Listing Issues or Rolling Blackout?

[annmikhailart]

I've recently noticed that my newly listed items aren't receiving any views.  I initially thought this was an eBay glitch associated with the August 2018 site changes and upgrades.  I'm in the Direct from Artist 'art paintings' selling category, so sales in general aren't consistent.  I have noticed that I may go 2 weeks without any activity and suddenly I make 5 organic sales in a weekend.  I've always found this to be odd but assumed it was related to pay-day cycles.  However, normally within the first hour of listing a new painting, I'd have at least 15 or so views regardless of it being a BIN or an auction-style listing.  The art I do is relatively popular and I typically receive a consistent number of hits and/or watchers on my items. 

Over the past two weeks, any new item i've listed sits with less than 10 views (probably my own) and many with zero.  I got curious and tried a keyword search for my items as well as a basic category search.  Newly listed items should appear, right?  Newly listed auctions should appear, right?  Items with watchers should appear, right?  I am no where to be found with the exception of 1 listing which appears in the first page of results.  A month ago, I was on the first couple pages of search results with my items showing repeatedly.  

I never knew there was a "conspiracy" behind this until I became fed up, defeated and decided to research it today.  I've learned this phenomenon is better identified as the eBay rolling blackout.  My question for other sellers is, how long do these "black out" periods last?  Also, is anyone else currently experiencing this issue as well and do you believe it may be related to the holiday weekend?  Is anyone aware of whether or not there is a site-wide technical issue with new listings not indexing correctly?  

I decided today, out of a moment of despair, to place several items on a "promoted listing" upgrade.  Did that help?  No... I still can't find my listings - naturally - within the search results.  Please, someone that knows more about this, give me some advice or insight as to what is going on.

[odie200412]

I just did a search on five items you have listed and only used the first 4 or 5 words in the listing.  You showed up first in every search result.  

[annmikhailart]

That is so odd! I'm trying the term "abstract oil painting" and not seeing my listings AT ALL. I wonder if it is such a widely used item description that I'm being flooded out within the masses. I did try a more specific item title and did find a painting. You are right.

[jason_incognito]

there are over 45,000 returns for "abstract oil painting"

How should eBay decide who to show and who not to show? NOBODY is gonna look at 45,000 items.

They're not hiding you, they're not blacking you out. They are merely showing other people first. 

It is not published as to how to be first. If it was, so many would try and manipulate it that it would become worthless. From my own personal experience and from the sound of it, yours, it would be that when you make a sale, you move way up. As more people either don't click on yours, or don't buy, you go down in ranking.

[femmefan1946]

@annmikhailart

I have noticed that I may go 2 weeks without any activity and suddenly I make 5 organic sales in a weekend. 

Yes. Apparently part of the Cassini alogarithm is that one sale leads to higher placement in Search which inturn leads to more sales which leads to higher .....

  assumed it was related to pay-day cycles.  

Since fine art is very much a luxury purchase, I doubt your customers are tied to a payday cycle.

They should be able to put the purchase on a credit card and pay it off at leisure.

It's not like waiting til payday to buy milk.

[buyselljack2016]

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@annmikhailart wrote:

Over the past two weeks, any new item i've listed sits with less than 10 views (probably my own) and many with zero.  

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Doesn't help with your question, but just to note, if you are logged into your account, viewing your own item does not show as a "view" even when all is working as it should. 

[ifyouloveit]

A pattern I see frequently on my ID's is no sales, then 1 sale in each store in the same 10-15 minute block, then nothing. This pattern has repeated so many times it is clearly not random or coincidence. eBay knows I have more than one store, when I get a CS rep on the phone, they ask me which store and read off the names.

I have to assume eBay has my stores under 1 account and they are 1 store to eBay's bots and spiders, since the sales are almost exactly at the same time.

I have played around to see if there is a black out. Over the last 3 months I have put popular items at wholesale, no one even looks at them. I have not advertised some items on social media so I know the views are pure eBay shoppers (no UPC's, no Google pick up either) and they get no views (these are not items that need a UPC just to be clear). These are items that up until about May always got 100+ views and sold. Now they have less than 10 views and do not sell. The demand is there. My items are not getting viewed.

I've played around with some other selling techniques on my stores to find nothing improves sales. Nothing. New products, better photos, free shipping, paid shipping, best offer, auction, I believe I have tried them all.

