Slow sales

[june_elizabeth1971]

Sales have fallen off the cliff!!  It was slow before but now has gotten worse.  Anyone else experiencing the same thing?

[stacy_pme]

Yes, slower.... Sold a few Christmas recently.... get your Christmas stuff out 😄

[stacy_pme]

I agree... and if have compared (if you haven't do it!), ebay items are priced higher than amazon items....  Weird. 

[stacy_pme]

I am seeing it too, and it happened here several months ago, I call into ebay, talk to customer service, they say they will "reset" my account, and things rebounded...?   

[stacy_pme]

YES, I'm seeing that too.... on top of that, if I search for the item, my listing wasn't coming up.... I kept doing it over and over, changing my title, changing information... trying to be able to see my item when I did a search.... but it didn't show up... and had hardly any views.... I cleared history, cache, and cookies, and I think that did something because the item began showing up to me.... Something is definitely WRONG>

[marybell214]

Yes same over here getting worse everyday 

[johnrj1226]

I always comparison shop before  I purchase and most often find that the same item is less expensive (based on total purchase price i.e. including shipping) on eBay than Amazon.  Will buy on Amazon if I can't find it on eBay.

e.g.  My last purchase was  two a Poetic dual layer shock proof  cover/cases  for a Samsung A51 on eBay $12.30 ea on Amazon $16.00 ea  - both w/Free Ship - same Seller.

[fab_fings]

Yes, me too! Terrible! Two small sales in four days. I blame the weather. Hopefully it will improve when the sun comes back again.

[collectiblecollectiblecollectible]

a very thoughtful and insightful response.  KUDOS

[chapeau-noir]

Agree with @glasser about eBay missing the market.  Unfortunately, no matter what they do I don't think they're going to be able to walk that back - they've fallen too far behind.  As well, I think it's normal in the maturation of any retail sector for it to begin to disperse - spending habits don't remain en bloc for every generation.  I remember in the 80s when 'sport shopping' was a thing - you'd go to the malls and spend money, like a social occasion.  The retail sector decided that that was going to last forever and severely overbuilt - there is way too much retail square footage per capita than anyone needs and there are dead malls all over the country.  Most shopping is still done at B&Ms, but we didn't need such a huge infrastructure.

Etailing should be a lot more agile than B&Ms because you don't have to deal with, well, bricks and mortar, but when you get rent-a-CEOs from Bain or some place, I've never had much confidence that they know what they're doing - the fidget spinner debacle was a good example.  The present CEO is trying hard with 'verticals' but I'm not sure the world is going to be on fire over getting 'authenticated' sneakers with that dopey eBay button on it - and they're banking a lot on what is essentially a fashion fad.

My buyers are all ages here, but tend to skew younger on the other websites where I sell.

[katzrul15]

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@stacy_pme wrote:

Yes, slower.... Sold a few Christmas recently.... get your Christmas stuff out 😄

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Yes - folks are buying ornaments pretty much daily now.  Little earlier than usual, but hey....all good!  lol

Hang in there everyone - in just a few short weeks, it will be ramped up like always and we'll all be wishing we had an afternoon to relax on the patio.  Until then, list, list, list!  (especially Halloween, fall items, Christmas......)

[glasser]

@chapeau-noir  I agree about sneakers. Another example of chasing a market others already dominate (stockx and Goat). You can add NFTs to that list to.

I actually think a lot of people these days want to support small and local businesses as well. Hence some of the younger folks being anti-Amazon. Yet, eBay seems to being moving away from highlighting the 1-1 nature of the site. Moving toward by your iPhone at eBay. Just look for the best price and with MBG and INAD it doesn't matter who you but it from and you'll never get a negative FB. Also if you look at the mobile app the seller is the last part of the listing. That kind of tells the story right there. Yes, they highlight sellers in PR efforts but that's to create a warm fuzzy not a business strategy. 

They have really reduced the natural competition between buyers, which is really how eBay organically becomes a better platform over time. 

[beachychicd]

Yes they have been slow the last week or so now. Very Odd.. Sales have been consistant and then it just stopped. Today is the first day in I don't even remember that I had have had 0 sales..

[blacktopautoparts]

It is totally odd. The last 2 weeks sales were finally back to normal for us and then the last 2 days, it's like someone hits the brakes and then they get cut in half. It is the most oddest thing. Honestly, it has nothing to do with Covid, back to school, vacations, etc. as excuses that get tossed around so much around here and at eBay phone support.

Something has changed again with the search but then also with the amount of impressions as I have seen that same normal dip that occurs when things start to go awry. We sell in the parts and accessories, which now is the hot time for sales and you see these drastic dips is puzzling.  I do analyze all of the traffic and numbers each week, and you can tell something is off.

What it comes down to at the end of the day is that eBay is not organically generating the sales that they need to grow and they have put way too many little traps for sellers where they are making money off of them. Add that many sellers are also buyers, and in the last year many of those sellers have left the platform which also you see their buyers leave too.

[mr_lincoln]

@june_elizabeth1971   It's August, maybe lots of folks are getting their summer vacations in before school starts ... 

[chapeau-noir]

That 'sellers are buyers' I think is one metric which actually doesn't factor in and never really has - sales on eBay in 2020 grew 22% and are continuing to grow (though not as quickly).  Sellers are always coming and going from this platform, as are buyers.  If there was a concurrent, actually correlative connection between the two, it would be pretty obvious.

My sales are down because it's the dog days of summer and I sell in fashion (plus I'm running out of inventory so not listing much) - the first happens every single year (in fact, I used to just shut down for July/August), the second is my own affair, because if I list, I sell, and I sell in a very over-crowded, super saturated category.

EBay search can be pretty strange - people keep saying "well, *I* find XYZ", but personalization may have something to do with results that are returned.  Even Donohoe was saying that they wanted to 'serve a different set of results to a 45-year-old woman than a 55-year-old man' or some such nonsense (I can't remember the exact words) and thinking that was one of the stupidest ideas I've heard in a while.  Amazon already was doing that with Kindle until I finally taught the dayumed application NOT to keep showing me romances because I'm female, when I was pretty much buying a steady diet of gladiator novels, sword n' sandal war adventures and medieval mysteries.  They finally stopped.

edited for fat fingeritis.