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/...

[ci1000]

Sorry but I'm not real clear on what that's supposed to mean.

[partfinds]

@nuclearomen 

“@benz_li all I can suggest is to end and create new campaign...really that's all we can do aside from play with election percentages, everything else is on ebay, we have no control or access to their system(s), algorithms etc... I can say that the old way running the same campaign for months doesn't work any more... you literally need to end and start new often - at least every 30 days - been my experience anyways. ‘

i don’t want to do it as earlier the algorithm was negatively affecting new campaigns — like you needed to jack up the promoted rate. I think that @zamo-zuan  was mentioning that but maybe he can comment if it is advisable at this time.

[zamo-zuan]

Honestly, it's a gamble. 

Certain people have reported starting new ones works better. But in our category, restarting is literally always a drop, and then momentum builds over time.

It sucks that it's a risk to even touch your promotions. But that's the sad reality.

Here's a screenshot, you can see the exact date we changed our campaigns, and the drop we received, and then the momentum building over time:

Also of note, how the Organic drops, and raises, alongside the Promoted momentum... 

I want to also be clear, we did NOT reduce our rates, we simply changed our campaigns to the new type that eBay had (it used to let you edit by spreadsheet OR manually, and now those are separated in to 2 different types of campaigns).

If we reduced our rates, the Promoted AND Organic would be even larger of a drop.

TLDR: It's at your own risk. For some, momentum builds over time and restarting loses the momentum. Other, they lose momentum after 30 days. 

[blacktopautoparts]

In our category starting new ones does not help at all, and it is a slow burn getting the promotions to even get going. They do drop the first few days for sure anytime that we restart these and then it takes sometime for them to start working properly.

We have tried both the PLS - Basic and Automated, and I feel like Automated tends to perform worse than Basic after all of the tests that we have done the past year.

The last few weeks, I have also noticed that our eBay Page Views are down by 25% and then the Organic are is up by 15%. Go figure on what is being pulled here number wise. Even walking through this with the reps they are baffled by some of the way these numbers are showing.

We never raise or lower our rates either. When we let them run their course, we end the campaign and start another one.

[nilis13]

I've called in the past, got absolutely no where.

[nuclearomen]

---

@blacktopautoparts wrote:

Piggybacking off of the other thread you replied to me on yesterday, but it seems like the impressions are borked yet again as of today. It is so strange, yesterday we had a pretty good day and felt like days of old. Then today, it is just like Friday all over again. Where we made several sales in the morning and then at one point the sales have just stopped and we have gone several hours now without a sale. This campaign is only a few days which I restarted on Friday, wonder if I should end it and start it all over again.

---

@blacktopautoparts @partfinds @zamo-zuan I can't possibly tell anyone what "works" and what "doesn't work" - because there is no real answer here. Things that others do, like @zamo-zuan do not work for me at all, I tried them, they work for zamo because of his history of selling, the category he sells in, the election rates he elects, the time periods he runs them for, etc etc etc etc.... they MAY help for others selling in his category, just as things I do and my "strategies" may help others selling in my category - little pieces here and little there may help anyone but I have yet to discuss a "strategy" with anyone on boards or privately that has actually worked for me as it has for THEM. What does this tell all tell me? NOTHING - literally - Nothing - I cannot figure out why particular strategies work for me or someone else, but not others. The only answer I have been able to come up with is 1 either the algorithms are personalized to seller where they learn based off sellers selling history (are we in 2050 yr yet? lol) or 2. it has nothing to do with anything except Election Percentages - but then you can jack those elections up 10% + from your current and it will help impressions, it will get more clicks - it doesn't however mean you'll get more sales. So IDK - someone tell me? The ONLY thing that has ever worked for me, is to end and start a new campaign and my impressions/clicks and sales go up when i do usually - depending is any given day/time the issue is actually PLS and not some other horse radish ebay has going on at the moment.  

[nuclearomen]

---

@nilis13 wrote:

I've called in the past, got absolutely no where.

---

@nilis13 yup, like i said - go through the hoops for nothing or just do what ever you can on your own... that's ebay and especially PLs - you are ON YOUR OWN for the better part of it. 

[reallynicestamps]

I'm not sure why comparing today to yesterday is useful. Or before noon to after noon.

Admittedly there are seven time zones in North America, and not all of them use Daylight Savings.

Really you have to compare this year to last year. Or because of the pandemic surge, 2022 to 2019. There may still be a drop, but instead of comparing apples to oranges, you are comparing Granny Smiths to Honeycrisp.

[blacktopautoparts]

I have tried that game in the past jacking up the promoted listings percentage to 20% in the past to see what kind of results we would get on our account. About the only thing it does get you is more clicks and impressions, but doesn't result in getting sales conversions out of it.

