Sales down

[marilu72121]

My sales are significantly down suddenly. I am just a small seller, usually 2-10 items a day.  Now I’m down to going days without a sale.  My sales had been steady for months. I have not done anything differently. I understand the Christmas rush as I have been selling for several years but seems something must have changed that I’m not aware of. Anyone else having this issue?

[kosmosattik]

@drusalina 

I don't think I'm the one needing education in macroeconomics.

In a full bore economy you can expect 4% unemployment, ergo current conditions are 2% off peak.   And some of those unemployed, low wage workers, have more money in their pockets by being on the dole. 

4.2% inflation is a year-over-year number, i.e., compared to last April.  Inflation in April 2021 vs March 2021 was 0.8% following 0.6% in March vs. February.   These numbers would not be a reason for anyone's sales suddenly plummeting in April or May.

You say your sales have sucked since 2007.   That's 13 years.   So clearly employment and inflation have nothing to do with your troubles.  Surely, as I said, eBay messing with one's mojo could certainly be the cause, but if your adjustments to whatever they've done have not worked in 13 years, you should probably look at microeconomic factors.  

[kosmosattik]

@drusalina 

"I'm sure you know that eBay doesn't pay much to any search engine.  Especially Google.  The Promoted listings are only promoted within eBay.  It is not outside advertising.  The only way I see my items is if I use search on any other browser.  Google never shows my items because eBay doesn't pay them. "

To be clear, when I referenced "search" earlier I was not talking about Google or any other search engine.  I was talking about eBay's internal "Search for Anything" field that appears at the top of pages.  Buyers  looking for something specific will use this field.  When I'm looking to buy something or price an item that's what I use.  That search field is not at the top of the screens for nothin'.  Browsing by category within eBay is just that--browsing--or drilling down through innumerable clicks. 

e 

It seems to me browsing is the smart phone alternative to find something specific appealing to the the thumb typing challenged, of which there are many.  The smart phone seems to be the driver behind the seller hub and recategorizations to facilitate browsing--these new applications and alterations are click-heavy.   That may appeal to a certain demographic, but those familiar with a desktop or laptop at home or at work and a full sized keyboard, and there are billions or those extant, would be inclined toward the "old" technology. 

[retro_entertainment_collectibles]

Yep...

When there's a website which has a high depth of hierarchy in organization having the smaller screen real-estate in mobile phones can be quite challenging to address.  The "Proper" way to address it is however often not consolidations as people use the web essentially three ways, they browse drilling down to data, they search for data, or they search and then drill down via those resultant data.

In terms of categories for example it might sound sensible to re-organize and consolidate which results in both casual browsing and search/browse having less resolution due to the consolidated data, in this case, products.  The proper way to address the bridge between mobile and larger real-estate platforms such as desktops/laptops is to make an entire mobile ready secondary navigation system whereby consolidation of said categories and data are done through an intermediate linkage.  In otherwords say the index ID's in the database for 70's, 80's, 90's playing cards are 1, 2 and 3.  From a non-mobile device we're querying the database individually.  On a mobile device our playing cards category ID is say "1", however, when queries to the database occur they go through an intermediate step.  That "1" is looked up in a DB Table or a cache table (so the DB query need not take place), the results of that lookup show, "Query Categories 1,2 & 3" and return the results.  It's more complex than this but the general idea you get.  This way for mobile your able to consolidate resultant data sets towards better navigations due to the device limitations.  It also provides a more flexible path towards future development.  For example, say in 5 years VR headsets are a dime a dozen and VR takes off as a browsing mechanism, now, an existing mechanism exists already towards the navigation and database layers that can be leveraged to suit the new input/output device(s).

The other side of this is sellers vending products which still need categorize properly keeping the high resolution integrity of the database(s).  The simplest way to do this is a final step of submission.  So, your making your listing and the LAST thing that you do on the mobile device (or can even migrate it to all devices) is to perform the category selection simply making it the "last step" before submission of a listing.

[call*me*alfred-o*]

Were down but getting better

[2013grotz]

> sellers were actually funding thier Ebay purchases with money they made on EBay.

True of me most certainly.  The sales would incentivize purchases.  Between the current environment and the shift over to managed payments, that's not going to happen.

[2013grotz]

>I beginning to think that the Watcher Numbers are fake.  I have had watchers on the same items for months and months and not very many sell that are watched. 

Ditto.  It's best to really ignore Watcher Numbers, I've found.  Simply because there's so few committals.  Of course, one of those reasons is that Sellers actually use that function to keep tabs on their competition and it seemed that's what was happening to me (95% of my watchers are non-purchasers).  So no real meaning to Watcher Numbers and it's best to ignore them.

