eBay

cb-boards · ‎04-23-2018

Let me preface this by saying I understand that there is not universal acceptance that eBay throttles their sellers; I respect the opinion of those people who feel they do not and hope that they will do me the courtesy of respecting mine and to please not turn this post into a debate about whether or not eBay throttles sellers, to what extent they do, how or why they would do such etc. I do not mean for this to come off as rude, I just would like this thread to stay on point and be an ongoing discussion amongst sellers who believe eBay does throttle us with tips on how to best deal and position ourselves in such an environment.

With that being said, I have a particular listing that up until 2 weeks ago, over the prior 3 months I had sold a whopping total of 5 of these items. About 2 weeks ago I managed to sell 3 in a 2 day period to different buyers. Over the course of the next 2 weeks I sold 19...about 4x the amount in two weeks then I had sold in the prior 3 months!!! This is not an exogenous event, I have seen these types of patterns so many times that I can not possibly think it is an exogenous coincidence.

It seems very obvious to me that if you want sales, you need visibility for your listings. In order to get visibility for your listings you need sales. A classic chicken vs. eg scenario. eBay buries the listings of items that don't sell and give enhanced visibility to those that do. I usually do a few things to circumvent this sort of throttling. (This example above is one of the instances where I did nothing to the listing as an attempt to illustrate my point about eBay throttling. ) But I usually:

1) When an item that doesn't have any sales within a 2-3 week period, I will usually cancel the listing. Instead of "re-listing" I will "sell similar." This way it appears as a new listing.

2) If my sales for a particular item that I have many of are slow, I will run a sale for a 3-4 day period droping the price to pretty much break even after I factor in my shipping, fees etc. While I normally don't like to work for free this way, sometimes dropping the price will drastically will ignite sells over a short time and over the next 4 days I may sell 5 or 6. While it is true that I may not have made any profits, however I:

A) reduce inventory

B) Now have several sales that might help generate more product visibility...so if I originally had it priced at $30 when it wasn't selling and lowered the price to breakeven at $18, now it might start to sell a little more regularly at $24 now that I have a little bit of a track record.

I'd love to hear from other sellers who believe eBay throttles on what they do to deal with it. Again, for those that don't believe in eBay throttling I respect your opinion but I ask that you please not discuss that here. I would be happy to discuss this issue if you would like to start a new post. I would like this thread to stay on topic and be a forum for sellers on how to best position our listings to cope with throttling. It would be quite difficult to add value to this topic if one doesn't believe in eBay throttling to begin with. So again, I hope my desire to stay on point will be respected.

tunicaslot · ‎04-24-2018

I'm also on another site that does not have a filter for solds - so you don't know what similar items have sold for. Is it a race to the bottom there as the range of prices on an identical item is $10 - $75? If other sellers see that $10 item sold - they are going to lower their prices to get that next sale.

If you can afford to sit on an item for 2 yrs to get your requested price - more power to you - but the name of the game is to make money. I know others here bought low from sellers who priced low and resold it for higher - so in that case the race to the bottom profited them - did it not.

braamh-0 · ‎04-24-2018

@stonevintage wrote:
I've never seen anything like "don't put photos in the body of the discription, but in the photo area only - it's good to still max out to the 12 in Mobile?

Seems like if "too much information" is being displayed for mobile, and photos are always larger consumers of space - why would it matter, once that listing was pulled for viewing, if they were in the photo area or in the body of the description? I thought the initial "selection process" by the computer was dependent on Best Match unless the shopper selected otherwise - regardless of which position the photos were in the listing.

Because of the way that the the the website presents the photos.

On eBay the photos up top optimize to work well and not use up alot of data. Depending upon where the photos down below are hosted they can suck up a lot of data.

The ones up top are also optimize to load quickly while the ones down below depending upon where they are hosting can load very slow and keep the entire listing from being able to be seen.

HTML does not work very well on mobile phones forcing the buyers to scroll side to side as well as up and down.

