Slow sales discussion for sellers. Nov 2019. Will we get our Holiday Rush??

[monstertoybox]

Well, my main problem, as I keep mentioning, is that my sales are in the dumper. They are down by 60% and it is the holiday shopping season, will we be getting our sales rush this year? It is looking more and more like this won't be happening.

Does Ebay want to keep us here, or do they not care? I'm a good seller, don't they want good quality sellers to make their site a great place to shop? How many other sellers are having slow to no sales this season? I see the board full of them. Would love to hear from other sellers about their experiences. If you’re doing well, please share your secrets. If you’re doing poorly please add your voice to this discussion. It does help when you know you aren't alone.

I’m following all their suggestions and more, constantly tweaking and updating, trying to chase down what works here. It is very difficult, when things keep changing. We’re trying to stay at Ebay because we believe this is a great place to sell. We just would love for it to work properly.

I am trying to get my sales kick started by taking some of the great suggestion that a few of the posters have given for Ebay and ended some items, waited a few days and then relisted them using sell similar. I did do the promoted listings again, which I don’t like at all, but I’m afraid that this is a necessary evil after reading what others have said. I listed a bunch of Christmas ornaments and I’ve added more free shipping to more of my listings. Maybe I'll try to list some more stuff today. So hopefully these things will help, whenever the site starts working properly again, that is. Still waiting …

It is hard to stay motivated, when you try everything and nothing seems to help.

I did start selling on another site (and actually got a sale today, yay), but of course I'm new and don't have a seller reputation like I do here on Ebay. I would much rather stick with where I have all my history and with what I am familiar with. It would be great if Ebay would please stop changing things and concentrate on fixing things instead, so we can get back to selling. We just want to love you again Ebay. No hate here, just frustration, major frustration. I would much rather be packing up boxes then writing on this board, believe me.

[lostweekendshop]

Unemployment is down, but wages for most people remain flat. 

[nuclearomen]

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@pink.fish.rule wrote:

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@nuclearomen wrote:

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here? Amazon, you do know Amazon takes more money from their sellers then ebay does? True, and not saying your wrong, ebay / PP take their chunks of the pie, yet all platforms do as well and yeah, you can go to private company's site and order what you want from them direct... which sure everyone does from some things, I do it myself. It has been said before by many (even me in cases) that ebay should lower some of their sale percentage rates in some categories yet sellers I know on Amazon pay twice as much in some cases, especially if it's a FBA category where they charge you storage fees etc.. so idk... of course there is big difference between ebay and amazon but fee wise, ebay is the better of the two, sales wise amazon clearly moves more product. Issue I have with Amazon is everything comes destroyed like was through nuclear war. I worked for them several years back I can tell you they treat merch like garbage. They store (especially small items) in bins that are over filled and stowers just stuff what they can anywhere cause there is no empty space to put anything, in the process stuff just gets damaged.  

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The worst part of AMZ FBA is that they will stash all 'like items' together, so a seller does't even know that what got sent to the buyer was the item they actually sent in.

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The stow (Amazon for Stocking) all considered small/medium/large items together yes. The bins for small items are only approx 1 foot wide x 19 tall and should only have tops of 20 items per bin... the issue is all bins are full normally and no room to stow more, so stowers just throw whatever they can fit into any bin (and then get in trouble for it lol) so things that have no packaging...like say books get damage and things that have packaging the packaging gets damaged. 

When a order comes in they go to Pickers who have hand held devices (same as Stowers) that tell them where item is located, they pick the item from that location and scan the the item as picked which removes it from inventory and places in a new que for shipping. Every item amazon has has a serial number that is scanned when it's stowed and stowers enter the location and quantity, pickers get that info when order comes so they can pull it for shipping, they scan the item to take it out of inventory. Once they have all the items in the order it goes in a box with a label they print onto a conveyor and the items goes to packaging dept to finish packing. 

I've never gotten the wrong item from Amazon, I always get damaged though. For a lot of things the packaging doesn't matter but if your buying something that is collectible it does, if your buying thing like books it usually matters to the buyer it's not dented and creased etc.. 

