More and more zero sales per day

[cammie-ysd]

I am seriously disappointed in sales volume. I have sold on eBay for 20 years.  My store maintains around 900 items which totals $49,000 retail. My sales per month has dropped to around $1,500.  This is devastating.  I realize we are in a pandemic but this is extremely low. My prices are low and so is my shipping.  Am I the only one having this low sales volume? 

[chapeau-noir]

Your home goods seem to be doing better than clothing (which, as mentioned, is a super saturated category).   I would start moving more into that area - people always need bedding, etc.   I'm just a used clothing seller (as I was firmly told the other day), and have pretty much stopped listing on ebay, but I find I did better selling pre-owned clothing than any retail arbitrage (which I found boring, though that's a very personal observation, some people love it) which tends to be even more saturated than niche pre-owned clothing. 

Clothing is never going to get better, though, believe me - it's a rapidly changing market and is not only dispersing to other sites, but is even more overloaded now with people trying to make some extra $$ with starting to sell their own items online.

Anyway, this is the dog days - just keep going, try to work up other markets.

[postingid7659]

LMAO

[dazzling_you]

Don't give up.. Try and try one day you can fly...  I think All because of this pandemic situation ..

[beachychicd]

Yes. It's Been terrible. I've had only 2 sales in the last 2 days. I usually have consistent sales daily. It has been going down hill for 2 weeks now.. VERY ODD and I think it's got to do with the item specifics they are pushing on us. EVEN though the do not even apply to my listing they just want us to keep revising revising and wasting time here. They lower or hide you in search because of the **bleep** item specifics if you don't keep adding them in even though they do not even apply!!!! it's too much!

[john_lerouge]

I suspect it's more a factor of eBay not being the platform it once was. They talk about Trust and Safety, yet when you go online you see thousands of listings in the wrong categories, and you hear horror stories of people getting scammed on eBay, and you see pricing from price gougers selling items for 3 or 4 times MSRP. Look at computer graphics cards right now. There is a limit to supply and demand pricing. Offering a $1500 item for $7,200 (which is a price that it was sold on eBay) is gouging in a low-supply marketplace. Yes you can certainly offer something for any price ... I get that. But this is outright gouging by scalpers who have helped create the low supply.  Potential buyers seeing this on eBay does not bode well for a platform as far as buyers are concerned, from a trust and safety perspective.

Add to that the number of sellers who have gone away, many for reasons that are directly related to a lack of concern for sellers on eBay's part. Weeks to get a limit removed on seller accounts, or even getting a reply to an inquiry . How can a business doing eBay sales exclusively survive when there account gets restricted and it takes weeks to get it sorted out? Listings removed "temporarily" and no customer service to be found. What if a singular notice was sent to you about an issue and you missed it, and after 90 days that message is gone. Can you reply via email ... nope. Can you call to speak to someone who can do anything other than quote policy which is already on the website ... nope. Customer service in "the back office" is no customer service at all functionally.

You can go a month or so with all you listings on hold because you have an issue with your  registered bank account or a change in policy requiring personal ID. Bang ... the algorithm knocked you off eBay ... and it takes a month to get fixed and your business is at a stand still as a result. Not from anything you did ... just because. So people come back to eBay to look for their favorite seller, and they are gone. Well ... so are they. They can find it on Amazon or ETSY.

Case in point ... this account I have right now. I have sold one item on it since I opened it in 2017. Mostly I use it as a buyer. Within 48 hours of making the sale, eBay sent me a singular MC011 message, which I missed. I am not an active seller anymore, so I wasn't as diligent as I used to be. I sent the item to the buyer and didn't log back on for months. Turns out my seller account is restricted. Does it say that anywhere on the site; the seller hub, dashboard, my account page, while browsing or logging in, anywhere? Nope. It wasn't until I spent a few hours taking photos and writing up drafts and then trying to list a couple of things, did I find out my account was restricted. It says "limited", but not in the "number of items" thing. It's just a banner at the top. I can't list ... anything. The seller hub says I can list 1000 item or up to $25K. That was back on July 23th.

