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Massive decline in sales -73%

Sales down 73% vs last 30 days (and prior 30 days not impressive either). I did not think this was even possible. Impressions are UP, I have already increased promoted ad rate % with no results.

 

Have asked ebay about this twice now, no real help to be had. They did say many sellers are experiencing poor sales.. but 73% is absurd.

 

I have a near perfect account and anchor store + 17 years on ebay. There is no reason to target my account but it feels that way given how poor things have become.

 

Is anyone else experiencing this magnitude of decline?? (I sell computers, I am aware of the poor market for PC's, this is beyond that and beyond earlier this year). I've tried more aggressive pricing, new listings, more advertising, nothing changes. It feels targeted. I also have had perhaps 2 interested customers message me in several weeks, that is VERY odd as well.

 

I thought last year was the worst possible scenario with the macro economy and geopolitics. I understand the economy is very poor now, but this is vs 30 days, however 90 days are also down, up to midsummer sales were outpacing last year moderately well, so this is entirely weird.

 

Sure it will get better into the holidays, but in the meantime this is very bad, this is the WORST month I have EVER had in 17 years of selling. That makes no sense.

 

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Massive decline in sales -73%

We all have our theories and opinions and I respect that.

Just curious though.

Would your theory apply to someone who's sales were up 73% instead of down 73%?

 

 

 

Undone - Bachman & Cummings
Message 31 of 192
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Massive decline in sales -73%

There is no discretionary income for the avg American  Rampant inflation and stagnant wages took it away.  I'm seeing the same results and much much worse with my brick and mortar store where things have totally ground to a halt.  Right now only one media outlet is really talking about how bad the economy is  Wait till it becomes more widespread and people who do have money really tighten up.  2024 is going to make us want 2023 back  Election years seem to always be terrible sales wise

Message 32 of 192
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Massive decline in sales -73%

Yes as it would show favoritism and or incompetency, in fact, it would prove the point that something non organic is happening (strings being pulled) behind the scenes. That was my point in showing my less than desirable Amazon store had more sales yet only 5% of the listings of my ebay store. My insight is that when certain accounts struggle it means others are being gifted sales, and this becomes more apparent in tight economic times. My "would be" sales have been directed elsewhere.

Message 33 of 192
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Massive decline in sales -73%

"One media outlet"?

Would that be the one that paid almost a BILLION dollars in a settlement for lying?
And now faces a 2.7 BILLION dollar lawsuit from Smartmatic? For lying?
And just this month had a lawsuit filed against them from their own shareholders?
For lying? 
Yeah....that's the "media outlet" I'd trust. 

Message 34 of 192
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Massive decline in sales -73%

@inhawaii  Yes - absolutely- if our sales suddenly jumped up 73% and we had done nothing different-then i would without fail assume that ebay changed something that showed our items with more visibility and relevancy.   That would be wonderful and ebay would be due the credit.   

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Massive decline in sales -73%

I was "gifted" $4700 in sales over a few days last week. Now crickets. It will remain crickets until sometime in October, then I will be gifted more sales. Off-eBay however, my sales remain steady.

 

Unrelated - I can't believe you do well selling gaming PCs on eBay. I used to co-own a company that sold custom PCs for a while on eBay. We stopped offering them because we found that eBay buyers of that type of item were the lowest quality buyer anywhere. And this was 2004-2005. I can't even imagine doing that now.

Message 36 of 192
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Massive decline in sales -73%

Join the club, all the website issues. The new algorithm not working properly as well as the promotions. All the other bugs I have been calling in for 2 years that are never fixed. Item specifics deleting themselves along with pictures. Store categories not being recognized when listings, if you can list. Server failures and system errors, "it's not you it's us" as well as customers saying they cannot check out along with trying to accept an offer and it errors out. I have a list a mile long (which may be literal by now)

 

I have even sent in a video showing all the issue yet they never get fixed. My 75-100 items sold a day has dropped down to 20-40 with all these changing nightmares that are going on. I had to recently start cross lisitng to when I have always bee a die hard ebayer for 22 years. 52,000 and some parts of certain days I get better sales on other site with only 3k of my items cross posted so far. It has become a nightmare here, sadly. I love ebay for what it has done for me over the past 22 years but what is going on now is killing a lot of sellers.