[2013grotz]

Actually my sales have been up the last couple of months.  Nothing like where I'd like to get it (i.e. moving all my stock reasonably quick), but I've been very happy with what I've seen in comparison to prior months.

[kosmosattik]

@retro_entertainment_collectibles 

"The proper way to address the bridge between mobile and larger real-estate platforms such as desktops/laptops is to make an entire mobile ready secondary navigation system...."

That's right.  However, it's not just the real estate issue.   It is also a keyboard vs. click (or should I say "touch") issue.  Many prospective buyers sitting in front of a physical keyboard would be more inclined to key a search string in the "Search for anything" field.  With a phone, many more would be to  inclined to  touch their your way through a drill-down search.

The more I think about it the more convinced I am that the recategorization mess which forces sellers to enter more details in listings is to facilitate phone touch drill-downs into sub-sub-sub-etc-categories.

Back in the day, a priority was placed on minimizing clicks (or touches) in navigation.    From the seller perspective, eBay has gone the other way with the Seller Hub, a click or touch heavy interface compared to the popular Classic View.  A key reason for minimizing clicks and touches back in the day was much slower response times than we're accustomed to today.  The Seller Hub is more click/touch heavy than the popular Classic View.  This is to your point.  If the Hub is a common user interface for keyboard and touch users, that's not very friendly to the desktop/laptop user.  eBay overlooked something.  Clicking and touching is not just a response time issue--it is inherently annoying the more you have to do it.

I don't think it is a coincidence that this greater orientation toward the mobile user coincides with 5G rollout with faster response times.  Also, I'd be curious to know if this is a global approach.  Probably.  The growth opportunities long term are in developing economies.  For many users there the phone is the only computing device they own.  

The concept may be sound in the long run, even for developed market.  It takes more work to create a listing but the extra data might make it easier for the mobile user to hit on relevant items when drilling down.  Execution of the concept is a whole other matter.  Right now, the rolling recategorizations requiring listing updates to facilitate the concept is strictly beta test--and sellers are the testers.

[fallgold4031]

Sales certainly seem slower.  In my case, I like to sell collectable items.  However, people do not collect things like they did years ago.  Also, it is hard to compete when there are hundreds and thousands of similar items for sale.  Also, the price of shipping has increased so much over the last two years that for small items, the shipping cost is the same or higher than the value of the item.  I used to find items for sale at garage sales, etc., but collectable items are harder to find these days.  Again, lots of factors at work.  Not Ebay's fault, again, just seems to be a lot of changes in the marketplace.  

[drusalina]

I understand that the future is always a way to have a company ready for changes in the way items are searched for.  But they need to also think of the way things were searched for in the past IMHO.  Simple key words are what started shopping online and they did away with keywords and sought their own algorithms to make shoppers buy more or suggest things they might want to buy.  But not everyone thinks that way.   All of the Item Specifics aren't filled out anyway, and many don't apply. 

When I search for something I want my keywords to work exclusively.  I use quotes all the time to get exact results.  But that seems not to work very well anymore.    Just like the shutting down of pipelines and  strongly suggesting that everyone buy an electric car isn't going to work.  Most people can't afford a $60,000+ vehicle.  Most are hopping along with older cars and used Electric Cars are few and far between.  But there was a report that I saw the other day that people who have bought electric cars are going back to gas powered.   They are projecting that only 7% of people will drive Electric Vehicles by 2030 in the US.   I digress.  

All I am saying is there are still many of us who use a laptop to search and buy on the internet.  I do.  I don't use my phone because I feel safer at home on a laptop buying things than on my phone.   It is also much easier to find items on a laptop than a phone, there is so much more info to see at once.  I use my phone for phone calls, and that is about it.  I'm old school, I've been using computers for 45 years.  And even taught people at work in classes how to use a computer and mainframe at that company when computers on desks were new. 

I don't know what eBay's buying demographic is.  I would like to see those numbers.  Because if they are courting the young people who only use a phone to shop they may lose us old school computer users, which I am seeing with sellers leaving because of all of the changes.   Buyers are Sellers and Sellers are Buyers. 

[drusalina]

---

@kosmosattik wrote:

@retro_entertainment_collectibles 

The more I think about it the more convinced I am that the recategorization mess which forces sellers to enter more details in listings is to facilitate phone touch drill-downs into sub-sub-sub-etc-categories.