Now mind you the first thing they mentioned was the Payment Management Program saying I had to sign up. Ok ... that's fine eBay wants to manage the money, I can deal with that.  So I do that and wait days for the micro-deposits. Thing is ... that wasn't the issue at all. It's now August 16th and I have yet to here back after giving them all the multitudes of documents they requested beyond what I gave them for the Payment Management. Turns out they sent me an MC011 message back in January and never sent me anything in regard to that specific issue (whatever it was, I still do not know) since that time. Nothing. The MC011 message mentioned tracking numbers, but I used eBay shipping labels for the item I sold. So I don't know what the issue actually was. I got nothing further regarding this issue from eBay. I checked all my emails going back to January. Nothing. Just that one message. I have no notification turned of in my preferences so I get every eBay email and message. Yet ... you can only reply to that message on eBay; however, after 90 days they are all gone. It's ridiculous. DMV is an easier bureaucracy to deal with than what eBay has become.

Additionally, the number of buyers has been shrinking on eBay for the last decade, well before the pandemic. It been a wholesale reduction in how many people view items. eBay's own data shows this. I think I saw a recent number on one of their pages talking about the number of buyers being  around 160M. It used to be nearly a billion ... but not any more. So a seller has less page views for their items which means a lower percentage chance of making a sale. eBay is not what it used to be.

I have been a user of eBay since the 90's when eBay first started up. I've been a pro-lister for other businesses as well as having my own eBay based business for a number of years. I will not sell on eBay or focus a business solely on this platform. It's just not the marketplace it was nor the one eBay advertises.

[cammie-ysd]

I use all the tools that they offer and hope it increase sells.   I call eBay seller support and am told that they can refresh my store, whatever that is, and it helps for about 2 days.  Selling is my full time job.  I wake up at my computer every day of the week. 

I now sell on Amazon, Wal-Mart and Poshmark  and still do not make what I made back when I only sold on eBay.   I ventured out because eBay sells were going down.  It cost extra money to have a 3rd party link the inventory.   Plus, the return policy on Walmart and Amazon are anti seller.   Both Amazon and Walmart charge the seller return shipping on top of 15% fees.  They actually give the customer an immediate refund when the post office scans the return label.   How crazy is that?   The item is not inspected or received and the customer has a refund. 

 How can anyone make a profit?   They are killing the small business person. 

I am 60 and just need to make it 5 more years.    eBay is my favorite site but, the sells have been decreasing year after year.   I am hopeful but something has to change.   

[yuzuha]

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@katzrul15 wrote:

Sales are slower than we anticipated going into August, but Halloween sales are brisk and we are selling Christmas items most days now.  Buyers are starting early, which is interesting, but glad they are.  With postal hikes in October, grateful to move whatever possible before then.

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Yep, I've sold some Halloween and Christmas stuff in the last couple of weeks, which is definitely earlier than I usually start seeing those sales.

[jhr-4800]

1 thing that I can advice, is to try to sell to resellers.  As an example you can sell 10 to 20 dresses for x price, plus shipping.  Or 10 to 20 curtains for x price, plus shipping.  In my case, I sell to end buyers and to resellers.  This has help me to move stuff out, and get some money in, by not relaying only on end buyers.  

Keep your chin up, and start to think outside the box.  Good luck on your seller journey.

[chapeau-noir]

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@cammie-ysd wrote:

I use all the tools that they offer and hope it increase sells.   I call eBay seller support and am told that they can refresh my store, whatever that is, and it helps for about 2 days.  Selling is my full time job.  I wake up at my computer every day of the week. 

I now sell on Amazon, Wal-Mart and Poshmark  and still do not make what I made back when I only sold on eBay.   I ventured out because eBay sells were going down.  It cost extra money to have a 3rd party link the inventory.   Plus, the return policy on Walmart and Amazon are anti seller.   Both Amazon and Walmart charge the seller return shipping on top of 15% fees.  They actually give the customer an immediate refund when the post office scans the return label.   How crazy is that?   The item is not inspected or received and the customer has a refund. 

 How can anyone make a profit?   They are killing the small business person. 

I am 60 and just need to make it 5 more years.    eBay is my favorite site but, the sells have been decreasing year after year.   I am hopeful but something has to change.   

