Sales are Horrible.............anyone else experience this?

[memphiskansasgirl123]

Sales are Horrible.............anyone else experience this?

[hosedaki]

I do think it case could be made where eBay was making a lot of changes and consequently had some problems. I know that finally today I got someone from eBay who acknowledged in my case the issues that I brought up in a previous post about the IPad and mobile were true and they were working on those mainly page views not working. I do know that since then I had my 1st Sale in 2 weeks and a couple of offers which I was not getting any of. Hopefully this will be of encouragement to others who are having trouble. Thank you 

[tunicaslot]

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I watched eBay slowly kill off a huge veteran seller last year, that I followed. Over 44,000 FB and about 65,000 listings. They sold about 1,000 plus items a month. Then around the beginning of 2017, I noticed a drop in sales numbers for the month, an I chalked it up to a bad month.

The next month it dropped even more, which peaked my interest. Every month a bigger drop than the last. By mid spring, they had a 75% drop in normal sales. At this point, they shed inventory and downgraded, and the drop continued through the summer. Through the summer they were selling less than 5 items a day. By fall, they were done.

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What were they selling? What were their prices in comparison with other sellers of similar items? There are too many questions that need to be answered to put the blame on Ebay.

Mr C bless his heart and one of my dearest friends - had a thriving business here but his niche became invaded by someone who was bigger, could lower their prices and offer free shipping - he just couldn't compete against that. It wasn't Ebay that did him in but other competitors - and that is what each and everyone of us are battling with.

No different than in the real B&M world - whether a store of restaurant - you have to offer quality merchandise at affordable prices and hopefully establish a client that help you to continue to exist. Stores, restaurants and bars start up and close every year because they just aren't a good fit or good value for the community - or the new guy in town takes their business away. Who's to blaim then? People strike out at Ebay instead of realizing this is just another part of doing business in a competitive market. 

[coolections]

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@timemachine777wrote:

If that were the case, then why so many sales for Sept, Oct, and Nov? Also, I didn't really finish my point as I had to deal with something else earlier, and just posted what I had.

 The point was that those monthly totals, mirrored the monthly totals I had when I was just running one account vs all four. Even though the inventory grew, the sales numbers stayed the same. 

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Because people do not want the items you have listed at the prices you are asking. Those that sold where in more of a demand but they are now long gone. All that is left is he stuff over-priced and in less demand. 

[uncseniorsportsfan]

The thing is that many ebay sellers have big expectations but little real world buying and selling experience before coming to ebay.   A little initial success goes to their head, and ebay is perceived as an easy path to their big American dream.  

I had a brick and mortar store and 10 years of flea marketing before ebay became a viable marketplace.  But just like with my brick and mortar, I had to constantly change what I was selling and how I was driving traffic to my store  because the marketplace was constantly changing as was the neighborhood.    My brick and mortar was originally located between a restaurant with a lot of lunchtime traffic and a hairdresser - both good for my business.   The rsetaurant became a bar - the hairdresser a massage parlor  - both with a lot of nightime business.    I used ebay to supplement my brick and mortar until the lease ran out. 

Having a brick and mortar I became acclimated to wide fluctuations in sales from day to day and month to month, and was constantly looking for ways to overcome the slow periods.   My business had to constantly change and evolve, and for many selling on ebay will require the same.  

[rschissler]

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@yuzuhawrote:

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@kathieskornerwrote:

There is risk in any business - more so when selling online.    It is one thing to take small steps to grow a business limiting risk - quite another to double inventory (your words) and hire personnel no matter how big an ebay footprint one has.    There is no gaurantee that what has been selling very well for a period of time will continue to do so - especially in a very competitive and changing ecommerce environment.

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That's exactly how plenty of B&M stores end up going under-- they try to expand too fast.  Every market has a saturation point, and once you hit that point, no amount of expansion is going to get you more sales.  It happened around here with cupcakes several years ago: cupcakes became the in thing, and the next thing you know, there were a million and one cupcake boutiques opening up.  Well, eventually that bubble burst, and now almost all of those bakeries have shut down because it hit the point where supply vastly exceeded the demand and the area simply couldn't support that many cupcake-only bakeries.  It made me sad because I really liked the cupcakes from one of the places, but they'd tried to open way too many stores in way too small an area and they effectively put THEMSELVES out of business by being too ambitious.

