So what's the real story?

[mr_lincoln]

I just re-read the "Summer Trends" June 27th post by the SVP + General Manager, American Market (link below).  However, what I would really like news and details on is how eBay will turn around the continued decline in sales that many, many members are reporting here on The Community, and a lot of them seem to be newer posters ... with Pay per Click PLS Advanced kicking off last year, the November 2021 Category reshuffling, the more recent Views counter change and other changes made to the venue's programming in the last 6-8 months I have lost confidence in the Search algorithms being able to function properly.

Earlier this year on the Traffic report Impressions took an abrupt nose dive ... 80.5% in a very, very short period of time.  Historically I run at least one PLS Standard Campaign per quarter and they normally do well but not so in 2022 ... this year the two I ran under performed which is baffling considering one of the ways the venue makes additional income is through promotion fees ... and in checking Traffic the last few days Impressions are once again dropping.

For myself and the categories I sell in I am not buying in to the economy excuse for declining sales ... if that were true then I and others would be making a killing on acquiring low priced inventory to resell ... in fact, the opposite seems to be happening - meaning competition to acquire inventory is stiffer then in the recent past.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/Summer-Trends/ba-p/33032652

Something is seriously amiss within the organization and someone or some group knows what is is ... just wish they would let the rest of us know too ...

Regards,

Mr. L

[mr_lincoln]

@lakefor94   Thank you for posting that yes, business segments are different then collectibles, one offs, etc. BUT you and so many others are identifying the same time period for significant drops in sales " ... Sales over the last 5 years were as steady as can be until last fall and then in April got even slower. ..."

THAT is the reoccurring theme ...

Additionally, Buyers started posting more frequently here late 4th quarter last year about how bad Search had gotten after the category shuffling ... did they ever receive any message from Home Office about the changes and how they can still get the same search results they used to AND instructions on how to do that?  Nope ...

[onlinecentral]

My hypothesis is that we are in a mini recession that has reduced consumer spending on non-essential items such as vintage board games.

Some expect these supply chain and inflation issues to subside over an indefinite period of months resulting in a new normal.

I choose to ignore the traffic and views reports within the Seller Hub. I have run several sets of numbers and have concluded that Promoted Listings do not belong within my business model.

I acknowledge the long history of dissatisfaction that buyers and sellers have had with the search engine.

[cool.jewels.by.jeff]

Sales are declining due to the ridiculous changes being made. Crazy amount of irrelevant item specifics, checking boxes, its all tedious and buyers want simple. Every single person I talk to that sells on ebay ( I personally am responsible for 7 sellers) has watched their sales fall and fall by a ton. They are quickly destroying the jewelry categories. People will say the economy, but if that were true sellers would see it across all the platforms. Our sales on other platforms have actually increased slightly with less items listed and a few times out preformed ebay. That has never happened before. It wasnt even close. I would also struggle believing  traffic or impressions or any other stat.  We are seeing how fake bots have thrown off Twitters claims and Im sure they heavily impact stats on ebay. Sales were incredible better before ebay started tracking the most likely unrealistic stats. All they need to do is get sellers opinions on things. Find out what works, what buyers main concerns are,  what is not working instead of allowing people not qualified to make major decisions.  

[monster-deals]

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@eunster1313 wrote:

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"In fact, close to 90% of eBay's GMV is derived from non new in-season items."

eBay CEO Tells Shareholders Old Strategy Was Not Working

https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2022/6/1655217275.html

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ebay has been freely giving up this territory for years without showing the least bit of interest in fighting for it.

Now that they know this item specific driven nonsense is not working...like everyone saw coming...it is time to FIX THE SEARCH ENGINE and ditch all this **bleep** busy work that does not produce results.

BE the venue you claim that you are ebay, and stop pretending to be something else

[donsdetour]

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@mr_lincoln wrote:

I just re-read the "Summer Trends" June 27th post by the SVP + General Manager, American Market (link below).  However, what I would really like news and details on is how eBay will turn around the continued decline in sales that many, many members are reporting here on The Community, and a lot of them seem to be newer posters ... with Pay per Click PLS Advanced kicking off last year, the November 2021 Category reshuffling, the more recent Views counter change and other changes made to the venue's programming in the last 6-8 months I have lost confidence in the Search algorithms being able to function properly.

