My ebay store is becoming ebay storage

[mypostingid15]

I don't think ebay is helping me sell my items, I have over 1200 items listed and sold 2 last week, not even enough to cover the fees, why?
I sell in all categories, so it's not that
I have very competative pricing, so it's not that
I have 100% feed back, so ir's not that

I offer free shipping, free returns, free anything, so it's not that
I go out of my way to help and provide service to my customers, so it's not that

I use promotions and auctions, so it's not that

Last week, I listed over 150 auctions and only one sold for under $10

So, what is it?

[doubledz-a2z]

---

@orangehound wrote:

As luckythewinner pointed out, it is hard to give you any real suggestions without seeing your inventory and listings ... but here's a bunch of stuff that I'm just pulling out of the air for you

• Maybe your listings are not mobile friendly
• Maybe your account sells drop-shipped items, and eBay has now lumped you in with all the other drop-shippers they are trying to get rid of
• Maybe you have multiple seller defects
• Maybe your items are just not selling because they aren't in demand ... anywhere by any seller on any site
  
• Maybe your items have a lot of views, but not sales, and eBay is demoting them in search
• Maybe your photos are poor
• Maybe your listings have a lot of "legal" terms in them that scare away buyers
• Maybe your overall Sales Conversion Rate is very low (well below, say, 1%), and eBay is not boosting any of your inventory.
• Maybe you call customer service too much, and eBay is penalizing you
• Maybe you misrepresent the location of your items
• Maybe you sell from a country with a high fraud rate
• Maybe your seller ID is connected to another ID (e.g., same address) that has gotten poor ratings in the past.

---

MAYBE BECAUSE YOU ARE PAYING FOR A STORE EBAY HAS YOU WHERE THEY WANT YOU.    Sellers often are under the wrong assumption that the number of items listed means something.  With only two sales, your sell through rate is in the toidy.  You are actually more irrelevant to ebay than selling two items with 10 listed.   

[emerald40]

@goldrushfinds wrote:
I wish you would be open to the idea that at the present time Ebay is having significant problems with the site. There is without question, very intermittent exposure of listings, possibly more concentrated in some categories than others. I have been selling in clothing, which I know, is highly oversaturated But really, over the past week or so it has hit all new lows. Over thousands of listings of 4-5 sellers I watch, sales have nearly been nonexistent. Sales in this category has probably been halved in just the last days (no, it's not the hurricane). Also, when I view other's recent sales, some of the sales are visible at one time and then absent when I look an hour later. Just many strange things going on. One seller I have been watching has had nearly no sales in the past 5 days, then this morning, in the period of 1/2 hour had 4 sales. It's like you get this brief moment of preferred exposure, then back to the black hole.

I have said it more than once here that ebay is a mess.  I even suggested they shut down for a week and fix things rather than just put a band aid on it.  I have come out and criticized ebay on some of their bone headed changes for change sake,

Categories are a mess.  I told the story of trying to find diamond earrings for my daughter and gave up.

But this is not all ebay's fault, Sellers are complicit in this mess as well.  I have been shopping for 19 years and the quality of what I am receiving has significantly gone down.  Seller's attitudes lately has been this is ebay, you are getting it cheap, so deal with it.

Ebay could do a lot to help it self.  Get rid of the freebies which are just turning the categories into trash.  If your listing is not worth .30, then it should not be here.  Get rid of drop shippers.  Put a limit on how many listings one seller can have under all his accounts.  This will allow all of us to be seen.

But I will not buy into ebay deliberately hiding listings.  Yes every time you search, what comes up is going to be different depending on the wording.  And no when there are 30,000 diamond bands I do not want ebay to show all of them to me.  You listing is there, somewhere.  In all the times someone has come here to say ebay is hiding their listing and I ask for an item no, only 3 times did it fall off the planet ebay.  Your listing is there, somewhere, but categories are just way too saturated.

