Regards,
@rmorrisvintageandmore wrote:Do you plan to stick around on eBay, or do you have an eBay alternative in mind? I'm about ready to throw in the towel and get a regular job. I love selling on eBay, but it doesn't seem sustainable anymore.
Yes I plan to stick around selling on eBay but I am currently working towards some differences in what I sell here and will get that worked out this year.
We were Buyers starting in 2007 for our kids and then in 2015 I helped my father liquidate my uncle's estate. It was then that I researched what we had and decided to try selling some of it on eBay ... the stuff flew off the shelves. In 2016 I decided to try some buying and reselling on the side and viewed eBay as a potential additional cash stream for retirement years. I was working full-time in my own business at the time so it was really a part-time side thing.
Ironically it grew pretty fast and I was able to do buying and reselling from local auction houses. I ran mostly auctions ending on weekends so the shipping end would not interfere too much with my regular job which was covering 5 states in a sales role.
So even at the beginning of the eBay experience I would buy lots at auctions and sell the good stuff on eBay and then recycle the other stuff back through local auction houses in box lots or in some cases just buy something at one auction knowing it will sell good at another auction house bases on their regular customers. During that time period I was doubling and tripling my money. That was a great mix until Covid hit and ALL auction houses were shut down. Many had to spool up to online sales fairly quickly. My sales job came to an abrupt stop as manufacturers closed their doors to outsiders for almost a year. I shifted all my efforts to the online and auction sales and after the first 6 months of Covid things started to move again rather well.
So now I am winding down one business, have another part-time job in the auction world due to some of my acquired expertise in certain areas and consign with 3-4 auction houses on a regular basis. When the eBay sell through rate doubled and tripled I pushed inventory through the auction houses to keep cash flowing. So while that may be more then you expected it's important for anyone in the buying and reselling business (be that part-time or full-time) to have alternatives that they are always or regularly working on or experimenting with.
I pretty much know why my eBay sales have been slowly declining and some members on this thread are circling around the reason too ... it has to do with Promoted Listings coupled with the changes eBay made in early 2022 when the fully launched PLA (promoted listings Advanced), changed the way Views are counted and doubled and tripled the "Suggested" ad rates for PLS (Promoted Listings Standard).
I had great success with PLS for a number of years until PLA fully launched. I would run quarterly 30 day campaigns on ALL my BIN items with one common fixed Ad rate. I averaged 2-3 sales per day during those. Then when those three changes happened in early 2022 my PLS dropped to at or under 1.5 average sales per day and in between my 30-day quarterly campaigns my BIN sales fell off the face of the earth.
This went on all of 2022 and well in to 2023. I regularly had 30-30% of my listings with (0) Views in the last 30 days and items with 0, 1 and 2 Views consistently between 50-60% ... although recently eBay hit a new record there with hiding - burying my listings and the 50-60% jumped to 71% ...
So the math is simple, if half or more of your items have virtually no visibility what are the chances things will sell??? That's a loaded question of course.
So part way through 2023 I ran a 17 day test PLS campaign and jacked up my Ad rate to at or above eBay's inflated "Suggested rates" ... BAM ... average daily sales jumped back up to 2-3 per day, just like the old days. The problem of course is the total FEES of over 23% kills my target margin.
So in 4th quarter last year I decided to STOP using PLS so I did not run my normal 30 day campaign ... care to guess what happened? I received not ONE but TWO of the messages below: "We've missed you, try Promoted Listings Standard again"
I was like WHAT??? Oh yes, for those who don't think the programming monitors how Sellers sell they need to think twice. And the second pic below shows what was sent January 25th, another plug to use Promoted Listings Standard again ... right around the time I would normally run my 1st Quarter 30 day PLS campaign.
So right now I am trying to wait out their AI programming until it finally realizes that Mr Lincoln is no longer playing the PLS game despite them burying and hiding my listings in hopes I will cave and run a campaign with ridiculously high Ad rates ... I have monitored and proven all that I need to in order to see what is going on. Most of my sales now come from the auction format and my BIN sales are still lagging way behind where they should be.
Sorry this was so lengthy but it was not a simple answer to your question and perhaps this will encourage others to keep track of exactly what is happening when their sales tank ... during the last two years of decline I have pushed more inventory "elsewhere" than at any time in the past ...
@chapeau-noir wrote:So in 4th quarter last year I decided to STOP using PLS so I did not run my normal 30 day campaign ... care to guess what happened? I received not ONE but TWO of the messages below: "We've missed you, try Promoted Listings Standard again"
I was like WHAT??? Oh yes, for those who don't think the programming monitors how Sellers sell they need to think twice. And the second pic below shows what was sent January 25th, another plug to use Promoted Listings Standard again ... right around the time I would normally run my 1st Quarter 30 day PLS campaign.
I wouldn't make too much of that and suspect that was simply a timed announcement. I get the same thing on Poshmark. They'll send them out periodically. I doubt they're tracking and monitoring you save whether PLS is toggled on or off triggering automatic reminders.
Nope, I used PLS once per quarter or years and then the first quarter I stopped I got those two messages around the time I would normally run my 4th quarter PLS - roughly mid-Nov to Mid-Dec to cover black Friday, cyber Monday and the general Christmas shopping period.
Same thing this quarter, get the message near the time I ran my 1st quarter PLS campaigns ... sorry but I proved what I suspected, others can think what they want or do their own testing, their choice. I could accept the occasional dip in sales over the years, yep, that's normal but not what I have experienced over the last 2 years.
Read the first message I got twice, "We've missed you - try Promoted Listings Standard again" ... yeah, Big Brother is watching, he just has a different name these days.