Not to mention it actually looks far more professional to have a plain white background and not a lot of junk in the description.

yuzuha · ‎04-24-2018

Things are only worth what buyers are willing to pay for them. You can list something that has zero sold history to compare to, and if buyers think the price isn't reasonable, they won't buy.

greg_kurtz · ‎04-24-2018

eBay buyers want this.....

They want it for next to nothing
They want free shipping yesterday
They want to "Buy it, (Try it, Use it, Break it), Return it (No questions asked), Keep the item"
On other words, they want it all with no effort on their part.

Any questions?

stonevintage · ‎04-24-2018

Though, my highest sales had no sold history. That's when I get excited about a find, that's what it's all about for me. I love it when there are no listings, no completeds and no solds. Rare air rush:)

emerald40 · ‎04-24-2018

@stonevintage wrote:
Though, my highest sales had no sold history. That's when I get excited about a find, that's what it's all about for me. I love it when there are no listings, no completeds and no solds. Rare air rush:)

_________________________________________

If there are no completeds or solds chances are what you had is a very unique item. So yes those tend to sell higher.

I am willing to pay more in my category for items I have not seen before and may never see again.

As to the more common items, we all in our individual categories know what they are worth. I do not need a sold listing to know what I am willing to pay for it. So hiding sold listings is not going to make the average buyer pay more for it.

tunicaslot · ‎04-25-2018

@greg_kurtz wrote:
eBay buyers want this.....
They want it for next to nothing
They want free shipping yesterday
They want to "Buy it, (Try it, Use it, Break it), Return it (No questions asked), Keep the item"
On other words, they want it all with no effort on their part.
Any questions?

Let me ask - have you tried other platforms? If not - read their forum and discussion areas or go to Facebook and join one of the trifting reseller groups - I see the same complaints about every other platform. I don't like it either - but it's happening all across independent sites on e-commerce - not just Ebay. Sites like Ebay need buyers to survive and sellers take a back seat. If you have your own web site - then you get to make the policies - if not and are using a venue like Ebay - you play by their rules.

shevey55 · ‎04-25-2018

I'm listening. What's wrong with my listings (besides being in a saturated catagory)? Sales about shut off in mid March. I only had 4 sales in April. March and April have always been decent in past years.

I slack off on new listings from Jan-April because I work a job during those months, but it's the same every year. I've been listing several new items every day for the past week, auction and BIN.

On April 21 I made one sale and got 2 bids, then crickets again. I'd hardly say I had my turn at sales. I didn't even make enough to pay my fees.

tunicaslot · ‎04-25-2018

First you come here with a chip on your shoulder - so you're not going to take any advice people give you seriously. Your problem - yes children's clothes is over saturated. I stopped selling them because even brands like Ralph Lauren and Hanna Anderson were hard to sell - let alone common brands.

Gymboree was a great brand to sell 2 years ago - now - people pass it by - same as Children's Place. Being kids grow out of their clothes so quickly - parents don't want to spend that kind of money on things. They can go to the Salvation Army or Goodwill and get like new clothing for 50% off. Garage sale season is starting here in the north - kids clothes sell for 25 - 50 cents. That's where I got my inventory when I sold kids clothes. Can't tell you the number of bags I donated to Goodwill / Salvation Army - I now avoid it like the plague.

My advice - watch youtube videos and see what items that resellers are actually buying that will sell and give you a profit. People always have to keep educating themselves. They shouldn't depend on others to do their research for them. If something isn't selling - check completeds - are others selling for less - is the item selling at all?

I checked a couple of the complainers accts and they are in such a small niche that no one was selling their items. There are so many hobby groups and many times - that's where the sales happen - but they blame Ebay.