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A lot of truth there.  Just because you double your inventory and hire more staff to handle it, doesn't mean you should expect to vastly increase your sales.  The sellers who did this and crashed, and are paraded around by certain other sellers here as  examples  of "eBay did this to them by throttling their sales," are so off base.  Instead of it being eBay's fault, they probably took out a large loan to pay for the expansion, and when the expected sales didn't roll in, they were cash bankrupt and had no other choice but to fold.  

[timemachine777]

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@coolectionswrote:

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@timemachine777wrote:

If that were the case, then why so many sales for Sept, Oct, and Nov? Also, I didn't really finish my point as I had to deal with something else earlier, and just posted what I had.

 The point was that those monthly totals, mirrored the monthly totals I had when I was just running one account vs all four. Even though the inventory grew, the sales numbers stayed the same. 

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Because people do not want the items you have listed at the prices you are asking. Those that sold where in more of a demand but they are now long gone. All that is left is he stuff over-priced and in less demand. 

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That's what you said about those items last spring, and they sold over the summer and fall with no changes. 3 weeks ago I was told my Eagle was way over priced, yet it just sold with no price change.

I'd rather have my item sit for a while and get what "I" think is a fair price, vs get into an eBay driven race to the bottom and sell my stuff for chump change, and have ship a bunch of stuff everyday for few bucks, if that in profit. 

[coolections]

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@timemachine777wrote:

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That's what you said about those items last spring, and they sold over the summer and fall with no changes. 3 weeks ago I was told my Eagle was way over priced, yet it just sold with no price change.  I'd rather have my item sit for a while and get what "I" think is a fair price.  

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 @timemachine777

Great, now you can quit blaming Ebay for lack of buyers and your problems. I think you are starting to understand that it can take 3 months to find a buyer when you are competing with others that have lower prices. 

[timemachine777]

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@coolectionswrote:

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@timemachine777wrote:

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That's what you said about those items last spring, and they sold over the summer and fall with no changes. 3 weeks ago I was told my Eagle was way over priced, yet it just sold with no price change.  I'd rather have my item sit for a while and get what "I" think is a fair price.  

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 @timemachine777

Great, now you can quit blaming Ebay for lack of buyers and your problems. I think you are starting to understand that it can take 3 months to find a buyer when you are competing with others that have lower prices. 

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You just love the spin. What you just stated made absolutely no sense. What happens during the other alternating 3 to 4 month periods? Everything just normally stops selling because during those time periods, all my so-called competition, ( including the competition that doesn't exist for some of my items ), is priced lower then me during those months?

[leathernfeathers]

THE WORST EVER!  Last month at least I was getting page hits & watchers with WAY slower sales -now all of a sudden nobody is even LOOKING at the stuff.  Same types of items I've been listing successfully on and off for years-and now all of sudden I have all these items with zero views. 

Something is going on -and I don't think it's all of us sellers.  Last month when I checked into this (when people were at least still looking but not necessarily buying) one seller said she had 60 something sales Feb 2017 and FOUR in Feb 2018, and one article I read online alluded to the fact that Ebay sales were down up to 40%.  I think it's a bunch of crazy stuff ebay does.   I don't know if they did this to everyone-but ebay decreased the discount on postage -gave me like 2 days notice to fix all my auctions and since USPS didn't go up, and my other selling site didn't go up-the only reasoning I could figure out was that ebay was going for those few extra pennies they are getting when I had to increase my shipping fees.  I haven't even ever figured out how ebay got away with charging final value fees on shipping legally and they haven't been sued.   Recently a lady paid 42 cents more than my shipping price (which I always display on the label) and marked me down a point on shipping costs.  And ebay LET HER do that.  I think if a buyer marks down a seller on shipping costs ebay should come back with a message that states how much the buyer paid AND to keep in mind that we pay ebay 10% of whatever we charge. 

