@myoasisjewels wrote:
it has been very dead. pre-christmas was terrible... i expected it to pick up after christmas or at least the beginning of january, as it always does.... but january too has been extremely slow. been selling here for almost 20 years, and have never experienced sales being so bad.
i do all i can do. promoted listings. free ship and free returns. run sales.... jump thru each and every hoop to no avail. not sure what to make of it.
Honestly, a lot of the incentive for hard work on eBay is gone, and I'm not surprised to see the drop at this point.
It used to be that hard work, keeping TRS, and following best practices was rewarded.
Nowadays, your hard work isn't rewarded. Non-TRS sellers with poor feedback are allowed (encouraged) to appear on top of search. You can put in effort and not see any growth. You follow best practices and eBay can't explain your drops, despite being cheaper and better offerings than the competitors. Meanwhile, competitors who don't follow best practices are on top of search.
Then all the tech issues causing problems. And policies that are unfair to sellers have been allowed for 1-2 years at this point with only minor changes, none making them significantly safer for sellers.
Another Q4 report has landed, and another GMV decline, 5% again. Considering how big eBay is, 5% is HUGE.
I just said it elsewhere earlier. If eBay returned to a system that was designed to REWARD sellers for hard work, you can bet a lot more people would be selling on eBay.
And if eBay returned to a system that actually rewarded sellers for doing a good job, and didn't put items from poor sellers who can't even keep TRS on top of search, then BUYERS would be in a much safer position to buy from eBay.
But instead, eBay is seemingly attempting to cash out by putting China sellers of poor goods on top of search, which only gives buyers red flags, and good honest sellers who take care of their customers are only seeing declines as their hard work goes unrewarded.
EBay needs to start actually taking action on the problems. They're driving sellers away, and driving buyers away, with their foolish business plan/policies that have been driving people away from eBay and causing declines for 2 years now.
2 years should be long enough to recognize the issue... I just worry at this point that eBay doesn't even understand the issue they're facing. Us sellers who are LIVING through it while trying to keep our doors open... we're the ones who get to see the problems first hand. Why won't they listen to anyone? Do they prefer running their site in to the ground?