Message 37 of 192
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Massive decline in sales -73%

Sigh. The one you speak of is not owned or in favor of the people you dislike, but a part of the ones doing the brainwashing and truth changing. Be careful when what you believe is validated by those you trust - in order to make itself validated. A vicious cycle of power abuse. Intuition is a great gift

Message 38 of 192
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Massive decline in sales -73%

Unfortunately I do not live in a local market that would be large enough to support my family unless I also did repair, which is hell.

 

It is cutthroat and I am not suggesting that it will get better, it definitely peaked years ago and during COVID. I do believe I can go several more years before being run out of online business. The margins are low with advertising and fees, it is getting absurd. It used to just be 6.5% final value fee.. now its 8% + a minimum 2-8% advertising fee. Shipping goes up every year as well, and competition grows, and suppliers will NOT sell to anything but a large customer, so you pay retail costs basically for parts. Reputation is the only metric to battle on, so fighting terrible buyers is definitely a problem, they often make false claims, false feedback on occasion that I must beg to get removed ("buyer experience") no they just make false statements or treat me like crap, in addition to payment disputes 5 months after and such. Ultimately the vast majority of buyers are great and awesome, but it only takes a few to entirely screw your business. The feedback system is needing some help. No one on Amazon even sees your feedback, ebay wants to use it up front, that's great, and the protections are great, but it still makes that single % number far too important. Item reviews should be forced separate form customer feedback, almost every feedback relates to the product when it shouldn't in this system.

 

 

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Massive decline in sales -73%

Sales for us have been like a roller coaster since around April or May. We had consistently been getting around maybe $800 to $1800 in sales on a weeking basis prior to the decline. Now there's no actual pattern anymore. One week we will barely hit maybe $500, then suddenly,  the following week $1200. Luckily,  we sell other things in other venues,  so we aren't internally dependent on online sales, but it would be nice to have the same sales we had at the begining of the year, because the bills don't ever stop needing to be paid. All we can really do is hope things get better and move forward with posting. The overall economy hasn't been really great, and there's people with money, but they are spending sparingly these days.

Message 40 of 192
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Massive decline in sales -73%

Marginal Utility. 

Message 41 of 192
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Massive decline in sales -73%


@dirk12955 wrote:

Tagging on:

 

I've seen a 56%  drop in sales in the last 90 days.    Been selling for 23 years 

and have 3 selling accounts.    I've seen it bad,    But this........


 

The Nazi stamp market isn't what it used to be.

 

 

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Massive decline in sales -73%

Im in the same exact boat.  15 year seller with very consistent sales til the economy crashed last summer. Sales were down but still rolled in daily. Picked up a bit in spring and then bam.. 50% decline..then 60% down when  int'l shipping was rolled out.  Now 70% down and I have spent months optimizing every piece of SEO and attributes..excellent whiteback photos, everything in the store is running on promoted listings.  Im sending offers daily, and now running more ebay ad campaigns per click. and its like my store fell off a cliff.  I can easily find myself in top slots on EBay..but NOTHING on Google, although I see Etsy crap photos and listings in nearly every Google slot.  I have a store on Etsy too and those listings show up on Google but RARELY ever my Ebay items.  Why Ebay cant push through to Google is beyond me.  or why Google isnt picking up more EBay listings on their scans HAS to be an issue with EBay attributes.   My Ebay impressions seem decent.. and click through with tons of watchers..but I think problem is 3 fold.. The intl program costs to buyers too high..the incompatible Google/Ebay attribute tags..and the consumer being tapped out with high costs for shipping that we must build in.   But to go from 6-8 sales a day to 1 every few days..something is bad wrong.

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Massive decline in sales -73%


@tech*knowledge wrote:

The point of mentioning impressions is that visibility of the product has not changed.

Item views are the same as well.

 So you admit the same amount of people are viewing your items, but sales are down 73%.

How is it ebay's fault that the same amount of people are viewing your items but less people are buying them?

Undone - Bachman & Cummings
Message 44 of 192
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Massive decline in sales -73%

As it stands, the CEO of eBay is committing a textbook case of Gross or Intentional Negligence with the eBay website.

The exact definition is a CEO purposely acting to lead the company astray. Gross negligence occurs when a CEO knows what actions are necessary to ensure compliance but fails to do so.

There's no way possible that they aren't aware of the severe issues and bugs this site has had for months now. They have access to the full sales data on their side and top-rated sellers have repeatedly talked to eBay management on the phone. The CEO has reached out to eBay sales channels on Youtube. Yet, eBay continues to push for updates that ignore fixing these long tail problems that have spiraled into the situation we're currently at.

Investors should start asking if he's being paid by Amazon or Poshmark to crash this platform into the ground.

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