Earlier this year on the Traffic report Impressions took an abrupt nose dive ... 80.5% in a very, very short period of time.  Historically I run at least one PLS Standard Campaign per quarter and they normally do well but not so in 2022 ... this year the two I ran under performed which is baffling considering one of the ways the venue makes additional income is through promotion fees ... and in checking Traffic the last few days Impressions are once again dropping.

For myself and the categories I sell in I am not buying in to the economy excuse for declining sales ... if that were true then I and others would be making a killing on acquiring low priced inventory to resell ... in fact, the opposite seems to be happening - meaning competition to acquire inventory is stiffer then in the recent past.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/Summer-Trends/ba-p/33032652

Something is seriously amiss within the organization and someone or some group knows what is is ... just wish they would let the rest of us know too ...

Regards,

Mr. L

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Mr L this mess is for sure an internal problem: the economic stuff has allowed a cover up of the mess:

I do have a reason for saying if they can not find you item they can not purchase it.

[zamo-zuan]

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@mr_lincoln wrote:

I just re-read the "Summer Trends" June 27th post by the SVP + General Manager, American Market (link below).  However, what I would really like news and details on is how eBay will turn around the continued decline in sales that many, many members are reporting here on The Community, and a lot of them seem to be newer posters ... with Pay per Click PLS Advanced kicking off last year, the November 2021 Category reshuffling, the more recent Views counter change and other changes made to the venue's programming in the last 6-8 months I have lost confidence in the Search algorithms being able to function properly.

Earlier this year on the Traffic report Impressions took an abrupt nose dive ... 80.5% in a very, very short period of time.  Historically I run at least one PLS Standard Campaign per quarter and they normally do well but not so in 2022 ... this year the two I ran under performed which is baffling considering one of the ways the venue makes additional income is through promotion fees ... and in checking Traffic the last few days Impressions are once again dropping.

For myself and the categories I sell in I am not buying in to the economy excuse for declining sales ... if that were true then I and others would be making a killing on acquiring low priced inventory to resell ... in fact, the opposite seems to be happening - meaning competition to acquire inventory is stiffer then in the recent past.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/Summer-Trends/ba-p/33032652

Something is seriously amiss within the organization and someone or some group knows what is is ... just wish they would let the rest of us know too ...

Regards,

Mr. L

---

Let's not forget about the fact that they took out the "Year to Year comparison" section from the Sellers Hub page, saying that it would be back in early 2022.

The Year to Year section didn't just have a nice comparison for yearly sales, but it showed how you were doing in your category, and how your category was doing compared to last year.

Now there's no way to tell if your category is having issues, or if you're having issues directly, or if you're doing better or worse than average for your category.

But as I've been mentioning in my other thread, there seems to be something seriously wrong with the organic/promoted systems of eBay. If eBay can't even get the statistics right on the SAME statistics/traffic page, how are their algorithms (that consider the broken traffic data) supposed to work correctly?

[bimm_corp]

@katzrul15

>p.s. No clue about Barbie. Her condo is in foreclosure, her pink sportster is repo'd and her high-end couture has maxxed out her credit cards. She's in need of an EM doll, except his billions might be running out too!

I imagine you look forward to the debut of "trans" Barbie.

[katzrul15]

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@bimm_corp wrote:

@katzrul15

>p.s. No clue about Barbie. Her condo is in foreclosure, her pink sportster is repo'd and her high-end couture has maxxed out her credit cards. She's in need of an EM doll, except his billions might be running out too!

I imagine you look forward to the debut of "trans" Barbie.

---

Already here.  Laverne Cox Barbie.  Sold well.

[flyingmvp]

Barbie should ask for a loan from Ebay's CEO who will be taking home $$$34,000,000 this year.

His salary will sray the same ot will keep rising while profits are in decline.