The only theory that I can think of lately the more that I review all this is that the algorithm is solely based on each personal account and depending on what metrics are built into this algo is how we are getting our sales. Then add the talk from the one VP from eBay Open that as you get more returns, it also affects your account with sales. They keep adding layers upon layers to us trying to sell on here and its doing nothing but causing a lack of sales.

Just like you @nuclearomen and @zamo-zuan, I have had reps tell me I know more than their staff when talking with them. It is sad that us sellers can talk most of eBay reps and their upper management around in circles.....funny part is that most have no clue how the site even works and they provide support for it. The best is when you get reps blaming things on the elections, covid, and the economy. While these are factors that play into some of this, the bigger problem is the toying around with the platform that some third rate developers keeping making changes on causing us all of these headaches since Mid-May 2022 which is when a lot of this started.

[blacktopautoparts]

Sure it is useful to compare day to day, that is how you notice certain trends going on with the eBay platform. I will be honest with you, you sound like one of the eBay reps that will say the same thing to me. To run a successful business at the scale that some of us are, you need to be also looking at day to day because the platform is a mess. Some of us are trying to see if there are certain patterns and trends that are coming out of this. I have been doing some day to day testing since last Monday, 10/31 where I have noticed some very strange patterns that are occurring each day as how sales are coming in.

[nuclearomen]

@blacktopautoparts 
the one thing that increasing percentage(s) does is helps get views and raise your impressions I have said before various places/private that a lot of it is timing - the algorithms seem to favor your peak selling times, and if it's not your "time" upping rates by 20% won't do squat other then maybe one sale and a huge chunk more out of your pocket. 

I'm no programmer or market analysis pro... I can only speak to my own experiences using PLS since it started for me and going off the experiences of ebay changes that have corrupted PLs in general. I don't even get to talk to someone who is anyone at ebay, i get general reps who's only job is to make a report and send a ticket to the "appropriate team" and who generally blow of some bss and have no clue what they are talking about. 
 

Like you, the theory I have come up with is that the algo's are somehow in someway designed to ride off a sellers selling history, rate of sales, seller level etc etc... though I have had from plenty others tell me that's impossible, but when someone comes up with a better explanation I'm sticking to it - algo's that learn is not new, who's to say they haven't employed them to PLs when no ones really knows squat about what's under the hood...even if did likely i wouldn't understand 2 cents of it anyways. But the "stacking" makes sense to me when you mention it. 

Sad thing is October seen best month is several but as soon as Nov 1st hit it just vanished. Oct sales weren't record breaking, but they out performed the last several months in terms of consistency and how many of the sales were via PL - I gave more to ebay last month for PL sales then ever did before - ever - most every sale (like 6 out of 7 - consistently) was on PL. 

[partfinds]

@zamo-zuan “But in our category, restarting is literally always a drop, and then momentum builds over time.‘

I noticed that after May 2022 updates but wasn;t sure if that is still the case. I stopped creating or changing anything in the campaigns as it seems that listings were waiting for some approval which was taking long time. Not to mention that listings were hard to assign to new campaings - they were defaulted to the first on the list. 
my promoted impressions are currently in 6k range - drop from about 20k (2/3 drop)- it is huge. I haven’t changed anything . I think Ebay is again trying to get all sellers to jack up rates or they are forcing us to do stuff to test 

[ci1000]

I don't sell auto parts and I'm pretty much a light weight in regards to the sales you all generate.  That being said.... I read all of your posts and have been ending my listings after they have been on market for 60 days.  I also end the related PLs.  I do not "relist" I use the "new listing" option in Six-Bit.  I've never used eBay's listing tools.  Views are absurd!  I realize that it takes time to index but that just doesn't even begin to explain it!

I have no clue if this is working for me or not.  My sales are on a roller coaster ride EVERY month.  Sporadic and there doesn't seem to be anything in all of graphs etc that explains why this is all happening.  Are they doing this to us on an individual accumulative basis based on whatever algorithm is the flavor of the day?

I'm so lost and I so want eBay to listen and fix the things they've broken..... Please!!

[partfinds]

@zamo-zuan @nuclearomen 

today I woke up to the view counter reset. ALL my listings show 0 in the views area and almost all show 0 watchers. It seems that we have repetition of exactly what happened in May this year when they changed the bot view counters. Something is up and it is not right 

[debbie6438]

Very odd, last night views and watch counts were very high for some old films I have on!

The first round ends in a few days, so this morning, all views and counts are at zero????

How can this be? Maybe because we phoned in last night to tell the tech that the cut and

paste was not working, and the text was corrupted. We probably being punished for

complaining? I have a feeling that THEY are not listening to us on these pages!

The new listing tool is also a joke! WHY WHY WHY change something that works?

This could turn out to be the second worse sales holiday season since they implemented

managed payments system! Are trying to kill us off? OR kill sales? 'Cause that's what

they are doing!