Personally I have never gotten a item in from ebay order I made damaged unless it was damaged in the listing. I feel that to be an upper hand on amazon FBA items

[monstertoybox]

@trueartworx 

I’m feeling the same way you do. Exactly, spinning our wheels! Oh the hours and hours I’ve wasted trying to keep up with the endless changes. We are all trying to hang in there, but Ebay is making it really hard. We do not feel like we are on a “team” here, more like they could care less if we were here or not. You would think good sellers are something they would want to keep ... nope, they could care less.

[monstertoybox]

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@lostweekendshop wrote:

Sales day-to-day are not static and they never have been. 

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I am not saying regular sales day-to-day, I’m saying holiday sales (like in the past) have been constant. Not a bunch for a few days, then absolutely nothing. That is not normal. Like a faucet being turned on and off. Not sure what is causing it, but it is obvious. I would like my store to be left “on”.

[monstertoybox]

@nuclearomen 

Amz is notorious for treating items like junk. I have received the wrong item and damaged items a lot. You are right, this is definitely what Ebay has over Amazon, quality sellers who care about making their buyers happy. But, quality seems to be slipping away from EBay.

Top Rated Sellers, great feedback, those things get you no where on here anymore. It’s all about who can get their prices the lowest. I think Ebay will regret not treating their good sellers better. 

[nuclearomen]

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@monstertoybox wrote:

@nuclearomen 

Amz is notorious for treating items like junk. I have received the wrong item and damaged items a lot. You are right, this is definitely what Ebay has over Amazon, quality sellers who care about making their buyers happy. But, quality seems to be slipping away from EBay.

Top Rated Sellers, great feedback, those things get you no where on here anymore. It’s all about who can get their prices the lowest. I think Ebay will regret not treating their good sellers better. 

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It's an issue where it rests with the seller on ebay. I am very picky with quality and if something has any damage to it I fully photo and list it in the description. I spend A LOT of money on shipping supplies and time/care packaging items...but not all sellers do. That is why feeback should be useful for buyers the issue is getting buyers to leave feedback anymore is a job in itself. I find I have to mail and ask and even then not all leave it. Yet I have no returns or claims so obviously doing something right. As I said before there are two types of sellers on ebay, established sellers who sell full time as their employment, new sellers who sell part time and not really in quantity who are cut throat prices below wholesale just to make a sale and gain some leg room on the platform. I have a minimum I can sell items for, my prices are based on shipping (I offer free shipping so that cost is included in the price), ebay fees, paypal fees, item, rarity of limitation and availability (I sell a lot of limited items like vinyl) and industry of the product (meaning what that item is going fro inside and outside ebay). When sellers cut prices too low on any given item that is overall hurting not just themselves (because yes, in the end it will hurt after all fees, shipping, shipping supplies, and federal taxes at end of year) and other sellers pricing items in accordance to all the expenses involved with selling on ebay.

I don't do the Top Rated Plus for buyers, I do it to gain some discount on my ebay fees, that generally equals to paying my store subscription every month...which isn't some huge saving but it's something and that's why I do it, doubt buyers even care if seller is TRP. 

[chapeau-noir]

Third type of seller: The professional part-time side gig seller (which I was for years and recently became again).  I only sold in the fall/winter/early spring and ran my little store on my off hours. I'd start each fall opening my store again (they save your settings, which is great),  with no badge or power seller icon (they don't do that anymore I don't think), then the TRS would roll around at some point and I'd go "Oh! It's back!"  I started selling part-time just a couple of months ago to supplement SS (I just retired) and because I like working and online sales are flexible.

I know a number of part-time selling pros, but even when I was just a closet/house cleaner, for all the hassle and trouble of listing my items, and the fact that they were my best to offer, I didn't like giving them away for next to nothing - I could donate and get the write-off for that.  Why go to the trouble for .99, you know?

[nuclearomen]

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

Third type of seller: The professional part-time side gig seller (which I was for years and recently became again).  I only sold in the fall/winter/early spring and ran my little store on my off hours. I'd start each fall opening my store again (they save your settings, which is great),  with no badge or power seller icon (they don't do that anymore I don't think), then the TRS would roll around at some point and I'd go "Oh! It's back!"  I started selling part-time just a couple of months ago to supplement SS (I just retired) and because I like working and online sales are flexible.