Thankfully things are going better on another platform where I also sell.  I am spending LESS AND LESS time on ebay and more time on my other system.  I would strongly suggest everyone try alternatives.  Maybe when the only sellers left are selling **bleep** Chinese **bleep**-ebay will finally wake up and smell the coffee.

Sorry-my rant for the day.  I haven't posted on one of these boards in forever... 

[wheredidiputthatremote]

Fair at best. Multiple days since mid last month with zip.

[anubisjackel12]

Sales seem to be lower as spring and summer come around, I have a flea market business that slumps in the spring and summer months. people are out doing other things, vacation and so forth.  These months of the year are up and down...  🙂

[leathernfeathers]

I would like to add that historically in other years when I have sold on ebay-sales PICKED UP in February and March because of tax refunds.  Usually I have found Sundays and Mondays to be best for closes and page hits and I just went thru some of my typcial categories for auctions ending soon-and hardly any of them have bids.  A good time to buy-but if you can't sell it why bother? 

[leathernfeathers]

AND HERE'S ANOTHER THING!  So I went on google to check exposure without being logged into ebay -and guess what-the item I checked -a 1980s Nelsonic calculator watch -I clicked on MY IMAGE ~ my item doesn't come up first- a bunch of other stuff that isn't even from the 1980's does -AND GUESS WHAT-it comes all in Euros.  Even when I scrolled down to mine-it gave prices in Euros.  I don't sell outside of the United States-so HOW DOES THAT WORK???   I went on the shipping tab and it only gave the option for United States shipping.  So WHY is it coming up under some wierd international marketing program? 

 IT IS NO WONDER WE AREN'T SELLING ANYTHING!  OMG-I am furious about this and I frankly don't understand WHY ebay is doing this.  Just about ready to pull all of my items that I am allowed to sell on my other site and move them over.....

[michael_atw]

For me, this has been the worst 4 day stretch in months, if not a year or more.  Not sure why.  We'll see if it continues.  

[jaxjoy]

Just when I think it can't get any worse on here. I've been a seller for eons and I've never seen it this slow. Just this weekend I had 2 auctions end for a whopping 1.98 total...all weekend.... I only ran some auctions to maybe grab some traffic into the store and pretty much counted on them being loss leaders but still those 2 auctions were the only sales of the weekend (and no sales yet today either).

I have around 837 items up and March is usually my best month. So far only about $200 in sales this month. Used to consistently average about 500 per week with about half the inventory as I have now.

I had some health issues and was hospitalized for a few weeks in December and still trying to recover so I haven't been listing as much and I can't source for now either so all I can do is list my own belongings or leftover unlisted stuff but I would hope that sales would still come in since I've already put in all the work for all the stuff that's listed now. I am definitely freaking out because one cannot live on $200 obviously. Not sure what else I can do. I run promotions, % off sales, I have reasonable prices and shipping prices. Wits end. It's frustrating knowing that something you once felt competent doing and making a living at is no longer feasible. Not sure how to get my store out of the ditch sales wise. 

It doesn't help that I received several defects for cancelling a few transactions when I was emergency admitted into the hospital. I wasn't going to be able to ship obviously and I didn't have time to call ebay and stay on hold with Drs and nurses constantly tending to me etc so talking on the phone wasn't an option so I cancelled them using my iphone and used the reason out of stock because I saw no option that suited what I needed. I tried to get them removed when I was out of the hospital but they won't and it's taken my top rated seller away ...which I've had ever since it's been a thing and never lost it before. I'm saddened that a company that I've given so much of my time for can't even look at my track record from my long tenure on ebay and help me out on that. One rep did say my top rated wouldn't be affected since it was due to hospitalization but apparenly he misspoke because my dashboard says otherwise. Sorry, got abit ranty but I'm so frustrated at so much with ebay. I really love what I do and I wish this company appreciated the service I have provided to it's patrons since 1999.

Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions for my store, do tell. Hopefully sales will pick up very soon.