eBay

redlinear · ‎11-23-2022

I think eBay throttles listings. But, as one person, I can't be sure. AND, how can I do my research when listing items if I can't find what I'm looking for?
SO, Lets have some fun. As sellers, y'all know how to search (for research), as well, if not better, than ANYBODY.
So, here's your challenge.
Somebody you know has a Polaris RZR 800 (it's a little off road atv thing).
And, they need a Rear Differential for it. The whole rear differential, not just pieces or parts.
They are on a budget, but it's not easy to replace. SO, needs to be used, a good price, AND best chance of it being good, no problems.
Their budget is $500 to $1000.
Fitment.....Has to be RZR 800, year does not matter.
Show me your two best choices.
Lets just see how close we all get to the same choices?

sapphire_studio · ‎11-24-2022

My sister's main income comes from a blog that she makes money on the advertisement. So she follows really closely with changes in the algorithm on Google. Apparently this week they had huge changes in googlea algorithm. Maybe that is affecting some of our eBay sales.

She also said that pretty soon Google is completely removing 3rd party cookies which is going to take away like 75% of the income on people's websites that rely on advertising.

retro_entertainment_collectibles · ‎11-25-2022

@maxine*j wrote:
Even using exactly the same search terms, search results will vary by searcher. That's because eBay's search engine, just like Google and Bing and others, returns results based in part on your own history of browsing and searching, etc. They have your number, and they return results accordingly.

As for eBay "throttling" anyone's listings, that would mean that eBay is "throttling" its own revenue and, weird as good old eBay is, it isn't that weird.

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Companies throttling (controlling) their own revenues is nothing new. The idea that enterprise level business wants always, every moment make all the money it can is a fallacy.

I cited the former Onsale Supersites whom in the day were the undisputed king of B2C auctions and they did exactly that as well as issues of traffic management vs server assets. If ya' know the customers are coming then what they are exposed to matters, they are coming to shop and most are "feel good" shoppers not "I need" shoppers. Entire concept of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Itchy Scratchy Tuesday is based on "Feel Good" shoppers and biggest day's of the year.

Amazastone has a fine example that has no trickery except upon the actual consumer. It's called "The Buy Box" and if a seller owns "The Buy Box" you just would not believe the number of sales that start pouring in. It's a literal night and day scenario... If you sell say 25 items a day at Amazon and for whatever the reason you get the buy box against you're significant amounts of inventory? You'll see an order every minute and a half non-stop and over the holidays it's just insane atop that nine times out of ten the operation owning the Buy Box has a higher prices for items than other vendors.

These places are not Walmart and they do need to satisfy a variety of vendors preferably those that make them the most revenue's w/o the most issues and I certainly understand that.

retro_entertainment_collectibles · ‎11-25-2022

@onefootflipper wrote:
@sapphire_studio wrote:
Well yeah there is seller limits but I'm just talking about the algorithm itself doing what it can to make sure you only grow at a steady rate that you can handle as a seller.

People are right that there's definitely something that happens when you start selling to one particular location on one day.

We all know that one day Ebay will be pushing you and other days your store seems shut off. I don't think it's that hard to believe I mean we pay promoted listings for the algorithm to favor us more. Cassini is God here and even if you're not participating in the promoted listings program you're going to sometimes be favored higher and sometimes be favored lower. I really think that eBay monitors how quickly we grow and uses the algorithm To influence that....and I really thought that most people knew this.
You can promote nothing and still rank very high in search results if your items have high conversion rates. Daily Refinement when he was doing ebay didn't promote anything and ranked very high in search results because he did everything the search engine wanted included having the good prices that caused high conversion rates. Ebay favors sellers whose items sell when people click on them. Also, most sellers just DO NOT SEEM TO UNDERSTAND THAT MOST CUSTOMERS SEARCH PRICE LOWEST FIRST. Even though they search that same way when they buy things they think that somehow their customers are doing something else and wonder why their item that has 3 or 36 or 360 cheaper competitors never sells. The cheapest ones sell and are replaced with other cheap ones continually and number 36 never sells unless the market changes over a long period of time and that old bad price somehow becomes good. A huge number of ebay sellers literally only ever sell anything because their guessed price was too low or that their high guess became right much, much later.

There is truth in what "Ti-gg-er" is saying here for a significant swath of consumers. That however does not mean a point of sale doesn't control exposure, every significant eCommerce site DOES control exposure but it DOES'NT mean that there is some sort of conspiracy involved. It's like saying Target Merchandise is hiding the sox we manufacturer over there but Hanes seems to own the floor space! The fact Hanes sells 120:1 might have something to do with it even though my sox are better or even cheaper than Hanes sox.

Companies especially online albeit offline too want meet or slightly exceed their sales predictions towards shareholders. They don't want "Oh my windfall days!" as then it can become an expectation and/or people bail whilst the bailing's good.

mickmeymouse · ‎11-25-2022

Hidden camera's on my inventory? That's ABSURD!
(It's drones.....)

monster-deals · ‎11-25-2022

@redlinear wrote:
I think eBay throttles listings. But, as one person, I can't be sure.

Oh you can be 100% sure.

Promoted listings.

baantiques · ‎11-25-2022

I agree, they definitely throttle. I've observed it over the years and can predict relatively well when it will happen, how much my sales will drop, and how long it will go on. Right now I'm on day 4 of continuous throttling (views down 50%, sales down 60%+) and I figure it will last another 5 days, because if it doesn't, I will exceed what has typically been my hidden limit.

The first time I realized something was up was when I bought out a warehouse of late model air and oil filters and wiper blades about 8 years ago, something completely different than the 1920s-1960s NOS Ford parts I was selling. The idea was to make something happen. A year and a half earlier I made something happen by buying a big parts collection and moving from selling $800/mo of thrift store finds and toy closeouts to $4500/mo. So I wanted to make something happen again and increase sales more. I listed and sold cases and individual filters and sold $1500 the first month. Want to guess what happened? Sales of my Ford parts DROPPED BY THE SAME AMOUNT. The moved in lockstep every month thereafter until I sold out the last of the filters about two years later.

Sure, maybe it's a coincidence, but if you believe it's a coincidence, you also have to believe that the same coincidence happens enough over time to become a predictable pattern. No one is ever going to convince me that throttling is a myth.

redlinear · ‎11-30-2022

@baantiques
Yep, I do that same every now and then. Buy a huge lot of little bit different, just to make something happen.
I'm almost convinced, that in order to sell, you must sell.

onefootflipper · ‎11-30-2022

@redlinear wrote:
@baantiques
Yep, I do that same every now and then. Buy a huge lot of little bit different, just to make something happen.
I'm almost convinced, that in order to sell, you must sell.

I have absolutely noticed that with my Christmas ornaments. I have 7 or 8 varieties of ornaments that I have large quantity on. They always sell in streaks. Seems like whichever one or two some random customer finds first at the beginning of the season are the only ones that are going to sell all year. Last year I was shipping almost nothing but Wreath Snowmen and Hot Air Balloon snowmen. This year, the first two to sell were Sledding Snowmen and Jolly Jingles and now those two are all anyone is ordering.