I know a number of part-time selling pros, but even when I was just a closet/house cleaner, for all the hassle and trouble of listing my items, and the fact that they were my best to offer, I didn't like giving them away for next to nothing - I could donate and get the write-off for that.  Why go to the trouble for .99, you know?

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Makes sense. I do it full time as of Late June/July when my stuff finally got delivered from moving from east cost to here. Work here is not like on east cost, I did manufacturing all my life for various companies and that industry here is zero. So while ebay is not enough to pay all the bills it helps with my outside ebay sales... which lately past 3 going to 4 days now is zero on ebay...there is something major wrong with my account, I reported to ebay few days ago and then again today to report other issues on my seller hub that just started...not sure what's wrong and ebay sent it to their tech support to look at...it's really wonky, I'm getting "Review Offers" on my seller hub even though I don't allow offers...all kinds of wonky stuff like that...is it effecting my sales? IDK.. can only assume, but 3-4 days no sales is long stretch for me, I usually have orders every day, even if some days it's just 1 and others is 6...whatever something is messed up. So currently I'm just waiting for tech support to get to my issue and fix some stuff.  Likely be on the phone again tomorrow to ebay. 

[simply_toyz]

Being a toy seller myself for many years on ebay, I have the numbers to prove that sales are awful for me at least. More than a third of my entire years' income comes between middle OCT - middle DEC. I can say without a doubt that my sales are not going to match what last years were, not by a long shot. 

As it stands now, I'm practically giving away a lot of my items, but still can't pull in sales. According to ebay's sales chart, my sales are UP. However, once you account for the shipping and taxes included in those numbers, sales are not as "up" as they'd like you to believe. 

For the non believers, If throttling isn't a thing, how can I sell $500USD one day and $50 the next? With absolutely no change in items, prices or anything.  I'm not expecting to sell that much everyday, but the large difference between days is kind of crazy. This platform is unreliable.  I have seen from countless sellers if you have one good day expect bad days to follow. It happens every time I go above a certain dollar amount. It's always interesting to note that sales magically go up every month right before my ebay bill is due too. 

My sales were better before the GTC update. After that, they fell completely off a cliff and have never returned to normal. Coincidence? Maybe, but with a bunch of other sellers stating the same thing, I doubt it's a mere coincidence.  All I know is I am downgrading my store from anchor to a lower tier come end of year and i've had an anchor store for almost 10 years between two accounts.  I won't abandon ebay completely, but they're definitely not worth $300 a month in store fees.

[sakic92710]

I agree.  1 good day doesn't mean things will improve.  I had 7 sales all of last week.  I had 8 today.  How many tomorrow - 0, 1, 2?  TOO MANY 0 days!  Last 2 weekends - 1 total sale.  Unless I can start averaging $60-75 a day, I will not consider eBay a success.  Good luck to us all.   🙂

[monstertoybox]

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@simply_toyz wrote:

Being a toy seller myself for many years on ebay, I have the numbers to prove that sales are awful for me at least. More than a third of my entire years' income comes between middle OCT - middle DEC. I can say without a doubt that my sales are not going to match what last years were, not by a long shot. 

As it stands now, I'm practically giving away a lot of my items, but still can't pull in sales. According to ebay's sales chart, my sales are UP. However, once you account for the shipping and taxes included in those numbers, sales are not as "up" as they'd like you to believe. 

For the non believers, If throttling isn't a thing, how can I sell $500USD one day and $50 the next? With absolutely no change in items, prices or anything.  I'm not expecting to sell that much everyday, but the large difference between days is kind of crazy. This platform is unreliable.  I have seen from countless sellers if you have one good day expect bad days to follow. It happens every time I go above a certain dollar amount. It's always interesting to note that sales magically go up every month right before my ebay bill is due too. 

My sales were better before the GTC update. After that, they fell completely off a cliff and have never returned to normal. Coincidence? Maybe, but with a bunch of other sellers stating the same thing, I doubt it's a mere coincidence.  All I know is I am downgrading my store from anchor to a lower tier come end of year and i've had an anchor store for almost 10 years between two accounts.  I won't abandon ebay completely, but they're definitely not worth $300 a month in store fees.

