SLOW SALES!

[mrbriscoe]

🤔

Wow! business is terrible. Anyone out there experiencing the same thing?

[reallynicestamps]

@seibertron I'm curious how you pulled the data for my averages.

 From the Items Sold list on the left side of your Active Listings.

It's not very accurate (although 27 vs 32 is not bad) because it includes items you closed (I do this when a crosslisted item is sold on another site) and doesn't give discounted prices for accepted Best Offers.

Also I find counting on a screen clumsy, but that's me.

On my own RNS account I've sold 92 items in the same period-- but that doesn't seem to include those closed when sold elsewhere. You can take a look.

It's also interesting because I thought I had accepted a lot more Best Offers than I apparently have.

[vintagecraze50]

It’s pathetic. I am down 20 thousand dollars from last years sales. That’s estimating from my 2023 taxes and sales from last year. 

[vintagecraze50]

Thank God, I am starting to work on retirement funds as this place has lost customers for years and it’s winding down for us sometime after we sell the bulk of our merchandise as best we can. 

[vintagecraze50]

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@calgal19572014 wrote:

Election hangover? It's been slow for me the last 3 days...hardly any views.

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IDK. THERE was a news article saying sales could have slowed due to election preoccupation and those 2 big hurricane disruptions as far as fourth quarter. I am hoping things will ramp up on here in the next few weeks after Thanksgiving and the whole Black Friday stuff. Maybe it will recover quite well like it usually does during that time and well into January. 

[tarotfindsandmore]

Personally,  I think the erratic sales, with these drastic ups and downs is somehow connected to the (further) implementation of AI.  It was supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread, but eBay's AI is ASS.  It was implemented too quickly and very sloppily without any real beta testing.  What is happening now is the beta testing, and the results are bad.  It just isn't working.  It lacks the intuition/ability that is needed to do things like properly sort listings (it doesn't recognize the same items with variations in titles), recognize human error (such as missed scans from postal workers), and it doesn't recognize basic commands.  There are a million glitches in the system right now, but eBay doesn't do anything about it because the greatness that is AI has put a wall between sellers and actual functional human beings that might be able remedy the problems. When another quarter rolls around and even more losses are seen, and then another, and another, the eBay money guys may finally ask someone in IT to look under the hood and fix these problems.  Unfortunately,  it appears we will all need to lose a lot more money before they even bother to look into it.

[john_wade]

It's been very slow for me and many of my friends. Horrible economy. Millions are struggling with hyperinflation and high interest rates. Food, mortgage, rent, gas are more important to many families than knick knacks and rare treasures on eBay. That's a luxury. Glad about new administration. 

[cyberontix]

We were doing great for 4 months straight, and then we got a neg on our backup account two weeks ago and it immediately tanked despite the fact that we have 2.5x the listings we had last year. The buyer rescinded the feedback but that didn't do anything. Nothing we've tried to do since then has helped at all.
Really not in the mood for another horrible November like last year. Etsy and FB marketplace are making up for a decent-ish chunk of it at least, which is good, because there's been no consistency here since the days of Donahoe.  There's a secret to the algorithm and we'll never know what it is.  Really depressing.

[cyberontix]

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@nuclearomen wrote:

It isn't your items, listings, prices, or lack of new listing/promoting (like others love to say it is). 

Seriously, is there anything on earth less helpful than someone replying with nothing more than, "Well my sales are great!" It's like going to a mental health support group and saying "I'm in a bad place right now, guys, because something's wrong with my leg," and someone says "Wow that's funny, I'm walking just fine!" Lol apparently some people just have nothing better to do with their time.

I mean, there's no trick to this or secret formula. It's like you said, they mess with some internals just to keep employees doing busy work, usually at the worst possible time, and before you know it we're eating ramen for a week regardless of how good our stuff is.

[sakic92710]

It is awful all the way around.  I've had 5 buyers in 3 weeks.  Not even $100.   I have 34 auctions on a site.  10 have between 1-3 bids & they end in about 32 hours.  They start them at $2.00.  I'm worried I'm going to get wrecked there.  It cost $31 just to mail the items to them!  Good luck to all!

[lakefor94]

Week before the election, sales were steady. Wednesday thru Sunday were slow. Today, just finished packing and shipping a bit ago and dropped off the UPS shipments and have 5 USPS for tomorrow already which is good for me. Today has been great.

Sales have always been up and down most weeks but quite the same quarter over quarter, year over year. If I want a noticeable sales increase, I list a lot of desireable items to back up my previously listed inventory. 

On a side note, I sold a DSL device today, 3rd one this year. Folks still use that sort of thing I suppose.  Heading EIS TO Canada. Been listed for 8 years. Still have 2 left, lol. 

[chapeau-noir]

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@john_wade wrote:

It's been very slow for me and many of my friends. Horrible economy. Millions are struggling with hyperinflation and high interest rates. Food, mortgage, rent, gas are more important to many families than knick knacks and rare treasures on eBay. That's a luxury. Glad about new administration. 

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🤣

[hobby1965]

It's slows & picks up so I just keep listing, listing, listing until it picks up. I get daily sales so that don't slow my enthusiasm. 

[norskmediashop]

something happened because it was nonstop through Saturday, yesterday and today completely shut off, I don't know what they are doing. 

[goldenring.llc]

Sales picked up for 2 days right after the election and then just dropped off completely. Almost like someone turned off the switch lol. Sales down 40% compared to last year Oct 10th-Nov 10th although I have 4 times more listings than I had last year.

Oct - Dec is when I make the most sales usually, but this year is looking really slow

[nuclearomen]

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@cyberontix wrote:

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@nuclearomen wrote:

It isn't your items, listings, prices, or lack of new listing/promoting (like others love to say it is). 

Seriously, is there anything on earth less helpful than someone replying with nothing more than, "Well my sales are great!" It's like going to a mental health support group and saying "I'm in a bad place right now, guys, because something's wrong with my leg," and someone says "Wow that's funny, I'm walking just fine!" Lol apparently some people just have nothing better to do with their time.

I mean, there's no trick to this or secret formula. It's like you said, they mess with some internals just to keep employees doing busy work, usually at the worst possible time, and before you know it we're eating ramen for a week regardless of how good our stuff is.

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@cyberontix yeah, know those replies too. Point I was trying make is essentially that more then likely there isn't anything wrong with ones listings, it's whatever they messed with internally that creates these issues right after a quarterly update, but to say "what" it is - well, who knows, could be one tiny thing or could be everything they did, we just don't know. I ain't eating Ramen yet (though I do, in fact I always have some in the house lol). 

I did have 4x more sales since my last post in this thread, 2x were today, still in the red on my stats and I created new PL campaigns some days ago, so that's 6x sales this month, if count last month, 30th and 31st (update was 29th) then I've had 11 sales since the update - nothing to brag about!