My sales have quieted down the past week - am I happy - no but I'll continue to list here and elsewhere and hope for the best.

robot-hands · ‎04-25-2018

When it takes 2-3 days for even an ebay bot to see your listing and register a view you know your traffic or listing processing is artificially being choked off.

tunicaslot · ‎04-25-2018

The view and watcher count has been a glitch for a while now - doesn't mean a thing - I lost over 1/2 my watchers last night if you look at the count - but I also had a sale on an item that I registered 0 views.

coolections · ‎04-25-2018

I can buy it now your Carrie book for $20 with shipping and you are asking $140. Do you really expect views ? I've seen so many high priced sellers blame Ebay but WOW...

rschissler · ‎04-25-2018

@robot-hands wrote:
When it takes 2-3 days for even an ebay bot to see your listing and register a view you know your traffic or listing processing is artificially being choked off.

That is so off base! More excuses for not selling.

blu_surfwear · ‎04-25-2018

The items is unbranded as we note and it ships free USPS Priority Mail from the USA as we indicate in the listing.

When using something like this a diver wants to know they have quality merchandise that will keep them dry and warm. I'm not saing you're not selling a quality item - but most experienced divers would rather have a brand name suit that has gotten reviews and they know they can trust.

You are correct. We have been selling our wetsuits on ebay for 2 years and did about $165,000 my first year and $175,000 my second year and am on track to doing the same this year. This account is a secondary account for a slightly different line of wetsuits we plan on bringing in.

Believe it or not, some people selling here actually know what they are doing and just because they are not happy with there sales it doesn't mean they don't know what they are doing. They just want to do better. I doubled the number of styles i had after year 1 after proof of concept and only grew sales a measley $10,000. I would say 50-60% our styles are custom made ones by our supplier to our specs.

About 9 months ago I had a new suit we designed and brought in last year and it sold all 50 in about 5-6 weeks. We had ordered more in week three when we knew we had a winner in this style. When we got them in we listed them and over the first 3-4 months we sold about 7 of them.

When an item gets sales they get great visibility and sell even more. If an item here on ebay doesn't sell it gets buried by ebay. I get that not every item here will be able to be listed and visibile in the top of page 1. I think sellers who like myself who convinced some of there listings are being throttled just want to know if there are a few tricks we could be doing to bump us up from maybe 23rd from the top to 11th. It isn't that we don't know our merchandise and the demand for our products, our competition, or how to sell on ebay. Not saying we can't improve our listings but I'm doing $175,000 a year in sales so I must be doing a few things right.

turquoisetulips · ‎04-25-2018

For you j. kirkland,

I wouldn't open with "Okay, I'll be nice and play along..."

That already sounds condescending, as if you were being merciful.

All of these passive agressive comments leading to provoking someone else to reply in a negative tone is juvenile.

They ask for your cooperation, and you all just dive in like a bunch of hyenas. dr.clockenstien - unquote ---------------------------------------------------------------

No disrespect intented towards the person you were replying to with the above statement. It's just these type of posts seem to be getting more common . They were one of the first things I noticed when I first began coming to these boards.[ not from who you posted to here , but from others ] I've seen ops begin threads in a very polite way simply asking for a bit of advice just to have the whole thread turn into pages of rude insults and even some horrible accusations against the op. Actually this reply from [jk] was very mild in comparison to some others I've read. IMO , the whole idea of these boards was to provide help for buyers and sellers when they have an issue . Certainly not to provide a battleground for people who have a chip on their shoulder and want to point a finger at someone whenever they see the slightest opening . Yet some posters insist on it ,, not all of course . Most replies are still from people who really want to help . However Just recently an op began a thread asking for some advice because he had made ONE error when purchasing an item . He was forthcoming and admitted it was his fault and wanted to make amends with the seller . Instead of help he found himself being insulted and blocked by quite a few of the sellers responding for some pretty petty reasons . So Guess what happened ? He never came back and we may have lost yet another e bay buyer . Furthermore if any other potentional buyers had stumbled on that thread they too may have decided e bay just wasn't the place for them either . This type of stuff isn't helping , its not helping buyers , sellers , or e bay for that matter . So were in agreement . Hopefully things will improve . Tulips