate measures worked as simply copying the innovations of others rarely leads to long term success. eBay's star has continued to fall, but strangely eBay managers still get their big bonuses.
The second major accelaration of eBay's decline occured in 2010 when eBay negotiated a deal with USPS and the Chinese Post Office to allow the dumping of Chinese goods into the U.S. via ultra cheap postal rates. This was eBay's effort to replace the big box sellers in favor of China based sellers who complain a lot less. Now buyers expect their collectibles and antiques to also cost $.99 with free shipping. Since many buyers are also sellers who now can't sell they buy less.
Both of these declines were also impacted by the growth of a host of other online niches sites and sales via social media. Most of the decline; however, is due to the lack of innovation from eBay itself. Innovation to eBay for years has been to increasingly tighten the thumb screws on sellers, but at some point the seller's hands get gangrene and fall off. Innovation means taking the shackles of sellers to make more money.
eBay's polices are all geared to product short term profits without thinking of the impact on long term profits. Take for instance the policies in the diagram below. These produced billions in profits in the short term but the long term consequences is that these policies have driven up domestical shipping rates. With increased postal rates less sales are going to made long term. In many instances it is no longer worth listing items due to the dramatic increase in the cost of shipping over the years.
Take a look at this 2002 USPS Priority Mail retail rate chart and compare it to today's rates. eBay's Chinese vendors alone have cost USPS hundreds of millions of dollars in yearly loses which they had to make up by increasing domestic rates. This article form the Washington Post place the average loss at $300 million per year.