Back in the day, a priority was placed on minimizing clicks (or touches) in navigation.    From the seller perspective, eBay has gone the other way with the Seller Hub, a click or touch heavy interface compared to the popular Classic View.  A key reason for minimizing clicks and touches back in the day was much slower response times than we're accustomed to today.  The Seller Hub is more click/touch heavy than the popular Classic View.  This is to your point.  If the Hub is a common user interface for keyboard and touch users, that's not very friendly to the desktop/laptop user.  eBay overlooked something.  Clicking and touching is not just a response time issue--it is inherently annoying the more you have to do it.

It drives me crazy the click click click to get to what you want.  It is Frustrating and yes Very Annoying! 

[2....1....0....sold!]

@keziak 

"...buying storage units for example)"

Selling this stuff online is a huge hassle. Long story short, wife took a part time job at a consignment store, as an employee she can sell all she wants and she gets 70% of the sale price! FAR less hassle with no shipping, returns, or SNAD's!

In another topic, someone sold a $1,700 bag and the buyer pulled the SNAD scam on them...so the buyer is out everything PLUS the ebay fees which are not refundable. Had my wide sold that in the store, $1190 cash in here pocket with ZERO risk of theft.

We 100% stopped selling anything of value online due to the high odds of it being stolen with zero support from the online sites like ebay to fight the theft.

She loves finding stuff to sell for a profit...it's fun work...20hrs a week in the store and as many, or few, hours outside finding stuff to flip.

[2....1....0....sold!]

@lonebuck-books 

" I also think most people thought that once the vaccine went out things would go back to normal quickly."

Large studies, millions of people, published in The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine, have shown the vaccines to be less than 1% effective at reducing deaths between groups of vaccinated and the unvaccinated.

In the Lancet study of 1.2 million people...32 unvaccinated deaths and 9 vaccinated deaths...the unvaccinated group had 0.036% more deaths than the vaccinated group when you compare the deaths in each group.

In a nursing home in Kentucky, with 90% of the residents fully vaccinated, the the CDC determined 69% of the cases, and 1 death, were in "fully vaccinated" residents.

[linus.hux72fe]

To no one in particular:

I've been lucky of late.  My sales were darn good, For Me, although that's not saying much since I've never been a big seller here.

I also admit that my sales have gone done to nothing the last few days.  But that seems to be my fault.  I was gone to a big flea market selling so I didnt list anything for the last week or so.  Just too busy getting ready for the market and getting fields planted.

But the apparent changes in the search algorithm and the debacle with item specifics are certainly Ebays responsibility.  And as always we sellers can complain all we want but I dont think it will make a bit of difference based on past history.  If we want to sell here, we will have to adjust as always.

Well, that's my mental approach anyhow so I dont make myself nuts or grumpy.  So for me it's back to the basics, list and sell in additional places, rethink my price expectations,  rethink what I list, new title work, try to ship sooner, put together some lots, etc.  And stop worrying about things I cant control or influence.  Now that I've said that, I better get to doing just that.  

Thank you all for your time!

[retro_entertainment_collectibles]

Hey,

I'm a desktop PC guy, I just loath mobile browsing, my phone's a phone for the most part albeit seldom I'll use it as a tragic pocket PC.

That said I do know software application coding, web engineering & marketing, strange mix but there you have it.  Also 15 years in politics to which I am still quite well connected, was a State Dept. Contractor post 9/11 all the way through Obama.

In as far as Electric Cars go its a "ham job." Lithium batteries, USA has like zero.1 Lithium with Chile, China, Australia being the big players.  Last administration really did a # on us w/ the biggest Asian trade deal in history w/ us not a seat at the table considering Australia & China's Lithium assets. Watch & see.  Batteries are expensive, last 5-8 years average and see how consumer like a whoppin' $3000/$5000 replacement bill but of course, thats not why the Auto Industry is embracing it...  It'll be, "See, a new ride w/ a little more payment and... Presto... Pay us comin', pay us goin' " (Literal).

Where I am much pioneering was done on Hydrogen Fuel Cells but that all seems to have fell off the old radar, probably have hard time charging $3 for separated water not to mention people home brewing kits and oh, infrastructure (did I say that? Uh oh).  They had these puppies ready to roll (Literal #2).

Its become a world of no wine before it's time of course as everyone chases for their piece of pie not realizing that the one their embracing and eating as Version 1.0 already has 3.0 sitting in freezer waiting to be be baked.

I cite to people Corona... Here we are using exceptional 15th century science of masking up, distancing, isolating, hoping and praying instead of like a small purse or belt cylinder w/ compressed air, a water trap and a gated mask that gifts 30-45 minutes of air.  Slap it on your $29 Walmart (oh, eBay) compressor and off to the store.  Then we'd at least be turn of last century technology. 

Anyways... I've had a few more sales trickle in so this is good.