Sudden drop in sales May 2022

[partfinds]

Please, report here if you recently within a week or so experienced sudden drop in sales. We can then ask Velvet to pass it on to technical team for review of the accounts. https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Updates-are-happening-to-some-item-specifics-and-category/m-p/...

[kjacobs52]

What is PL? Hear everyone talking abiut it, but I don't know whar it is???

[nuclearomen]

---

@kjacobs52 wrote:

What is PL? Hear everyone talking abiut it, but I don't know whar it is???

---

Promoted Listing

[kjacobs52]

Finally, for the 1st time in months, a search for my prouct shows my listing, and other sellers of the same item that I havent seen on a search in a long time. All the complaining here and at other sites seems to have woke blokes up. Knock on wodd and hope it stays working properly.

[mr_lincoln]

Hi @kjacobs52 ,  It means "Promoted Listings"

Here is a link to the eBay Help pages for Promoted Listings Standard, it helps explain the promotion function. 

Promoted Listings Standard | eBay

Additionally, here is a link to a thread that covers many of the acronyms used here on the Community.

eBay Community Glossary - The eBay Community

Regards,

Mr. L

[lawnmowerpartsstore2]

You are so helpful 😉

[mr_lincoln]

---

@lawnmowerpartsstore2 wrote:

You are so helpful 😉

---

@lawnmowerpartsstore2 

My sincere thanks .... 

Mr. L

[nuclearomen]

I know a secret... but need to test it some more first to be certain on it...

[aqeeqsouq]

@nuclearomen 

When you will reveal the "Secret" to us? I can't wait..

[orlando_artist]

Absolutely. Large companies can negotiate with USPS for discounts. Many people, corporations and even our government have long thought that Amazon gets incredibly deep discounts from. carriers, including USPS, for the volume they do. It's worth noting that the discount we receive on shipping from eBay is a commercial rate and not public rate. BUT... because of the way eBay collects their fees from sellers (off the entirety of sale, listing fees, And shipping), we sellers rarely actually get a commercial or discounted rate, because whatever shipping discount we get is variably money Owed to us because eBay took a cut of their fees from our shipping.

There's an obvious conflict of interest here with eBay fees since they take their fees off the top: from sale of item, including shipping, then give us back the percent they fee'd us on shipping to correct for their taking fees from said shipping total. So, it's not actually logical or financially benefitial for a seller to 'shop around' elsewhere for shipping (IE directly from carriers and not on eBay), or else we automatically lose the % shipping "rebate" that eBay Owes us - from every sale. We only get our fees taken from shipping when we buy our labels on eBay. Sellers on eBay are financially locked into this shipping scheme.

Now, we should all understand that the reason ebay takes their fees from the whole sale including shipping is because, once upon a time, some crafty, unscrupulous sellers were highly reducing their item prices, or ie selling a $50 item for $0.99, and jacking up the shipping price (ie $49 plus relative shipping cost), to avoid eBay fees on the item sale. Because, a long time ago now, eBay didn't take their fees from shipping at all. And of course that was defrauding eBay, and they were forced to do something about it, and they did - they fee the grand total of every sale. Ebay's been doing that exact thing for well over 15 years now. I don't even know when they began taking fees from the grand total. It's a perfect system for them, but a rotten system for sellers. There Must be a better way to do this, but they've ignored revisiting this situation, likely because there Nothing in it for them. They're making out like bandits on their fee scheme, so why change. 

Any way, if it's not clear, sellers aren't getting commercial rates on shipping, eBay is. They're not passing commercial saving on to sellers, they're eating it for breakfast. To make a long story short it was bad for their business when sellers were screwing them of fees, and their measures were understandable; they turned it around. But it's all grossly an eBay benefit and no sellers see any benefits.

USPS has indicated they're raising rates once again for the holiday season, beginning in October. And for those thinking that's a season rate increase that will come down after the holidays (because of higher package volumes, they say), they've also mentioned a rate increase in January 2023.

While I don't have any answers to this enormous dilemma, I have a ton of questions. 

[mr_lincoln]

@orlando_artist   I think one point your post was gravitating around is the fact that the ever-increasing shipping rates levied by carriers has had an adverse effect on selling online in general.  And more specifically to larger items subject to being in the Dimensional weight class or more recently with USPS subject to their surcharges for longer packages. 