As far as sales, when did sales become like a 9 to 5 job.  Go to the mall.  One day you drive aroud in circles trying to find a parking place, other times you are the only one there.  Sales are not an entitlement.  They are not consistent.

There are just way too many duplicate listings here.  If ebay would limit them, we would all be happier and more successful.

[goldrushfinds]

Precisely. Almost without fail, when someone says something to the effect that you should stop whining and do your research, optimize your listings, improve your photos, change what you sell, yada, yada, yada, their seller ID shows zero listings. I will be much more apt to take advice, when I can see that the person giving the advice is making lots of sales, for decent profits (not $1 profit on a $10 sale). That almost never happens. Usually the person has 10 sales that day, for margins so small that they may net $15 total. Whopee!

[coolections]

---

@softersilk wrote:

---

@coolections wrote:

---

@mypostingid15 wrote:

Last week, I listed over 150 auctions and only one sold for under $10

---

If you listed 150 AUCTIONS and NONE had bids then you started your AUCTIONS at too high a price. An AUCTION starts low and lets the BIDDERS bring the price up. I have rarely ever listed at auction and not had a least one bid in THOUSANDS of auctions.

---

Not necessarily.  Generic stuff that is easy to find does not do well at auction, especially if no BIN price. 

---

Well since the OP does not want us to see what they sell maybe you have a point. The OP doesn't know what to list at auction and what should not be listed at auction. We also do not know if the OP is over-priced so that would be the factor on her BIN items. Without seeing a thing all we can do is guess that the  OP needs to do better research before putting items up for sale. Adding more and more items in not the answer. My sell-through is approximately 75% because I research what should be listed and what price points buyers are willing to pay.  Also Ebay never hides my items but then again I do not list in saturated markets such as clothes.

[coolections]

@goldrushfinds

Your problem is selling clothes AND prices in which buyers can buy them at B&M stores. No need to see what the poster's history is, it took me 30 seconds to see the problem. For every 1 item that is sold there are 1,000 sellers selling the same thing. You have a 1/1000 chance for every item you list.

[doubledz-a2z]

After 20 years here I am back at flea market selling.  Fresh Air, Plenty of Sales, No Stress and NO RETURNS.  I buy there too.   With all the online liquidation sites there is plenty to choose from and most items I buy (especially clothes) are $1.00 NEW WITH TAG.  And most of it is Nike and UnderArmour.   I buy literally everything but food and underwear at the flea market.   My wardrobe is to die for and a buck apiece.   I just outfitted myself for life for free from an estate sale close by and it is NEW Eddie Bauer Duluth etc.   I have no need for Ebay any longer other than to kill time reading the boards and listing a few things between my trips to the swap meet.   Ebay in the late 90's was so much fun and profitable.  Fast forward it's not a pretty site.

[goldrushfinds]

emerald40

I actually agree with a lot of what you say. I don't agree with some of your statements however. I did not state that Ebay 'is hiding listings', but I do think that they are having problems with their servers and programming issues, which are restricting visibility of various listings at any given time. If you follow sellers (and your own) sales closely, it is just statistically impossible for them to take place the way they do randomly. I mean for instance, a given seller has +-2,000 listings, of which only 2 sell in two days, and then on a Tuesday morning, 5 sell in 30 minutes. This type of activity happens over and over. And I can find this type of anomaly not only affecting one seller at a time, but like 5 sellers in my immediate location on a given day. A logically thinking person realizes there will be spurts of natural random activity, but this type of sales pattern defies the odds.

[goldrushfinds]

coolesctions

Admittedly, some of my prices need to be modified. The retail market for clothing is presently cutthroat. However, the majority of what I sell is less than half of even the discounted retail prices (or much less). Most are higher quality brands, which are often not offered in the discount stores. Anyway, they were selling well, until just a few months ago, with a further steep dive in sales in the past week. I don't just randomly list anything for whatever I want. I typically sell items with a great sell through rate and try to sell clothing in which the number of listings is less than what has sold over the past 3 months. My listings are not based on chance of wishful thinking. I am not that stupid. With all that said, I will be listing what I have on hand, and then be listing virtually no more clothing (due to the brutal competition and poor returns). So please don't make it sound like there is no thought or analysis that went into this. That is just not the case.