Nothing works. I have lost interest in fighting the eBay game, I don't know the rules, there is no umpire, the teams are fighting with their own team mates, the fans are gone, throwing rocks, or wanting refunds. I actually had my first return from a woman last week who didn't like the way the packaging on her essential oil was! (Instead of throwing it in a mailer like most sellers do, I bubble wrapped it and put that in a 3 mil heavy bag in case of breakage). She actually took a photo of it in it's safely wrapped packaging and told me she didn't trust it to be new! Never wrote me, filed a SNAD. Returned it and she had opened the entire thing after she said she hadn't). Buyers remorse or found one cheaper.

Those of you who aren't seeing what I am seeing, happy and a little envious, but rock on!! For the rest who are seeing and dealing with the 1 sale then dead routine, I can tell you it has happened enough times to no longer be of question AND other sellers are seeing the exact same thing.

However, if I look for my items, I can eventually find them. The rarer they are, the easier. I can't, no matter what I do, get my items up onto the first page like I used to be able to do. I had SEO down pretty good here, now I can't figure out how to write a title that comes up high on search to save my life.

Thankfully I sell on other venues and am doing fine 🙂 If I had to count on eBay 100% like I used to, I would be in serious trouble. Sad I had to go to other platforms to do what I used to do here just on eBay, but those days are clearly over for me.

Good luck selling everyone. I am watching many of my items roll off with under 10 views, and some of those views are me. These are items that should have 100+. I no longer know if it is eBay or me. Since eBay won't help me figure out what the problem is (I've had them on the phone, they don't know why my items have so few views, or so they say), I have no way to help myself improve. Need to know WHAT to fix in order to fix it.

They haven't told me what that is.

[ifyouloveit]

I wish buyers searched using that many words but they don't, usually. I don't know anyone who searches using 4-5 words. The trick is to get seen using the search terms a buyer would use.

Most searches are 3 words or less. Try it that way and see what comes up, curious to know how many people are being seen when you use the search criteria your buyer uses.

Like some of my items. I offer a lot of hard to find lapel pins. Huge collector market out there for pins. How do people search for a pin in a category they are looking for?

Let's take a Alaskan Iditarod Lapel Pin. This is how most buyers search. EVEN knowing they want Iditarod, they do not usually use the word, not at first.

Alaska pin
Alaska lapel pin
(now, if you haven't lost them by now because 500 cool pins came up before yours and they are seeking something unique or yours is lost somehow else they would have bought it!)

Alaska Iditarod pin
Vintage Iditarod pin
Alaska vintage Iditarod pin
Vintage Alaska Iditarod Brooch
Vintage Alaska Iditarod Pin Brooch
2004 alaska iditarod pin
2004 alaska iditarod brooch
etc

That's a typical pattern of how a buyer would search for my item.
My listing for this item would read:

Alaska Iditarod Vintage 2004 Husky Dog Sled Race Alaskan Lapel Hat Pin Tie Tac

Will my listing get seen? No idea anymore, wish I knew. How are you all writing your listings? Order sequence of words? My SEO optimization skills are no longer useful on eBay. Something changed, for me.

[goodluckselling]

I domnot know about your listing issues and I have no idea what you define as a rolling blackout, but what I do know is you are a very talented artist.  I love about everything I saw in your active listings.

AWESOME.

Good Luck Selling!

[annmikhailart]

I agree. I do attempt to use typical search terms my buyers would use. With the artwork I sell, it can be difficult to come up with key words that stand out. I spent months playing around with key word titles for my listings to see which ones generated the most impressions and views. I've tried different word sequences and haven't quite noticed a difference. For example, if I enter the search term - abstract oil painting - i'll be shown results with key word titles such as... "100% hand painted oil painting." I've done tons of research trying to figure it out.

[annmikhailart]

The odd thing is, my sales will happen all within the time-span of a day or two. I'll have weeks of dry time, perhaps a single random sale in between, but the larger sales occur at random, in groupings on a single day. A lot of my artwork has sold under $100 and since I offer best offer on my listings, I still receive the bargain offers at random. Pay cycle relation or not, I feel the selling highs and lulls are following too tight of a pattern to be coincidental.

[annmikhailart]

Before I was listing my art, I sold apparel.  I tended to sell more often when selling apparel, but I did notice the same type of fluctuation.  A solid week without a single sale and then a steady 5 or so items a day selling consistently for about a one week stretch.  This cycle repeated itself and sometimes, there'd be more 'dead' time inbetween.  This is when I first assumed it had to do with 'pay days' as most sales would begin picking up on a Friday every other week.  Since ceasing to sell apparel and converting my store to feature my artwork, the first month was slow which was expected.  Then I sold around 10 paintings via eBay in a month, which for my category is pretty dang good.  Suddenly for the month of August... I think i've sold 2 paintings via eBay?  This is when I also began seeing a correlation between lack of sales and views.  So in theory, if I sold 10 paintings in July, shouldn't that have boosted me high within my category so my winning streak could continue during August?  

