I'm just a small-time seller here and I sell in a saturated category, yet I always did fairly well by comparison. I'm also a buyer here, and I would typically spend double the amount in purchases I made than the revenue I made from sales. I was a great customer for eBay, both a buyer making purchases here and a seller making sales here, generating revenue for eBay with my frequent transactions, even if on a small scale, never having any issues with my buyers or sellers I bought from, and generally a great member of the eBay platform.
In selling, I have a perfectionist streak, maybe a little bit OCD, so my photos and listings are top-notch, which helped me succeed, even if my emphasis on quality inhibited the quantity I could produce. However, I saw my sales dwindle this year as many other posters experienced, and in frustration, I cancelled my Basic store subscription, ended all of my listings, even quit browsing and buying on eBay. I was (and still am) quite irritated with the algorithm and search from both the buyer's and seller's perspective.
There is a seller I used to purchase from regularly with two stores. He adds new items to both stores daily, and I would often place (relatively) large orders from him for multiple items with combined shipping. I noticed that for several months this Spring-Summer, one of his two stores had no listings, nothing for sale at all. I continued to purchase from his other store. Yet every time I checked the first store, it was empty. I accessed it through my saved sellers, through PC and mobile, via searching for the store name and via searching for the items the store would had carried... nothing. But all along, all these months that I saw an empty store, the account was continuing to receive buyer feedback as though sales were occurring. Suddenly, the empty store was back in business, fully stocked, and he continued adding new listings daily. Then I looked at his sales history for the formerly empty store, and saw there were sales occurring during all that time that his store appeared empty to me. This is not the only instance I have been befuddled as a buyer in failing to find what I am searching for. I suspect that the search algorithm returns only some results from some sellers in some regions and/or alternates varying (random?) algorithms in determining what search results I am allowed to see. And I have become an expert in searching, in tweaking the filters, in running multiple searches in different categories, with different filters applied, in effort to find what I am actually seeking to purchase. I no longer purchase nearly as much, and many of my purchases are made on other platforms where other sellers offer the items I want that I can't find on eBay.
With my own small sales, after abandoning eBay for a few months, I decided to return to test a new strategy. I listed a couple dozen items - no store - with no returns, no international shipping, while charging the full calculated shipping to the buyer, and priced my items on the higher end - with best offer. These are all new items, but not commodities, not exactly rare, but not quite OOAK - things you can't currently purchase anywhere else online, things that I bought a while ago and didn't use, still new/in packaging, now discontinued/out of production and not for sale anywhere. Not exactly collectors items, still below retail, but some people want to but these things and will pay a bit more for them vs. what every retailer is selling new and cheap today. And a lot of people are aware that changes made to outsourcing and supply chains in just the last 5-10 years have meant that sometimes the product you buy new today from a well known brand might be of inferior quality to the model of that same product made 5 years ago. Not true of electronics, auto, and other technologically evolving items, but of everyday personal and household items. My new stuff from 3, 5, 7 years ago is still desirable to many and they'll pay a premium to get it vs. today's new model with free shipping. Also very true of used items of superior quality & design, well photographed, accurately described - there is a tremendous market there, although it's labor intensive and low profit, but I moved my used inventory to the poshy platform where sellers are protected, which is performing so well that my limited time to do this work is tipping more and more in favor of that platform where buyers just snap my used stuff up. I have great taste, even if it's not the most profitable or efficient business model.
Anyway, my strategy of 20-30 fixed-price listings, promoted at random decimal points between 1-4% depending upon demand for the particular item, with full buyer-paid shipping, no returns offered, no free anything, no frills... is working so far. I used to write comprehensive detailed descriptions, even sales pitches about how great the item was, which often used to be effective... now I significantly minimize my descriptions to the bare-bones basics, so as not to overwhelm the algorithm in determining whether to show my listing. I fully fill out and complete all possible item specifics, even the stupid irrelevant inapplicable ones. I make use of all 12 photos most of the time. I use free app software and a lot of my time to remove the background from my photos for a nice white background the search algorithm can handle, and I shun stock photos. I create all of my listings on the mobile app so they will be mobile compatible, then tweak them later on the PC to correct the junk defaults from mobile listing.
I find that the value of promoted listings, for my items - items wherein there is lots of variety and competition in the category, an overwhelming sheer number of options, but few of the exact same item at any given time and not brands/price points saturated yet by legions of cheap China copies - the value I get from promoting my listings is not where they appear in search results necessarily, but where they appear as "you might also like" or "buyers also shopped for" ads in other listings for competing items, and in the order confirmation emails buyers receive when they make a purchase - here are more similar items you may also like. If someone searches the brand or looks at a similar item listed, my promoted listing may be shown in the listing they are viewing as a suggested similar item, or be shown in an email they receive from eBay. That's why I promote. It backfires for everyone when it's the exact same precise identical item being shown as an ad in the listing, but I benefit when my similar item is shown to the prospective buyer, who otherwise may never see it or be able to find it via search, or have the expertise and patience and skill to successfully navigate the search and access all options, or who would otherwise be overwhelmed by the sheer number of options if they aren't able to successfully and accurately refine the search. This is why I promote... because I get seen and I get some sales, while if I relied on the notoriously bad search, well...
So I'm making a few sales here and there, as opposed to before when whatever toxicity infiltrated my former store a few months ago, and my same/similar items also promoted in the same manner as before, now enjoy a much more robust exposure, and my efforts on eBay are rewarded with just enough sales to maintain my motivation to continue. After all, I want to sell the new items for higher prices than the savvy buyers of used items on the other successful platforms are willing to pay. I can reach the baby boomers on eBay, the grandparents who cling to the last remaining shreds of middle class wealth in this nation, and I can reach the credit-card wielding younger millenials who are still in the debt-accumulation phase of their young adulthood, who haven't yet been crushed by their debt (and when that does happen, we will see them here, turning to selling and minimizing as I am). I wish that selling on eBay was engaging and rewarding as it was until the dreadful damaging short-sighted, so-horrible-it-had-to-be-deliberate-sabotage sweeping changes enforced this year. I still have hope, and I've had enough success so far to say I'm hopeful, and I've come back fresh to see how long I can benefit from algorithm-of-the-week, and I hope I can somehow stay resourceful enough to keep adapting and just rely on dumb luck, riding the ups and downs, hoping I'm lucky enough to figure it out.
Maybe the solution is what I've done. Maybe stores are out of favor, or maybe some code error or rogue algorithm is punishing stores or elevating those without stores. Or maybe this is just some on-again, off-again tempestual thing I will have to endure. Maybe it's like this: eBay, you can't have me and my stuff for sale and the buyers of my stuff. I'm leaving you - we're through. It was a fast whirlwind romance, we go in too fast, too deep, then we had to break it off and go our separate ways entirely, heartbroken, missing the other. You neglected me, hurt me, so I've been cheating on you, out there on the other platforms, defying you, making you jealous. Now I'll come back, give you another chance, but I'm not moving in, setting up shop, giving you my heart and my inventory, and I'm still out there on the other platforms. I know you'll be good to me for a while, give me attention, shower me with sales, make me think this is how it will be if I come back to you. But I've been hurt once... how can I trust you again? Will we only ever make up and break up? Is the key to getting what I need from you, eBay, to break up, go our ways, make you jealous, make you miss me, make you want me back, then come back for that honeymoon period before the same old, same old starts, and we break it off again? I don't know if I can take the drama.
Guess it's time to go list now... on my real selling account. I'm hopeful, today.
