My sales have plummeted since deleting a large number of listings with minimal traffic

[bvkoski]

An inquiry for sellers who have minimized their inventory due to items receiving little traffic and who've then experienced much less in sales with their remaining previously-successful-selling inventory. I recently deleted a bunch of NASCAR diecast vehicles that were only priced at $4.99 each. Over a year I sold about 20 of them. I still had over 100 and I decided to just donate the remainder. I also had a magazine title with many issues and I only sold a few—I've removed them as well. Prior to these deletions, my inventory had about 620 items and I'd sell close to $1000/month across the range of items. Since deleting those two groups, my inventory is now about 420 and my sales have plummeted to last month's $300 total and to about $50 so far this month. I am stunned because I would sell soundtrack and music CDs, DVDs, movie posters, Star Trek memorabilia, books, magazines, etc., and now suddenly everything has dried up. I've lowered prices, added a 15% off sale on top of that, plus everything is ebay-promoted at 7%. Is my inventory somehow being ignored now that I've lowered it from 620 to 420 items? Is there some algorithm that ebay uses based on inventory over a certain number of items? This situation is quite disconcerting as that income was helping me pay bills while being out of work. Now that income has dried up. Any thoughts?

[flyingmvp]

The only consistent thing about sales on Ebay is it's inconsistency.

you can be on top of your selling game and immediately see your sales drop off a cliff with no clear reason or explanation.

It seems that you are doing all the right things to try and revive your sales here,

yet the answer in the Ebay top secret Algorithms.

You can always try to list again some of your deleted items in case it's not all donated ( 5-6 per day) and see what happens.

Or just spread your wings, we had a few racing/Nascar related items in the past,  all sold in specific targeted Racing memorabilia web sites and groups.

[yuzuha]

Well, consider it this way: I work B&M retail, and a lot of times people will come up to the checkout with a load of stuff and say "I only came in here to get one thing, but..." In other words, they came in to look at one thing and ended up deciding they wanted a whole bunch of other things too.

The fewer things you have listed, the less of a chance you have at that happening. More listings = more potential eyes on your stuff. They may not buy what they first looked at, but they might end up buying something else instead.

[chapeau-noir]

Agree with @yuzuha - what you can do is simply rejig those listings and relist, or if you've already donated, start listing fresh stock ASAP.  My sales are very slow because I only have about 145 items up here (got rid of a bunch of off-season stuff) but that isn't a huge deal since I'm just selling down and making hobby money at this point.  When I was making my living here I kept about 500 items of all kinds here and made sure I kept the numbers up.

[coolections]

I just looked at your first page of listings and to be honest the stuff is very low demand things. My guess is you sold more the good stuff and are left with what you got and can take some time to sell.

[katzrul15]

Are you listing new items (new listings) each and every day?  When we do, our sales stay pretty steady.

Keep listing each day - good luck to you!

[bvkoski]

My main point was that I was selling consistently in all areas of my listings and since I ended the listings I described, then all sales dropped off. You mention my items are low demand, but as I said, the only change in the degree of my sales was after I deleted those magazines and Nascar cars. I was wondering if others had ever experienced something similar.