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Thank you for being part of this discussion. You have a great store, with lots of cool items. Being here for 10 years, you know some drastic changes have happened, for sure. Like you, this time of year for me, is what I count on to make money. If toy sellers can't make it during Christmas time, who the heck can? The shifts in sales, one sale day is great, followed by an awful day, has been mentioned by so many sellers, this is more than a slight sales shift, these are significant shifts.

It is sad that you are having to downgrade your store, but I totally understand. I will be doing the same at the beginning of the year. It just isn't worth it anymore. So many qualified / experienced sellers are talking about leaving (or downgrading). It's a shame because that is not good for Ebay.

There is definitely something majorly wrong here. I really don't think they are going to pull it together for this Christmas buying season and it's a shame. I am currently down 72% compared to last year (and that is a REAL number). The worst part is, it is out of our control, whatever is causing this, we have no way of figuring it out ourselves. I mean, I have done everything to my listings I can (with the exception of giving stuff away, which I'm not going to do) and nothing helps.

Isn't it awful that there have been all these technical complaints and no one has told us anything for weeks. Is it because the problems are too big, are they even working on them? All we can do is sit and wait for something to happen, that is the most frustrating part. I can tweak my listing, lower prices, add free shipping, do promoted listings, send offers (which I have done all of those), but if our items are not being seen, none of that matters at all.

Wish you the best of luck! Currently, luck seems all we have at the moment.

[domin-tomas]

No, my main inventory is action figures.

[myoasisjewels]

@nuclearomen 

no. not buying from amazon either. there is only one item i buy once per month from them, that i cannot get elsewhere.... i am aware of how much amazon charges in fees;-(

[chapeau-noir]

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@nuclearomen wrote:

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

Third type of seller: The professional part-time side gig seller (which I was for years and recently became again).  I only sold in the fall/winter/early spring and ran my little store on my off hours. I'd start each fall opening my store again (they save your settings, which is great),  with no badge or power seller icon (they don't do that anymore I don't think), then the TRS would roll around at some point and I'd go "Oh! It's back!"  I started selling part-time just a couple of months ago to supplement SS (I just retired) and because I like working and online sales are flexible.

I know a number of part-time selling pros, but even when I was just a closet/house cleaner, for all the hassle and trouble of listing my items, and the fact that they were my best to offer, I didn't like giving them away for next to nothing - I could donate and get the write-off for that.  Why go to the trouble for .99, you know?

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Makes sense. I do it full time as of Late June/July when my stuff finally got delivered from moving from east cost to here. Work here is not like on east cost, I did manufacturing all my life for various companies and that industry here is zero. So while ebay is not enough to pay all the bills it helps with my outside ebay sales... which lately past 3 going to 4 days now is zero on ebay...there is something major wrong with my account, I reported to ebay few days ago and then again today to report other issues on my seller hub that just started...not sure what's wrong and ebay sent it to their tech support to look at...it's really wonky, I'm getting "Review Offers" on my seller hub even though I don't allow offers...all kinds of wonky stuff like that...is it effecting my sales? IDK.. can only assume, but 3-4 days no sales is long stretch for me, I usually have orders every day, even if some days it's just 1 and others is 6...whatever something is messed up. So currently I'm just waiting for tech support to get to my issue and fix some stuff.  Likely be on the phone again tomorrow to ebay. 

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Yeah, it definitely hasn't been business as usual since 10/15 for me - I'm usually steady, too, usually but the item specifics mess really put a dent in sales. I'm climbing out again, I went through my listings and fixed them, some of the broken stuff appears to be getting fixed, sales are coming in again, but I went 4 days without a sale, and that's really slow for me this time of year, usually I'm being run out of my shoes. I wonder what else this item specifics debacle (which mainly hit fashion) has perpetrated throughout the site though - I mean, nothing in computing works in a vacuum, particularly a relational database which is what the search is based on.

[nuclearomen]

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

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@nuclearomen wrote:

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

Third type of seller: The professional part-time side gig seller (which I was for years and recently became again).  I only sold in the fall/winter/early spring and ran my little store on my off hours. I'd start each fall opening my store again (they save your settings, which is great),  with no badge or power seller icon (they don't do that anymore I don't think), then the TRS would roll around at some point and I'd go "Oh! It's back!"  I started selling part-time just a couple of months ago to supplement SS (I just retired) and because I like working and online sales are flexible.

