MY SALES ARE DOWN

[pattik330]

Hello.  I have noticed a decrease in sales?  Have you?  Patti

[pattik330]

I am thinking economy.  I put stuff on sale and still slow.  Hopefully it will pick up soon.  

[dbfolks166mt]

     Slow on eBay but doing fine on other forums and venues. 

[mr_lincoln]

---

@pattik330 wrote:

I am thinking economy.  I put stuff on sale and still slow.  Hopefully it will pick up soon.  

---

@pattik330   Trust me it is NOT the economy ... if that were the case I would be buying inventory at an astounding rate instead of barely winning stuff because other people are paying AT or OVER retail for the stuff.  The problem is eBay, pure and simple.    Below is a week's worth of Traffic Impressions ... the screen shots were done about once a day ... notice they decline steadily at about 4-6% each day ...

Weekends are traditionally my busy sales time ... Mondays 15 - 25 packages was the norm ... the last 4-5 weeks it has been single digits ... the other trend I am seeing is GTC listings are not selling like they used to, even during Promoted Listing Campaigns this year.  Repeat Buyers, shorter duration Auctions, sales from ME Sending Offers are what is moving ... its almost like the first 20 days of a GTC cycle doesn't exist and until an item gets to 10 days or less remaining it won't show up in Search ... Time remaining may be driving the search algorithms.  The bottom line is this, the changes eBay made in the last 6-8 months has negatively affected sales, more newer members here are posting about their drops in sales, a lot of those older members are saying (in so many words), " ...I've been on eBay since the beginning and I have NEVER seen it this bad!!!"

So for myself and my categories I am not buying in to the economy excuse ...

[inhawaii]

Sales up. Sales down. That's normal.

[pattik330]

Where else are you listing items for sale?  Patti

[aqeeqsouq]

I agree with @mr_lincoln 

This recession began on May/10th and still going on.

[herbaearth]

That’s true, yet an official recession has yet to be acknowledged by the US government.

“Time remaining may be driving the search algorithms” is a smart statement.

[nilis13]

Hmmm...your listing impression, traffic, etc..look almost identical to mine.. - freefall!

[yuzuha]

Shipped 5 things today and already I have another to go out. Doing fine here.

[mr_lincoln]

---

@aqeeqsouq wrote:

I agree with @mr_lincoln 

This recession began on May/10th and still going on.

---

@aqeeqsouq   My sales have been off a lot longer then that AND Impressions dropped by over 80% prior to that too  ... doing Sold search research was horrible after the shuffled categories in November of last year and that's when we started to see a LOT of Buyers posting here (for the first time in some cases) about how BAD search was and they were having trouble finding what they wanted.

Whenever eBay makes a significant program change they have to tweak algorithms so that started last year when they launched the PLS Advance Pay per Click Promoted Listing feature.  So Sellers were paying advertising ad rates up front to have their items promoted to the top 4 positions in search ... that alone can affect how items are returned in search. 

The most recent change was the Views counter and resetting the count every 30 days (or once a month or something like that) ...

There is currently no significant growth in sales for me ... last year May through Oct set new all time sales records ... this year the results are bad ... while I don't expect each month each year to be a new record I know that this year I am not getting close to any records in 5 out of 7 months ...

[coolections]

---

@dbfolks166mt wrote:

    doing fine on other forums and venues. 

---

@dbfolks166mt 

If that is true, then why is all those other forums that everyone is making a killing on not doubling and tripling in size. I hear people are actually getting rich everywhere except Ebay, is that true?

[dbfolks166mt]

@dbfolks166mt 

If that is true, then why is all those other forums that everyone is making a killing on not doubling and tripling in size. I hear people are actually getting rich everywhere except Ebay, is that true?

     Probably because the other forums are localized so buyer market will never expand too much since it's mostly P2P exchange although I have shipped a few things through those sites but even then the shipping distance was not that far. Also some of the other forums and/or venues I use are meant for specific buyer markets some of which allow things you cannot list on eBay. Consignment auction houses are especially good for that. 

       I wouldn't say getting rich I don't sell that much stuff and certainly do not do it as my sole source of income. 

[the_fancy_fox]

Yep! I got one sale yesterday. And two people trying to low ball me on some listings.

Search is broken. Proved that last week when I was researching items I have to sell. Ebay search can’t find it but Google finds it on eBay. 

[the_fancy_fox]

---

@inhawaii wrote:

Sales up. Sales down. That's normal.

---

Search not working correctly is not normal! 

I was researching stuff to sell last week, lots of stuff, and over and over ebay search turned up nothing. Went on Google and they popped right up…….. on eBay. 

if “I” can’t find it, buyers can’t find it or buy it.

[dbfolks166mt]

Where else are you listing items for sale?  Patti

     Unfortunately eBay prohibits me from naming specific other sites but for local sites if you search your area they are not hard to find. I am fortunate that I live in a major metropolitan area with a LOT of people in a small geographic area. 

     For the other ecommerce sites you can simply google it and find a lot of them. You sell in a very saturated and highly competitive market so your results may vary.