Ebay has a lot of stupid suggestions. I sell a USA made muffler for Briggs engine on Troy Bilt tiller. Every time I relisted it they would have a little blurb "Similar items have sold for $ 7.45 to $ 11.00 with a starting price of $ 1.00 in auction format. We suggest you relist this item.................."
Trouble is the USA made version I carry cost me $ 14.00 plus incoming freight. The china version has a dealer cost of about $ 3.00 but it is made of paper thin metal, burns out very quickly Ebay doesn't care if sellers make any money on any item as long as they earn revenue. In their eyes a 10 cent gain over a couple million sellers is still a profit, and a good at that. If ebay earns revenue they could care less if a seller ever makes a dime, or loses money.
Ebay has other dumb suggestions as well. They sent me an email today telling me I could reach 171 million buyers and I was missing huge gains is sales by having so few listing on ebay. The email said I should bring my ebay listing count back up to the number of items I used to have listed, which was about 600. Based on their idea that the more sellers list the better it is for ebay even if there is no sale. They still get a listing fee if nothing else. Like the basic store cost per month adds up to a little more than listing 200 items, which is what you get for free listings at that level.
The flaw in their logic is that my ebay sales have tanked in the past 12 months on ebay. This is during the same period that my own company website has consistantly remained at the same amount as always and gained at the same percentage (or higher) as every year prior, with minor increases in certain items. In other words, business as usual on my site, nothing on ebay. Ebay is currrently over 60% less than last year.
Their Promoted listings are a joke. My fees went up, but my sales never changed. I still got the same piddly 10 to 12 sales per week but all of a sudden every sale was generated from a promoted listing. The problem is that I could use keywords from my title to search for items I had promoted. Very rare did one ever show up, even if I searched the exact same as my complete title. And if it did it was always on 3rd page or even further.
What did show up a lot of times on the first 3 to 5 pages was items from Wayfair, Sears, Toys r Us, and the other mega sellers on ebay, with their perfectly scrubbed feedback. I base this on their manipulation of the search for their increased revenue and standing from their big box store sellers.
Glad I don't have to rely on ebay. I would go bankrupt.
Best regards,
