Low sales in January 2023

[annettedolls]

Has anyone else seen a dive in sells in January.

[tweetyboyd1971]

I will join the choir and admit that sales are way down.   I can't see items for sale for anybody in this thread.   I wanted to see what one seller was selling to bring in $200 - 600 per day,  but search shows 0 results.

    As for the bad economy,   Obama sailed into office in 2008 claiming we we on verge of Great DEPRESSION part 2,   and ebay sales weren't nearly as bad back then,   so I don't believe economy is the whole issue

[wifetrained]

This isn't 2008 which was predominately a financial crisis involving major banks and the mortgage industry. This is totally different and IMO far more serious. No, you won't find any listings from me on this platform under any ID because I stopped selling here long ago. But my buying on this site has dried up considerably and may go to near zero in the not-too-distant future and for several reasons. Buying upwards of 300 items a year here are over, heck I may not hit 100 this year and to that I just shrug my shoulders and say, "oh well".

To hear the name "EBAY" in the past used to conjure up great things at great prices. HEY, we need to go online and check it out. Ebay had a near monopoly. To hear that name anymore elicits a "so what", sure it's a place we can check out but is long past being the place we have to check out. There simply too much competition from other online sources that sell things. The name just doesn't have the same draw it once had regardless of what they do with the site. Anyone who has sold and bought items here know what Ebay is and what it isn't. Having a lousy search engine, horrible customer service and even more horrible marketing certainly doesn't help matters. You have to give potential customers a reason to come here.

The economy is in recession and has been probably for around 2 years now with no end in sight. Inflation, coupled with shrinkflation is a real killer when it comes to budgeting. Inflation may come down a tad over time but the shrinkflation is more or less permanent. As I've stated in other threads, for every extra dollar needed to cover living expenses is a dollar less for anything else. The most bang for the buck rules and sadly will probably remain the rule for the foreseeable future. 

[lawnmowerpartsstore2]

How times are changing

[wifetrained]

You would be correct, and not for the better.

[replacementradios]

The last two weeks our sales on eBay have been 40% of usual. (Not down 40%, down 60%!!) We sell on multiple platforms. There has been no such drop on any of the others. Economy? Sure, not great, but I'm not buying it. If it were the economy, it would have been gradual. (Or following some big news or event. There has been no such news/event.) And it would be across all platforms, which it isn't. So either eBay is monkeying with things or they have a major problem. 

eBay, if people cannot find what they are looking for (and/or have to sift through irrelevant items), it benefits NO ONE. The buyer leaves, the seller misses out on a sale, and you miss out on selling fees. You're NOT a social media site!  Buyers aren't scrolling through a feed, waiting to see something that interests them. They're searching for something specific, not an impulse item... It doesn't matter how much a seller is willing to pay to have you present their ad if a sale does not result. Even worse is when the actual result is a buyer getting fed up and leaving. If a buyer is inundated with items they are not interested in when they search, it becomes like going to Google: extremely time-consuming and frustrating. Now eBay is on the same path... Because of the practices they've implemented. 

You're hiding items (or you have a major problem)! Again, sales don't drop to almost a third of normal for no good reason... 20,000+ feedback. 99.5% positive. 57,000+ sales. Member for 20+ years. Defect rate of 2.06%. (Which IS low! Don't tell me meeting expectations 97.94% of the time is worth having my items hidden, if that's what is going on...) 

[sugar_bay_sls]

Almost non existent, in fact the few Xmas remorse returns have exceeded sales . So sad the problem is the search results lead to buyer appathy. I know from personal buying experience  you know its on ebay but ebay will not show you it unless they earn big commission from the item, you end up going to etsy and Amazon , we used to be a  loyal ( first port of call) ebay buyers , but have not purchased on ebay now for over a year now. Came on board 20 years ago  never been this bad

[sugar_bay_sls]

spot on my friend

[sugar_bay_sls]

You are correct of course , this search engine thing is self inflicted by ebay , and blindingly obvious .I dont get how sellers both sides of the pond can see this as clear as day and yet ebay has its head in the sand in denial. The answer would upset the algoythm writers who continually entice ebay to sink to the bottom is to return to Basics go back to 2003-5 ( with only the minor tweaks for the sensible things learned over the last 20 years) Things were simpler in those days and buyer actually got to see what was for sale as opposed to what ebay wants you to buy. Big difference

[ckimodog]

@sugar_bay_sls 

This thread is a year old and most will not reply due to the age.  There are at least 70,000 threads on this topic, probably more.  You are located in the UK and this is a US community discussion forum.  You may be better served by logging out of ebay.com and logging back into ebay.com/uk.  Many other countries have different platforms concerning eBay than we do here in the US.  Here's the link:

http://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Discussion/ct-p/13

Good luck and Happy Selling

[kh-vince]

Hi everyone,

Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.

Thank you for understanding.