eBay

monstertoybox · ‎11-08-2019

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.

nuclearomen · ‎11-22-2019

@gwzcomps wrote:
So the search engine is essentially skynet then :o? All programs have been created and designed by humans. The real question is how much does the human input influence the output?

yes people have been writing algorithms since forever but algorithms are largely being written by computers rather than by humans now and where they are not they are being improved by algorithms. Computer algorithms are designed to allow computers to learn on their own, such is true with automated machinery and it's the same with internet search, when you enter your netflix account and it suggests movies based your viewing history...when you go to your social media account like facebook they determine what you see in ads on your news feed, when you visit your yahoo or google email account they determine what ads you see based off your online blueprint of shopping history... when your driving down the road and your iphone tells you where your going and how long til you reach the destination without ever touching the phone yourself is an algorithm making a judgement based off your location history and frequency of habit, why google or ebay lets say gives a completely different order of search results then someone else... it's not a human placing those for you lol. There are many different types of algorithms for vast sea of things and though they are not new what is new is how they are being written and "improved" by computers and applied into everyone's lives and especially online as more and more personnel data is mined and collected and almost limitless amount as there are no real regulation on data collecting algorithms are learning from all that data. But you can google this yourself.

The great truth is there isn't one
And it only gets worse since that conclusion...
...There is something about the rigid posture of a proper, authentic blind
As if extended arms reached to pass his blindness onto others.

chapeau-noir · ‎11-22-2019

@gwzcomps wrote:
So the search engine is essentially skynet then :o? All programs have been created and designed by humans. The real question is how much does the human input influence the output?

And a lot depends on the human - it's the saying that's been around since I started using computers in the mid-80s - 'garbage in/garbage out'.

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
— Alice Walker

#freedomtoread
#readbannedbooks

gwzcomps · ‎11-22-2019

Trust me I know how a lot of this stuff works. The problem is the algorithms have to be configured by someone. They don't just automagically appear. Someone has configured the search engine parameters to work the way they do.

nuclearomen · ‎11-22-2019

@gwzcomps wrote:
Trust me I know how a lot of this stuff works. The problem is the algorithms have to be configured by someone. They don't just automagically appear. Someone has configured the search engine parameters to work the way they do.

i may have misunderstood you, sorry, yes, someone initially configured the algorithm yet likely not someone from ebay wrote it... you know computers, i found this link while back which talks about ebay search engine algorithm found it interesting anyways.
https://crazylister.com/blog/ebay-search-engine-cassini/

The great truth is there isn't one
And it only gets worse since that conclusion...
...There is something about the rigid posture of a proper, authentic blind
As if extended arms reached to pass his blindness onto others.

gwzcomps · ‎11-22-2019

Thanks for the link. I skimmed over it and already see some things that might be hurting my listings.

nuclearomen · ‎11-22-2019

@gwzcomps wrote:
Thanks for the link. I skimmed over it and already see some things that might be hurting my listings.

welcome, it helped me I believe, prior to it i did not fill out all the specifics, just certain ones, once I read this and revised my listings by filling out as much specifics as I possibly could my sales did increase (even though right now, they are down for past week and half).

The great truth is there isn't one
And it only gets worse since that conclusion...
...There is something about the rigid posture of a proper, authentic blind
As if extended arms reached to pass his blindness onto others.

gwzcomps · ‎11-22-2019

Being lazy and recycling text from my other listings may be hurting me. All that extra HMTL that is in my listings and everything. Gonna be a pain to fix and deal with the new learning curve.

nuclearomen · ‎11-22-2019

@gwzcomps wrote:
Being lazy and recycling text from my other listings may be hurting me. All that extra HMTL that is in my listings and everything. Gonna be a pain to fix and deal with the new learning curve.

i looked at few your listings... doesn't seem like you have too much html, you list as i do, without an app, so your using basic html (if your writing description in html or just typing...I do it with html) but it's simple html, first line of code is ebay's mobile friendly code, then text size and font, then simple < b >, < br > nothing really above that.

I know what your talking about from the article, it's one part I didn't quite get because like said the html being used is super simple basic html that ebay will actually apply to the listing themselves if you choose to write the description on the text only tab. Also, Notepad is no more, it's a deleted program from Microsoft use to be given for free with every PC, years ago I used it to write html for my websites, but it became defunct with programs like dreamweaver and the other abobe etc... website design programs they have now. At least to my knowledge Notepad is not even available for download anymore.

The great truth is there isn't one
And it only gets worse since that conclusion...
...There is something about the rigid posture of a proper, authentic blind
As if extended arms reached to pass his blindness onto others.

yuzuha · ‎11-22-2019

@yuya_16 wrote:
BTW, when I searched for "whale plush huge" this morning the first few listings I was given were plush dog, monkey, bear, and tiger.
Those listings didn't even have the word "whale" anywhere in the title.
That was not a pleasant search experience.
An impatient buyer would have left seeing this.