I figured a few things came into play that has affected this other than the mysterious black out theory:

1) I ran more auctions in July versus BIN.

2) I was pricing my paintings at a lower price point because of the auction listing style.

3) I was listing around 5 or 6 new paintings a week in my category.

But for the month of August, I made changes that in theory should have helped me:

1) I offered free shipping on the majority of my items.

2) I continued listing approximately 5 or 6 new paintings a week.

3) I provided a 'best offer' option on all of my items.

4) I changed my handling time to 1 business day versus the previous 2 business days.

Shouldn't these changes have helped me?  I followed the advice given by most experienced eBay sellers.  I read about how Cassini works and absorbed all the advice I could.  Then in the past two weeks to simply throw salt in the wound, my organic views have just tanked.  Even on my auction items, i'm not seeing proof of any exposure.  It is not a matter of not MAKING the sale that is upsetting me, it's proof that my impressions and views have tanked (41% according to my performance manager) compared to 30 days ago.  

[flyinhawaiiangirl]

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@annmikhailart wrote:
The odd thing is, my sales will happen all within the time-span of a day or two. I'll have weeks of dry time, perhaps a single random sale in between, but the larger sales occur at random, in groupings on a single day. A lot of my artwork has sold under $100 and since I offer best offer on my listings, I still receive the bargain offers at random. Pay cycle relation or not, I feel the selling highs and lulls are following too tight of a pattern to be coincidental.

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You just described my exact experience as well for maybe the last 2 years or so. Doesn't even matter how many listings I have up, although I sell more, the more I have of course. But it almost feels like there's a window when it's my turn to have sales, and I'll get anywhere from 1 to 10 in a span of a week or two, then nothing for 4 months maybe?

[ifyouloveit]

Exactly what has happened to me. I have done everything, even returned to doing auctions because right now, auctions seem to be getting more hits for me than BIN.

You know the items are not getting seen. I know mine aren't. I have listings up right now that have been live for 3-4 days and not a single view except my own. They are not being seen.

I used up a bunch of their recent 100 free listings, but my desire to list here on eBay is near zero when I feel I am TOTALLY WASTING MY TIME putting up items that are just going to roll off again.

I understand they changed everything, but what they failed to do was tell their sellers HOW TO ADAPT TO THESE CHANGES to continue selling on their platform.

This is the #1 problem. Changes have been made and a lot of sellers seem to have been thrown into some black hole that eBay will not or cannot tell us how to get out of. I will list my fool head off if I know they are going to be seen.

Why waste my time listing here when it is like this? My eBay stores are getting smaller and smaller as I work on other sites that DO SELL my items, often the same day I list them. THAT is what eBay used to be like, list and sell. They are no longer the go to place for a lot of sellers, they either cannot handle the volume of items being sold or they keep mostly certain sellers and items where they will sell, the rest of us are grabbing crumbs.

I no longer suggest to friends they shop here. As a buyer, it has also become a pain in the you know what. I gave up last night trying to find what I wanted, no matter how I searched, eBay kept throwing me the same items.

Had some bids on some items, won 2 of them from a seller, he promptly cancels one as broken, and relists it. He didn't get the price he wanted. Read in his feedback he does this all the time. eBay has him as a top rated seller. If I did what this seller does, I would no longer have an eBay account.

I'll use eBay now when I get free listings and I'll use my free 50 in each of my stores, but eBay is now the place where I will be putting my slow sellers. It used to be the other way around, good stuff here, stuff that isn't selling on other platforms.

Funny how things change!

[calistas_closet33]

Pinterest has helped increase traffic for my stores.. they have business accounts with analytics..definitely more likely to be found there than here, even with promoted listings.. I was just lamenting I sold more on FB with 58 listings than here with 800 representing 1200 items, more on Mercari too.. I used to sell a lot here, now I don’t so needed to diversify, but this weekend with both smaller sites listing and customer wise outperforming ebay, it really exemplifies that they have done something to bury me.. so now I need to replicate elsewhere and downgrade store. Going from 70 transactions a week to about 20, is ridiculous