I see this on 40-60 year old factory sealed electric train sets where the boxes measure up to 33" - 34" long before you pack them.  Others are "boxy" and exceed the Dimensional weight threshold.  They just sit as a set (even with Local pick up added).

so what I wind up doing is opening the sets and listing all the items inside individually and the items sell that way ... and some very quickly.  It is sad to be honest because of how rare some of the full sets can be but at the end of the day the item(s) has to sell since I am not a collector of them.

[nuclearomen]

@orlando_artist 
The correction is Amazon is not getting discounted shipping like other sites when negotiate contracts with carriers. They get their shipping subsidized which has been highly called out upon. 
Ebay does offer discount on most services, can see it when compare the prices to the retail counter prices for USPS, in some cases price can be quite a bit difference. However yes, ebay is taking their fees and charging you on the shipping if you charge for shipping. They do not take it if you offer free shipping. 
There are services that offer better rates, Pirate Ship can be quite beneficial depending on package and service. I sent a Priority Mail trade package to Texas that was over $20 to send retail for $12 and change (before the new rates recently took effect but can still get good discount). 

USPS raises rates 2x a year, sometimes 3. They always raise at holiday season and then directly after in the new year. Actually all carriers do not just USPS. 

[lawnmowerpartsstore2]

Pirate Ship is the go to for shipping

[nuclearomen]

---

@aqeeqsouq wrote:

@nuclearomen 

When you will reveal the "Secret" to us? I can't wait..

---

uh ha... yeah, well I got busy doing other stuff, working, filling orders etc, family stuff...

So, I already talked to @mr_lincoln about this so i miss any thing they can fill in things may think is needed. 

There was issue with PLS campaigns, and the no sales effect things with PL's, losing momentum - your sales consistency - has direct impact in impressions of course. So few weeks back I ended and created new PLS campaign and changed (raised) election rates. When the min election percentage went up I already was electing the new min and didn't change anything due to it...but that made things worse. Suspicion is that in my category those who were not electing the min now are and / or electing/raised higher.... some categories like music, are popular with tons and tons of sellers, prior 2% worked fine...not anymore. 

So anyways - blah, boring we been over this stuff. I however didn't gain sales and my impressions were staying the same. Week or so past I decided something wasn't right and ended and created new campaign again - which helped, impressions rose, got few sales... nothing major but minor improvements. 

Following this been tinkering with listings, came to the point of ended a relisting older listings... but found upon doing this wasn't getting any views or sales on any of them. Did this for a week-2 weeks - really yielding no results from it. Telling myself things are still not right and frustrated, I decided to keep doing it, but decided not to relist via "Sell Similar" - which is a new listing, but found when I do this, it would relist and not get any views (other my own view logged out in incognito window). So decided to end listings and not relist but create entire new listing for instead. Every time i did this I also went into PLS campaign and removed the listing I was ending BEFORE I ended it. Then I create new listing, exactly the same as the one I ended, nothing (NOTHING) changed in the listings, not a word, picture specific etc... Found when I did this for several listings they were getting views and watcher and 2 even sold vs when i did it via sell similar, nothing, nothing at all. So I have continued this, and every time, every single time, the listings are at least getting views, some not a lot, and don't expect them to, as told Mr Lincoln , I have stuff up don't expect to get much action on or even likely sell here. But doing this getting them at least some views were prior - nothing. What this is doing is building your impressions back, that momentum you lost from period of no sales, in turn making some sales also so you building the conversion rates etc.. at same time. Can't and never can say "things are going to sell this way" - what I can say in my experience is it has raised my impressions both PL and organic and other stats from in the negative back to the positive side of the spectrum. Some items have gotten 40 views within several days with watchers where again, prior - nothing. 

Can it be has something to do with the search and algorithms? Idk... likely it is helping in the newly added searches - which is why I try to add new items daily, ebay has always favored activity, some can argue if it actually helps, but I always believe it does for my category - which again, has thousands of sellers and thousands of new listings daily. All I know and can, doing this, this way, has gotten all my stats back to the positive realm, and sales been happening almost daily again. So take all this how will, just reporting what has worked for me. 

[nuclearomen]

@aqeeqsouq 
To further show how it has helped, here is my current PLS campaign graph, all those numbers on the top were prior in negatives. 

[lawnmowerpartsstore2]

interesting