Sales are way down. Anyone have this happening too?

[ombra]

Hi all,  

We have been sellers on Ebay for well over 15 years.  We have a small business out of our home.  We sold over $75,000 last year on Ebay and were on track to sell over $100,000 this year.  Our average monthly sales are right around $6500 - $10,000 a month.  That was until last month.  (July 2018) Total sales - $2900.  This month we are at $3100.  I don't see us selling close to our average.  

I was wanting to know if Ebay changed some things, are long time sellers seeing the same trend or is it just the summer slump? 

Thanks 

Paula 

[oddmerchantsvintage]

The other nasty thing ebay does, is you cannot sell your ebay business. What a joke. You spend 10 years gaining followers and you cannot sell your profitable sales platform when you would like to call it quits. Fact is, ebay own your business, you do not. They won't even allow you to advertise any other websites that may be tied to your business. That is my biggest complaint. I have no problem paying a 10% selling fee if it's fixed and allows me to use my ebay business as a business asset. That is bull! It should be highly illegal. I wouldn't be suprised if ebay started selling popular sellers businesses who passed or simply quit giving them a 10 year company with followers and 10,000+ feedbacks. Because they own the right to the seller name.

[jeffcomowerparts]

yes sale sare down and have been done for some time between all the changes on here and all the knock off items being sold for OEM its bad, they need to do something to help sellers as we too are buyers as well as sellers with out the sellers there are no buyers because there would be nothing to buy

[patrokolos]

The answer to our bad sales is simple yet has many heads, one as far as listings go and relisting, free 100-200 items free listings has to do with ad sales, mainly ad revenue as each listing is perfectly balanced for  adsense etc ads to  rank in the searchengines. second is ebay wanted to be like amazon, why, i dont know, as being ebay was just fine in the world, but hey  when is it that anyone saw an ebay ad on tv or other media as advertisement, nothing zilch. amazon, on the other hand is everywhere, it is right now in my face in the form of a truck, or wait a amazon box in the trash can sticking out, so ebay lost the advertising war with amazon and its done there. three THIS ONE IS BIG, nobody under the age of 35 is buying anything on ebay, how do i know, my son is 26 with great income and no debt, all his friends girls guys from teens to 35 never even heard of ebay and dont care about it, they are again all on amazon where the amazon app is on their smart phone etc speeddial today is the app.  four ebay is pushing new sellers right, why, to show wallstreet how succesfull their model is and all the new comers, i have 2 accounts on here in testing stages as for the sales but one sale later and they die, so its about showing strength to the boardroom which is money for nothing from stocks, 5- ebay sells its own product in direct competition to its sellers- no diferent from amazon who is a sell out also.  the more listings they have the more ads they can show on so many variable subjects it boggles the mind how big that is.  SO do we matter, yes and mainly no as our listings are the bread and butter of the online ad revenue monthly for ebay, and our silly fees ARE ICING ON THE CAKE TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE ITS A REAL BUSINESS MODEL AND NOT A SELL OUT IN HIDING. but it is just my studied opinion as i have been with ebay since inception when it went live. 177 million shoppers a month --- thats a good one, how many from chinese phone farms is another question altogether.  One may have to advertise their merchandise everywhere else and stream them to your ebay store, and then what are you actually paying for?

[eco-green-chicken]

avoid offering (free) returns.... you get used as a hire shop that way....

or the buyer ships their faulty unit ( they replaced with your good item ) back for the refund hoping I don't notice it doesn't have my security markings on it....

Both are very well known scams.

[kramer_the_cat]

Last Year (2018) we averaged 3K to 4K per month. So far this year we are around 1.5K-2K each month. Not really wanting to pay even more percent per item to boost visibility. Been a seller for over 10 years. Not really feeling like I have much of a business partner in ebay lately...

[storytimequilts]

My sales are down over 60% with this new GTC rule.. this is just crazy

[dorea2009]

Hi! About 3 months ago eBay advertsied this new service to help promote global sales. There was some new outfit they were working with. Supposed to be great. Without going into detail, they were awful. My sales after 3 months have declined each month to now they are one-third of 4 months ago. I want to cancel this new service and i can't find out where to do it. At this rate i'll be out of business in a couple months.

[jlstoner]

19 is correct, it was a typo...

[dorea2009]

Hi! continuing my prior comments on unexplained sales decreases, as of this date my 3 months total sales are about the same as one months slaes before this mystery sales decline started. I have contacted eBay twice and after checking my account they said they see nothing wrong! egads, a 67% decline in sales is nothing wrong? Anybody who can help me? Thanks

[lightlily_arts]

I've been seeing this complaint from many sellers.  As for myself my sales have dropped 67% and the lowest I have been in years despite lowering price by 20-30%

[sd-brightis]

Way down.. and next weeks memorial day... cmooon sale

[westabsupply]

Ebay is trying to offer it's sellers a more competitive edge to compete with amazon. I have been selling on ebay for 2 years now in the business model of a resaler on a small scale but decent. I've come to the conclusion of it being worth it to a reasonable degree. In the end one of your end goals is to have a healthy profit margin and maintain solvency on all products profit margins across the board. I say reasonably if your able to reduce some overhead operations costs ie. (Using the promote listing button). As of the moment I've taken and still am taking a small bite out of profits and a bite out of the higher operating costs to a degree. In my view and experience you sometimes have to be willing to accept a lower profit margin just to get the items sold. Restructuring costs in the form of liquiditation on some products is also necessary to maintain a healthier cash balance should you be stuck with hard to sell items or items that sell with very little to no returns.

[turquoisetulips]

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@williamscw wrote:
Same here except on a smaller scale.. the last 2 months I was wondering if it was just us.. thanks for posting

There's one thing I've noticed  happening throughout  different  threads about the topic of slow sales  lately . Almost everyone mentions  things began to go bad  about 2 months ago. Very curious  thing . Tulips 

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[hiddeng]

I'm no huge seller, would sell something every few months or so, occasionally selling videogames or art. I have not made a single sale since 2017. Watchers on my items, but NEVER any purchases (then again watchers never buy my stuff). Even when I've offered several times to different watchers a lower price, no response, so many of those are probably bots. It's pretty infuriating.  Whatever algorithmic changes they made, made it worse for everyone  much like social media. Why is every site ever becoming like this?

[jimtim]

Sales are way down, Buyers are more concentrated on getting things done at home, & buying "needed" things at home, Combined with millions being laid off or fired , look at sales people that are on commission, noRV sales , no Boat sales , The New car sales are down 50% equills less fun money, and then business closing down = less equipment need to run the shop  ,, so combine those facts, add a crazy socialistic attacking election year and eBays desire to overhaul their format into something that is much more difficult to navigate , unfriendly high fees & what ya got==LESS SALES ,  Thanks for read'n this  TRAVIS