[mr_lincoln]

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@cool.jewels.by.jeff wrote:

Sales are declining due to the ridiculous changes being made. Crazy amount of irrelevant item specifics, checking boxes, its all tedious and buyers want simple. Every single person I talk to that sells on ebay ( I personally am responsible for 7 sellers) has watched their sales fall and fall by a ton. They are quickly destroying the jewelry categories. People will say the economy, but if that were true sellers would see it across all the platforms. Our sales on other platforms have actually increased slightly with less items listed and a few times out preformed ebay. That has never happened before. It wasnt even close. I would also struggle believing  traffic or impressions or any other stat.  We are seeing how fake bots have thrown off Twitters claims and Im sure they heavily impact stats on ebay. Sales were incredible better before ebay started tracking the most likely unrealistic stats. All they need to do is get sellers opinions on things. Find out what works, what buyers main concerns are,  what is not working instead of allowing people not qualified to make major decisions.  

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@cool.jewels.by.jeff   This is one of the points I've made too ... I am NOT seeing a decline in the purchase price of inventory where I typically acquire it ... if I were then I would be moving towards a surplus when in fact its the opposite.  I think its important for sellers in internet retail to have numerous avenues for how they move their products ... for myself, eBay gets first shot at selling items and if that doesn't happen  then they get sold elsewhere ...

[angelno9]

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@mr_lincoln wrote:

However, what I would really like news and details on is how eBay will turn around the continued decline in sales that many, many members are reporting here on The Community

---

I think that if eBay knew how to turn it around, they would have done it long ago. 

But personally, I am operating with far less information about sales levels than eBay is. All I have to go on is the GMV numbers in the quarterly reports. Those numbers say that GMV was down 20% in Q1 2022 which is very concerning.  I'd love to know the Q2 numbers but they won't appear until later this summer. 

[onefootflipper]

It doesn't really matter what EBAY chooses to focus on, as long as they let everyone list everything then everything will be for sale and people will find it and buy it. 

Do any of you actually think any sort of ebay focus on sneakers or trading cards is actually hurting your tupperware, vintage board games and Christmas ornament store?

When other sites get big for reselling in certain categories ebay goes after those sites by making those items more attractive to sell here. They have done it for guitars and sneakers. They are doing it for cards to take business from Beckett and TCGplayer. I am sure they are doing it for other categories right now. They actually haven't even tried really hard for cards. That is my main category and they certainly are not throwing 5 percent final value fees at card sellers like they have other categories. 

I am currently doing great, my 5 year plan to pay off my house with ebay proceeds is currently on track to complete in only 9 months. My big secret? I generally post my items cheapest. I don't post them middle of the pack and hope that the 17 cheaper than mine in the search will somehow sell first without getting replaced (although sometimes I ignore one too cheap listing if sold history says it is too far under market). I do have some minimum price points for certain categories that I won't go below, regardless of market prices (they can put it in the dump when I die), but generally I want my items selling first. I can fill my entire van with merchandise any day of the week for about $200. I can't sell a van load a day, so I don't need to try to hold out for the stupid money to come along. I would rather pack it up, get my $5, $10 or $50 or whatever and keep on moving on.

[vintagecraze50]

Interesting read. The most interesting about the trends is that ebay is now getting a lot of sales on digital products. Podcasts, meditation type digital etc. I have said here in a prior post that if you can get into something that is digital this would be a big plus. A digital product will cost so much to create and then becomes a cumulative and residual income product. No more running around trying to source inventory. 

[katzrul15]

@onefootflipper 

Do any of you actually think any sort of ebay focus on sneakers or trading cards is actually hurting your tupperware, vintage board games and Christmas ornament store?

Yes - I do.  E-Bay is doing ZERO advertising except for the Vault, Trading Cards, Watches, Handbags.........And the category debacles for those of us who do not sell in the categories above have been one cluster after another.

There is NO way it is a quinky-dink that so many of us are seeing NO sales all at one time.  The focus is not on the average seller, but the seller whose silos are what e-Bay is currently focusing on.

Glad you have a plan - many of us had one also.  For those of us who have sold here for a really long time - we have seen many stupid changes and some that made sense.  Whatever is going on right now, is REAL and it is affecting MANY of us at the same time.  ymmv

[chapeau-noir]

I'm still chugging along - if I list, I sell - but I sell modestly priced pre-owned clothing, which is something pretty much anyone needs.  I can say this - eBay's intense focus on their verticals is allowing other clothing websites to pull business right out from under eBay, so they're just letting the massive secondary marketplace for sustainable fashion just dribble away.

Also some of us cannot fill a van for $200, so have to factor in inventory acquisition, and that's getting tight around here - I've recently shifted my focus yet again.