Sales Have Completely STOPPED

[memorymarielane]

Hey everyone! I reached out to Ebay customer service yesterday regarding this issue and was told there are no restrictions on my account, my items are showing on the first page, and the best option to increase sales is to lower my price (that is not going to happen as I've tried sales with same result).

I've been selling for the past 6 months and list daily. My sales were increasing to 2-4 daily with listing 9 items daily. I've promoted almost all my listings, offer 1 day shipping with free shipping and 30 day returns. What more could a customer ask for. I am doing everything Ebay is telling me to do. I even send best offers as soon as I see a watcher on my items.

My views have dropped significantly. I have had no watchers this past week and over the past 3 days I have had ZERO SALES. What changed all of a sudden? Anyone else having the same issue. This highly concerning as we are going into the fourth quarter and sales should be increasing, not coming to a hault.

[bonjourami]

Ebay has always been cyclical, thats not really unusual.

[gloryglorygifts]

I know for a fact that ebay has an ebb and flow to when my products can be seen and when they are hidden. It happens a few times a month. Check in your sales hub and see if there is a common time of the month that your sales go down. They do this (supposedly) to get all the sellers in front of the people. It's an algorithm. If you have a store, you can call ebay and have them "refresh" it. An agent did that for me last year when I was having an issue. Maybe that will give you a bump.

Good luck to you. I hope your last quarter is amazing!

[memorymarielane]

Do you have the phone number for Ebay because everyone I ask, including Ebay, refuses to share it.

[gwzcomps]

You mean shoving unrelated junk down buyer's throats and flooding results doesn't work.  Kinda funny keyword spamming is against the rules unless eBay is doing it.

[nuclearomen]

---

@memorymarielane wrote:

Do you have the phone number for Ebay because everyone I ask, including Ebay, refuses to share it.

---

ebay doesn't have a phone number you can call, they have option instead for ebay to call you...available through Help section after selecting your issue they give choice of phone or chat, sometimes need to open the chat and then select "contact an agent" and then select option "Have us call you", enter your phone number and wait.

[nuclearomen]

---

@gloryglorygifts wrote:

If you have a store, you can call ebay and have them "refresh" it. An agent did that for me last year when I was having an issue. Maybe that will give you a bump.

Good luck to you. I hope your last quarter is amazing!

---

@gloryglorygifts 
correction, ebay reps will not and cannot "refresh" stores anymore, your SOL there.

[sakic92710]

eBay can be so depressing!  1 sale on Friday.  0 on Sunday & 1 today.  Thursday & Sat. were ok.  Just not enough to make up for those poor days.  I've been making more $ in the flea market in 4-5 hours than 2 weeks on here!  Not impressed!  lol   Good luck to us all.    🙂

[katzrul15]

---

@nuclearomen wrote:

---

@yuzuha wrote:

---

@nuclearomen wrote:

Dvd's is a specialty media that only people who are fed up with streaming services like netflix, hulu, prime, etc... buy anymore. You can buy brand new blue ray disks on adverage $5 to $10 in large bins at walmart, best buy etc... remember when blue ray's were minimal $20 for old titles... DVD market fell and will never recover, worst medium for media to invest in, Cassettes do better then Dvd's with the more recent surge and re-trend on the medium.

---

DVDs do well for stuff that isn't available on streaming services-- I've sold a whole bunch of stuff like niche horror films/old TV series that aren't available streaming anywhere. But your average movie/big-name TV show? Nah. I mean, even my parents (who are in their 80s) haven't bought a DVD in years by now-- they just stream whatever they want to watch. They like not having the physical clutter of DVDs that they probably won't ever watch again. I myself have bought exactly one TV series and one movie on DVD in the past ten years or so, and that's because they're things I love and rewatch frequently.

---

last dvd i bought was the original V tv series + miniseries... (not the remade V series that HBO did few years ago) idk... 4 year ago now or so. 

---

We sell boxed sets of older TV shows - especially those from paid tv not everyone had access to and often not available on streaming.  Kinda hit or miss, but decent sales overall.  

[zamo-zuan]

---

@inhawaii wrote:

---

@eye_of_the_tiger wrote:

eBay sales go up and down. That’s just how it is. 