I know a number of part-time selling pros, but even when I was just a closet/house cleaner, for all the hassle and trouble of listing my items, and the fact that they were my best to offer, I didn't like giving them away for next to nothing - I could donate and get the write-off for that.  Why go to the trouble for .99, you know?

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Makes sense. I do it full time as of Late June/July when my stuff finally got delivered from moving from east cost to here. Work here is not like on east cost, I did manufacturing all my life for various companies and that industry here is zero. So while ebay is not enough to pay all the bills it helps with my outside ebay sales... which lately past 3 going to 4 days now is zero on ebay...there is something major wrong with my account, I reported to ebay few days ago and then again today to report other issues on my seller hub that just started...not sure what's wrong and ebay sent it to their tech support to look at...it's really wonky, I'm getting "Review Offers" on my seller hub even though I don't allow offers...all kinds of wonky stuff like that...is it effecting my sales? IDK.. can only assume, but 3-4 days no sales is long stretch for me, I usually have orders every day, even if some days it's just 1 and others is 6...whatever something is messed up. So currently I'm just waiting for tech support to get to my issue and fix some stuff.  Likely be on the phone again tomorrow to ebay. 

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Yeah, it definitely hasn't been business as usual since 10/15 for me - I'm usually steady, too, usually but the item specifics mess really put a dent in sales. I'm climbing out again, I went through my listings and fixed them, some of the broken stuff appears to be getting fixed, sales are coming in again, but I went 4 days without a sale, and that's really slow for me this time of year, usually I'm being run out of my shoes. I wonder what else this item specifics debacle (which mainly hit fashion) has perpetrated throughout the site though - I mean, nothing in computing works in a vacuum, particularly a relational database which is what the search is based on.

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@chapeau-noir 
For me it's past 4 days, my sales have been steady for past few months, prior to that was horrid. Everyone gets the day or 2 of no sales with ebay anymore, something I just come to expect and I'm not worried in general of a day or so of no sales as my monthly is what I look at in sales and as long as hitting my monthly goal then it's OK. Yet when no sales are result of site issues or ebay hidding listings or store that is a need to be concerned because while we know it's happening we do not know the full extent of this practice ebay seems to have implemented and how that is effecting your repeat customers. It's like last week when I couldn't check out for entire day, something I heard people mention as issue for months but never experienced it.. when I did last week it was very frustrating and made me think how many people have seen my listings and tried to order and same thing happened to them before they finally just said never mind and gave up? While that maybe a PP issue on their side, I have never ever in 20 years of using PP experienced not being able to check out on any webstore anywhere at any time, only ebay! And I purchase a lot of stuff online from all kinds of sites for many years. 

The item specifics... yes, again, I don't really sell clothing but I know of the changes ebay made on those categories cause I experienced it last week when I was adding new hats. I had to completely remake a new template and noticed that half of the "specifics" they are asking for are not even relevant to the product...I left half blank, filled in all the important stuff, manufacturer, place of origin, features, character, character family, material...I mean it's a f'in hat, how much freak-in info they want!?  Kinda of ridiculous. Now I always fill in as much of the specifics for my listings as possible, but for example with vinyl if you look at my competitors they fill nothing out, literally nothing, not even format, a lot of those people are selling 20 years or so on ebay, it's so bad they don't even list what version they are selling, is it the unlimited or limited, is it the normal or die hard version, is it black vinyl or colored version? buyers have no clue! 

I went through all my listings last week manually and updated every single one. Seems this is now what you need to do cause the bulk editor does not work as it should, it says updated when submit but it either messes up your listings or creates a vacuum of several days of no sales after submit changes. The sites issues are so bad ebay doesn't even know of all of them. I reported my wacky issue yesterday of "review offers" showing up on my seller hub when I don't allow offers and the CS said never heard of it, add a new issue. I called this weekend and reported the link on account settings for "make a one-time payment" is not secure and on chrome you get a warning, on Edge no warning but still no secure connection...still that way, made a payment this morning. The list of site issues goes on and on and everyone is experiencing different ones...how can this create of seamless and good buying experience if the platform is broken?