For awhile now things have been better since earlier months. The update on June 18th-19th is where we seen a difference. After this date, sales suddenly jumped to a more normal place.
Nowdays, after "normalizing", it seems they also have a system that prevents you from gaining or losing too many sales month per month, although I suspect this may be affected by your total sales.
For example, I've noticed that the sales are a lot more "flat" from day to day. Even weekends, which are traditionally very slow, have been somewhat even in sales.
Our sales (31 days) has floated around 5% gain since last month, for over 2 months.
Every time we surpass too far past 5%, it seems we're followed by slow days. Then we even out to 5%.
Refer to this: https://www.screencast.com/t/DzNqbWbptgII
You can see that our "average" is just above where they have the greyed-out line. You can see even through the weekend sales were consistent. UNTIL we had good days and surpassed 5%.
There's 3 days that were significantly higher sales than the average. These days brought our "Sales (31 days)" up. Once we got a few points above 5%, those slow days came, and evened us out to about 5%.
You can see 3 days ago, we had a big day. We actually had a couple large cost cancellations, so its not quite a high as it was on that date. Before these cancellations, it was actually our biggest day in a month.
At the end of this day, we were at 8% up from last 31 days. Then we had a few slow days.
We have NOT had any slow days, unless we were breaking that 5% barrier.
After the 1st slow day this week, we were still at 5% in the morning. Then we had the 2nd slow day, which led to this morning we were 3.3% up from last month. Right now, 4.0% up from last month.
By the way this day is going so far, sales are normal again. We're below that 5% barrier, and at this rate, it seems we will be ending around 5% up from last month again.
This is the trend we have noticed for over 2 months now. It seems to be evening out if it goes above 5%.
I've also seen logs from other sellers that seem to indicate that drops are being limited as well - meaning you won't drop a huge amount suddenly (at least, without any bugs causing it).
Some may think this manipulation is not a good thing, but honestly, it looks like a fail-safe mechanism to me. It seems intended to prevent sudden changes. Being a store that experienced a drop as large as 60% earlier this year, I DEFINITELY think this is a good thing, as it will prevent such drops.
A slow drop can be dealt with and prepared for, and you (as well as eBay techs) have time to resolve any issues.
A fast drop, ruins businesses. We lost half our staff in this drop, including many people that didn't deserve it.
The most important thing, is that right now, sellers ARE still able to compete. It will take you a few months to build up, but you CAN build up. It's possible to put in work and be competitive.
Right now, visibility seems to be going well. We're lower than last year, but slowly building back up. As long as we are able to compete and build back up, I'm satisfied. We don't mind having to work for our sales! For a number of months this year, it was not possible to compete, as any changes we did, did not stop the impression drop, even if you were the cheapest prices in category with best offerings, you kept dropping, due to some technical issues alongside the drop that was causing statistics to be reported incorrectly.
I really hope the major bugs that hurt visibility are fixed for good. I have not seen any new reports in the last week or 2. I'm hoping this is a good sign!
And I hope the upcoming catalog changes on Sep 15th don't ruin things. Fingers crossed!