---

This is the smartest thing i've heard all weekend.

When my sales are down, i just figure nobody wants to buy my stuff right now.

If my sales are slow it's all on me.  There is nobody else to blame 

I can't even fathom calling ebay because my sales are slow.

What would you even say?  "Hello ebay,  My sales are slow. Can you do anything about it?"

Remember ... the more we make, the more ebay makes. 

---

Speak to anyone who is a top seller in their category and they will explain the various evidence that shows eBay's algorithms control who gets the sales, not the seller.

All of us who have made it to top sellers see the limits that eBay puts on sellers - the limits that an eBay member admitted to on these very forums. We can tell you the exact point that our sales are gonna slow down for the day. We had a good morning? Sales are going to stop for the rest of the day. Slow morning? Then at night time we'll get a rush of buyers between 9PM-Midnight and it'll still bring us up to par. Oh, new algorithm update on Thursday? Suddenly your level has shifted alongside every other seller in the top 10, you now have the exact sales/month as the other top 5 sellers.

We also have evidence of impressions COMPLETELY STOPPING for sellers on here, where forum moderators admit it's a "test" eBay is doing for their marketing system: https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Potential-problem-with-Promoted-Listings-impressions/m-p/31218...

So to say "nobody else is to blame" is incorrect. EBay even admits to limits on sellers as well as their marketing changes that could have a huge effect on sellers traffic.

This isn't even considering the huge amount of glitches that are going around on here, and penalties given to sellers incorrectly. 

"Remember ... the more we make, the more ebay makes. "

EBay gets the sales no matter who the seller is. They don't care about how much YOU make, just how much THEY make. Which is why sellers get a "boost" to their traffic for their first 1-2 years as a new seller, and then traffic plummets.

Finally, we have examples of sellers hitting a CLIFF of impressions suddenly stopping. This is not in control of the buyer, and typically happens because of technical issues. On these forums I documented the issues we went through where half of our impressions literally stopped, and eBay's system COULD NOT SEE our listings. Even our MSO one-pager business readouts would say more ACTIVE LISTINGS than TOTAL LISTINGS, which is impossible. Those listings that were not able to be seen were not receiving traffic at all.

If we only take the post I linked alone, it indicates what you're saying is incorrect. 

Please don't mislead people, as some of us who have experienced these issues and have even had eBay ADMIT to issues that have PERMANENTLY effected the search placement and impressions on stores. It's not helpful at all to have people claiming "this doesn't happen" when it has happened to seller after seller on here.

[dptedora]

I think it is this new Promoted listing advanced BETA is the problem. Every time eBay adds something new sales seem to go down. And why is it always in the fall our best time of year. We were averaging 12 - 15 sales a day last to day 3 each thanks eBay. 

[randysauto01]

Man your killing it! I've got about 24k items (we have 2 wrecking yards with about 1200 vehicles), in my last 30 days I've sold a total of 81 items. My numbers are down so bad the last 3 months, I'm pulling my hair out trying to figure out what went wrong. PL % increases, discount prices, nothing seems to be helping. 

Kudos to you and whatever your doing different than I am! It's working!

Things have sunk so low on not just ebay, but our brick and mortar storefronts, that after 40+ years in the business, we are headed towards closing up completely.

[sakic92710]

Hope there is a way it will turn around for you.  Best of luck!   Cheers!

[randysauto01]

Thanks! And same to you!

[craft-stash]

Deadsville☠

[frugality_inc]

@zamo-zuan is 100% correct.

Many of these algorithm changes used to be easy to pick up on and make adjustments, now it's so broken it's a never ending spiral. 2021 is the worst I've seen it. Sales down 60% compared to last year despite adding numerous new in-demand SKUs. We'll be down close to $1M on eBay alone compared to last year.

I strongly believe promoted listings has caused these algorithm shifts to be more violent than before. eBay is now focused on milking every single penny out of every dollar versus adding value to buyers on the website. Short term thinking while eBay can't explain the decline in marketshare. 

Meanwhile, Amazon is now 4x our eBay sales with 11% of the SKUs vs. eBay catalog. Even cheaper vs. eBay with a fraction of the daily work.