Just a quick note ... I see a couple of our fellow sellers mention that their sales are great right now. I don't doubt that they are. There are times that my sales are amazing and I see sellers posting in the community or elsewhere online that their sales are very dismal. I generally look at how long they've had an account for, how many items they're selling, take a glance at the number of listings, and then drill down to see the quality of the listings. Sometimes I see things that are blatantly obvious why their sales would be low, and then some times I see a seller that looks similar to my account with nice, descriptive listings that are actually part of a business instead of a side hustle.
Regardless, I feel like ebay has a few things going on behind-the-scenes that inadvertently hurt sellers. Not maliciously nor intentionally. For one, I feel like they might put too much weight on our service metrics. I think my screenshot above might show that. It seems like when I have a "negative" customer experience, sales and/or revenue go down. It's not fair that I have 1 return out of 5,239 transactions above and they're telling me that my ratings are negatively reaching a "high" level. Seriously? As a consumer, do you know how many damaged items I receive from big box online and brick-and-mortar retailers on a regular basis? 1 out of 5,239 is freakin' amazing! I work my butt off to keep my customers happy and to keep that number low.
The other thing that seems off is it seems like ebay regularly directs traffic to certain sellers. Maybe it's new sellers. Maybe it's older accounts that specialize in selling a certain product. Or maybe on top of that it's just plain seasonal (I'd argue that the toys I sell mostly are NOT seasonal since they are more collector oriented toys, but Christmas is definitely a big boost, but with consistent sales throughout the year ... if that makes sense). However, if ebay is "directing" traffic to certain sellers, the sellers that they are NOT directing traffic to would see a loss of sales. My "traffic" report above would stand in contrast to what I'm saying since it shows a fairly steady stream of traffic. However, the conversion rate is down. Perhaps ebay is directing the wrong buyers to my store? Maybe those stats are not real or are not accurate? Who knows.
I don't think ebay is doing anything I mentioned above maliciously. I think they've got some programming going on that matches up buyers with items that match their search. That's it. It's not a perfect science. Sure, the algorithm could be tweaked one way or another. But I don't think in the least that there's a line of code that says "hey send traffic away from this seller for x, y and z reasons because we need to send traffic to this other seller". I would argue that ebay should just show the darn items that match a buyer's search without any algorithms behind the scenes. However, ebay also makes money off us for "promoting" items (if you play that game, which I don't), our subscriptions, listing fees, etc. There are other ways to make money off sellers instead of just collecting a percentage fee.
The issue I'm concerned about the most is if ebay is directing customers to a rotating group of sellers, then I'm assuming they're doing that to keep sellers "happy". Send buyers to these sellers ... they make sales. Now we need to send buyers to group #2 sellers so they make sales. And so on. Everyone gets a turn at making sales and then not making sales. The real concern is that if there were enough buyers to match the number of items being sold from various sellers, they wouldn't need to do that other than to send enough business to new sellers so that they get a taste of what's going on instead of just sending traffic to long established sellers who have been doing this for over 20 years.
I'm a seller who has been doing this for over 20 years. I do not believe in conspiracy theories. I do not think ebay is evil or out to run businesses into the ground. They are a large company made up with a lot of folks. Mistakes happen (i.e. new bugs that get introduced with quarterly updates). Things fall through the cracks. But they're a business. They make the most money when they take a cut of what we sell. That's what drives this whole business ultimately.
On that note, I wonder if ebay has ever considered having a small focus group of sellers (5 to 10) that they talk to regularly update upcoming updates, potential ideas for a year or so down the road, and talking about problems that the small group of sellers is experiencing (or ideas that they might have). It'd be beneficial for ebay to have if they don't already do that.
Long ramble. Sorry. Just wanted to share some ideas about where I think the issue is and a possible solution. And to clarify that I don't buy into ebay conspiracy theories, though I do think things are going on behind-the-scenes that aren't helpful and should be addressed. Hopefully I was able to convey that.
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Ryan
Seibertron.com