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The clothing market has been dispersing from ebay for a while now.  There are many things that don't move here that do move on other sites because the market is gone.  Being solely dependent on any one site nowadays is not a great idea, so you're smart to be diversifying.

Yeah, every time people say EBAY IS AWFUL I'M GOING TO AMAZON I wonder if they really know what they're getting in to.  Even Amazon is making more money on their web services than sales anymore, and since their new CEO is the one who developed AWS within Amazon over the last years, I expect it to continue that way.

[itsjustasprain]

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@cammie-ysd wrote:

I am seriously disappointed in sales volume. I have sold on eBay for 20 years.  My store maintains around 900 items which totals $49,000 retail. 

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Correct me if Im wrong but you do not actually HAVE those 900 items - you are dropshipping them. The dropshipper that supplies your items to your buyers is also supplying all your competitors with the same things.

There is no way to get ahead with dropshipping. You end up in a race to the bottom - trying to reduce your price to get a few pennies below your competition and maybe grub a few sales that way. 

Your listings are almost entirely stock images. If I click on any one of them at random to open the listing I will then find a 'Similar sponsored items' section (even before I scroll down to your description) which almost always shows me two or more identical stock photos from other sellers with different prices - some lower than yours.

You are not going to win with dropshipping when your dropshipper is supplying your competition and Ebay is showing your competitors photos in the middle of your own listings. Find items of your own to sell and take your own photos. That way you have half a chance of standing out from everyone else.

[axiombody]

Sales up 40% from this time last year.  Had my best month ever last month.  Don't let items get stale.  People want new selection.  Hope things pick up for Christmas for you.  I usually have sales go down after summer but I have been collecting winter wear more than usual to have a good selection.

[Anonymous]

My situation is VERY similar to yours.  I called Ebay yesterday, but got no good answers.  I think the slow sales are from a combination of all things going on in the US.  It will be hard to be patient until things settle.  I try to keep busy doing other things.

It would be nice to see Ebay give us some type of compensation with all this.   They can't keep going unless we all do.   The expenses they put on us are way too high.  And the postal rates are also a huge problem.

Debra

[bargainnation]

There could be a number of reasons sales volume has dropped for many eBay sellers including the lackluster economy; job uncertainty; lower wages; higher inflation; etc. Many people hold off on making discretionary purchases. Although clothes are a necessity some people might hold off on buying more clothes , shoes, handbags (new or used) when money is tight.

Try to diversify what you sell and where and how you sell. There are other online reseller platforms besides eBay and if you are able to and feel comfortable doing so you might look into yard sales, flea markets, etc.

I look at a few videos at the online eBay school and you'll probably learn some information there that can be useful to you to increase your online eBay sales.

[freshw-100]

Don't worry, You are not alone, We too are in the same boat, Hopefully, things will pick up. All the best.

[oldschoolwear]

It can be very frustrating. In fact, it's scary to see your income drop so drastically.

My recommendation is to keep trying new things and new items.  We have always sold vintage clothes. We especially love vintage winter wear and heavier clothing. So, summer is usually tough for us because the clothes we sell just don't do well in the summer.  To adjust, this year we began listing some vintage hardgoods that we were able to find in addition to our normal stuff.

We run a small sale almost constantly. They run for a week or two at the most. Rarely are the sales over 15% unless I'm trying to clear some things out.  We also have best offer turned on. It not only allows me to consider offers, it gives me a chance to look at the feedback the potential buyer leaves other sellers. best offer helps me avoid some of the trouble up front. I also send out offers all the time to watchers. My margins are high enough that I have the latitude to adjust if I want to.

Our average purchase price is almost always under $5 and our ASP is currently $71...but those numbers obviously fluctuate depending on what we find. Living so rural limits some of my sourcing opportunities.

Most importantly, don't rely on what you've always done and hope that that alone will make things work.  We are constantly moving and adjusting as the platform and market dictate.  What I'm doing today might kill my business next year. 

Keep your head up. At one point you hit on a formula that was working for you. So, there's no doubt that you can do so again.  You can do this.