[goldrushfinds]

doubledz

Well, good for you. Although I suspect a bit of snark and hyperbole in your comment. Cheers!

[annasunicorns]

As a buyer of used clothing on ebay... I am.buying less for two reasons. There is less variety right now. And, alot of the prices are higher than in the store. I can get 50% off any day of the week at a store. I am looking for 75% off or more. Sorry. Regular stores are undercutting online prices while providing new product. I resell my used clothes and I find at 75% off retail, or less, it sells. Unless its something someone is very specifically hunting for, (and that stuff, is gold, but rare) clothing is cheap right now. I have a few things I am casually looking for but have not found in my price point. Ill live without them if I cant find them now and wait for clearance in a store.

[goldrushfinds]

annasunicorns

I do agree with you. I do try for the most part to find items that are good quality and highly discounted. Many items I will be however lowering the prices on, as prices in the market continue to drop. Clothing, not just on Ebay, but in the entire retail realm, is in oversupply, and pricing is ruthless. I am rapidly trending away from selling clothing on Ebay due to that reality. A once good category, is rapidly becoming a big fat lemon!

[grasshopperx]

I buy alot on ebay, and have been a seller since 2001.  There's something wrong here. Some of us old timers know the reality of this. I am totally detached emotionally from this site as a seller now. I list maybe 6 items. Mostly for Fun. Just to see how pathetic it's become. It's sort of a game to me. I can tell when I'm turned on or off. Matter of fact I've told ebay. Please notify me when I'm turned on? Other then that I won't waste my time and even look at My Ebay.(being scarastic). But I care less about their RULES, childish kindygarten baby stuff. I dont pay any attention to it, nor do I even care anymore. But If I were a seller that took MY TIME and listed over 1000 items, and had low sales like everyone is having, I would be some upset! Because THAT'S ALOT OF WORK! But as a buyer too. I prefer Ebay to Amazon. I think Ebay has  more variety here. I mostly like ebay because I CAN use paypal. It's easy, swift and always works. I dont not like Amazon, because I dont want to use a credit card and deal with paying it off every month. I like buying it and being done with it.  Phasing out pay pal WILL be the last straw for this company. As for Clothing ? it's too bad ? because I bought the most beautiful winter coats on here last year. I couldnt have found a coat that nice for the price I paid here, in any B&M store. But people have to understand. Amazon has done a better job at brainwashing the population to buy there. people are sheeple.

[myoasisjewels]

it is NOT you.
it is NOT something you do or dont do.....
it is ebay and ebay alone.
they have alienated so many good sellers that used to be steady buyers. lets face it, the chinese are not here to buy from us...... the constant changes have ruined this site. ebay has gotten a pretty bad reputation. it is not peoples first choice to purchase from anymore. heck, i got so frustrated with buying on ebay and receiving it from amazon that now i go straight to amazon.

[oceanviewengineer2015]

Same. Worst week I have ever had.

I have two 2.99 auctions going out today (stuff I am clearing out). Tuesday was a zero sales day. Saturday was a zero sales day (and Saturday can usually be a strong day for me)

I have two non-payers that are about ready to open the case.

I had two actual job interviews the past few weeks. I just can't handle the ups and, ever increasing and deeper, downs.  If and when I get a job, I'll still sell but more as a Hobby. The $6 can pay for my lunch.

[goldrushfinds]

Oceanviewengineer2015

I am with you on this one. I can't have any enthusiasm anymore for adding more listings and building a business on Ebay. It is just so inconsistent and unreliable. The returns for the amount of effort put in are ever diminishing. I guess the bottom line is it is no longer intriguing or FUN.