Lose the word "huge" and you'll get nothing but whale plushes in your search.

gwzcomps · ‎11-22-2019

My problem is copying and pasting generates a ton of extra HTML that isn't necessary. I should probably clean the stuff up and save it on my computer for my lazy copy and paste needs. I used to be good at manually typing in all my HTML for creating pages, but that was many years ago. I couldn't imagine what it is like creating webpages from scratch now days. I haven't switched to Windows 10 yet so I didn't realize they got rid of notepad. I have heard Notepad++ is way better, but never have tried it personally.

The attached image is what the HTML from one of my listings looks like. That is all eBay's mess.

nuclearomen · ‎11-22-2019

@gwzcomps wrote:
My problem is copying and pasting generates a ton of extra HTML that isn't necessary. I should probably clean the stuff up and save it on my computer for my lazy copy and paste needs. I used to be good at manually typing in all my HTML for creating pages, but that was many years ago. I couldn't imagine what it is like creating webpages from scratch now days. I haven't switched to Windows 10 yet so I didn't realize they got rid of notepad. I have heard Notepad++ is way better, but never have tried it personally.

The attached image is what the HTML from one of my listings looks like. That is all eBay's mess.

whoa... The screenshot is from Notepad so are you using notepad to view the page source html...only way can think your getting all that. On Windows 10 that is all removed now when hit view page source it's huge menu of mazes that makes finding the code your after near impossible (for me anyways lol). But in any case, you can't rid of ebay's coding... the article is talking about the html used in the description field of the listing, the kicker is the article is from crazylister which is a ebay (or amazon) listing app so some of the things it talks about in the article is only related to using the app... such as placing the alt tag in images...obviously you cannot do that with the images you upload to ebay in the listing but the app takes those images and places them in the description for their templates, they tell users to go to the listing html tab and find the img codes and add the alt tags to the images manually on ebay. However one can do this with images they upload to ebay themselves with no html, using the file info function in adobe photoshop and listing the text you would in the alt tag in the description and keyword fields of the file info.... just saying that some of the things in that article isn't relevant to people unless using the listing app (or any other that adds the images to the description field)... just like their mention of RSS feed is useless as ebay did away with the RSS awhile ago you can't turn it off/on as people use to do to manipulate listings appearance in search results....as least to my knowledge.

Notepad ++ is much more complex then Notepad ever was, it supports/can do way more I mean, like it supports many programming, scripting and markup languages (i don't even know how many) it also uses plugins where notepad never did to expand its uses...it is free, I had it for while but never really used it so I took it off. I know modders who use it often but not me personally.

The great truth is there isn't one
And it only gets worse since that conclusion...
...There is something about the rigid posture of a proper, authentic blind
As if extended arms reached to pass his blindness onto others.

gwzcomps · ‎11-22-2019

I went to edit a listing to grab the HTML. I copied and pasted it to notepad since it made for a better screenshot of the entire listing. It is a mess 😛

nuclearomen · ‎11-22-2019

@gwzcomps wrote:
I went to edit a listing to grab the HTML. I copied and pasted it to notepad since it made for a better screenshot of the entire listing. It is a mess 😛

it is 😉 example: they don't need to list font style every line, only once when you want that font and then again if you wish to use a different font with the < / font > tag prior to adding another.

The great truth is there isn't one
And it only gets worse since that conclusion...
...There is something about the rigid posture of a proper, authentic blind
As if extended arms reached to pass his blindness onto others.

karthok.of.daolodus · ‎11-23-2019

@coolections wrote:
@karthok.of.daolodus
I guess some just can't handle a joke. Of course I know people live there, but with that said they have the smallest populations. Those that expect sales from there and don't get them come up with conspiracies instead of looking at the real reasons IMO are really reaching as you say.

Finally got back here. In my reading you've never displayed even the slightest sense of humor, so hey, what was I to think? What else but that in struggling to prove your point you actually believed that in thousands of sales no one would sell to Wyoming (because there's nobody there?). Brodude, that is sad.

chapeau-noir · ‎11-23-2019

@yuzuha wrote:
@yuya_16 wrote:
BTW, when I searched for "whale plush huge" this morning the first few listings I was given were plush dog, monkey, bear, and tiger.
Those listings didn't even have the word "whale" anywhere in the title.
That was not a pleasant search experience.
An impatient buyer would have left seeing this.

Lose the word "huge" and you'll get nothing but whale plushes in your search.

Yes, but shouldn't 'whale' weigh more in the search than 'huge'? That's what confuses me about the search - it seems illiterate.

ETA: And how would someone not familiar with how the search works here (and thinking logically) know that 'huge' would cant the results like that? You know, we know, but I'm thinking about the off-the-street buyer who doesn't.

I don't believe in throttling, but I do believe that the search seems at times counter-intuitive.

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
— Alice Walker

#freedomtoread
#readbannedbooks