Rolling blackouts a thing?

[stephp4007]

I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but in my research last night I fell into a DEEP rabbit hole about complete slumps in sales. In the years I’ve been selling, I notice a definite cycle to my sales. Cycles that don’t seem to coincide with anything particular,  anyway, these past eBay discussions about rolling black outs made the go “huh” wonder if that’s actually a thing !

Not blaming this for my dismissal sales ( so please no mean comments!) I’m dust genuinely curious if anyone has heard of this, and what are your thoughts on it!

[portkoop-0]

The one factor we can not control is public sentiment, if you've ever dabbled in stocks you might have a decent idea of how that works but another way to say it is: If we could predict the future we wouldn't be here talking about this right now.

Sales come, sales go, there are definite cycles and unfortunately the danger is a type of designed complacency... You can't really do but so much, so you've done what you can and sales are slow and they've been slow so at some point we just accept it... But did we miss something?

I've had sales slumps that lasted several years...

In that time however I went over everything, piece by piece.

It's not my favorite job but it has to be done.

Good luck

[bigyellowdog2012]

I remember when my sister started selling on eBay. She had a crazy sell through rate..almost everything she listed. She had makeup and lipsticks that had been discontinued that were still popular.

Suddenly everything stopped. She went from a crazy 90-100% to nothing.

We could not figure it out. 

[luckythewinner]

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@uncseniorsportsfan wrote:

Since ebay uses multiple servers, I would assume that the idea of rolling blackouts has something to do with not all servers being available to all users 24/7 - more the nature of the beast than manipulation.  

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The ideas that items are "on a server" or that a server is "not available to all users" are hopelessly antiquated and simply do not exist in today's world. 

The "database" is available to all servers, all servers are available to all users, and load-balancers  field requests from users and distribute them. 

https://avinetworks.com/what-is-load-balancing/

[byrd69er]

I detect a cycle too.

I list items, I sell items.

I don't list items, I don't sell items.

I list items people want. I sell items people want.

I list items people don't want, I don't sell items people don't want.

The cycle is endless.

Business is funny like that.

[u_cant_take_it_with_u]

In past 10 years of the questioning of rolling blackouts, throttling, and cloaked listings, I have learned one thing... . The old adage of, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck!, seems to  apply, when speaking of eBay. 😄

[u_cant_take_it_with_u]

Seems NOT to apply

[stephp4007]

again I wasnt implying this was a legit reason for slow sales. Was just curious. 

[chapeau-noir]

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@stephp4007 wrote:

again I wasnt implying this was a legit reason for slow sales. Was just curious. 

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Yes - people are quick to act like you're (collectively) blaming when you're actually just curious, like learning is dangerous or something lol.

[fashunu4eeuh]

Hi! Haven’t heard anyone asking about rolling blackouts for awhile. At one time it was an

oft-discussed conspiracy theory. I personally don’t ascribe to it, but some were convinced it was a secret practice of eBay’s.

[moondogblues]

"There's even a statistical model for seeming patterns in huge random samples - yet they're still random."

Chaos Theory anyone?  Though once my M&P (Mom was a writer) took the family to No Calif for research, stopped at a restaurant for lunch.  We all got out of the car to go in, and coming out of the door was my BFF from high school at the time.  What are the odds of that?

I used to say that at every concert I went to there would be someone I knew.  90% of the time it came true.  What are the odds of that?  Remember the old 7 degrees of separation?

[moondogblues]

And not to sound like an absolute lunatic, but we are Jeopardy  fans for decades and have noticed that the questions echo commercials and/or topics within a day or two.  Wheel of Fortune a bit but not quite so much.

RIP Alex Trebeck...we loved him.

[agun2355]

For the past 4 months my sales have followed the same pattern no matter what I do. For the first 20 days of the month next to nothing followed by a big spurt of sales (80 to 90% of the months total) in the last 10 days. First of the month comes and the door shuts again. Given the unfolding USPS disaster I'm not minding the lack of sales all that much and I've reduced my own ebay spending to zero for the rest of the year to compensate. Hopefully 2021 will be a better year for us all.