Tremendous decline in sales and traffic in last 3 months

[urosh69]

In last 3 months I noticed huge decline in traffic over the night. It dropped down from 250.000 monthly impressions to 30.000 and sales dropped down from 50 to 5.  I do follow all eBay rules, called eBay 3 times and every time i get different answer with no solution. One of them even act like she is doing something but no success.

I sell same products on other places and have no problems there - sells and traffic are steady.

After almost 5 years here on eBay I don't know what is going on but it looks like eBay puts me on standby without any reason.

It looks like eBay Help Center and eBay itself doesn't care about sellers as it did before.

Does anyone had the same problem and what are possible solutions?

Maybe it's time to close the store here since it is waist of time and money at the moment.

[urosh69]

More and more I believe that money from China starts buying an eBay .... so we all see cheap **bleep** Made in China first.
Little by little eBay will become another AliExpres ....

[redline_auto_llc]

Reading another thread, I noticed that sales went from bad to dismal at exactly the same time as eBay stopped displaying all my shipping options. Coincidence? Seems unlikely 

[flo_mingo]

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@urosh69 wrote:
Any suggestion where else you sell? Beside Bonanza, Amazon.

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Brave of you to use market names. I cannot, my hand has been hit with the ruler.  I have been listing on the Artsy platform and found a clothing site m-u-r-c-a-r-.... google should get you there. I chose this over p..mark because I can list from PC. I think P. mark may be a better platform for sales, but can only list from a phone app. I take pictures on camera to PC. I do not want to learn a new listing format at this time. 

[esg-enterprises]

I hope you are wrong, but who knows anymore.

[zamo-zuan]

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@esg-enterprises wrote:

Zamo,

I generally average 5-600 per day on my main account, a good day 2-3x times that, and of course less at times, common sense.

I have had one day in the past 17 that I have reached 500, and my other accounts little or usually nothing.

You have great insight, is ebay now broken beyond repair? and if so someone will have to see the huge void and fill it, right?

I love doing what I do but I am becoming very concerned this could get much worse, and managed payments has not even begun.    

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It's hard to say... I would assume this is just a poor algorithm change. That's at least what we're hoping. For awhile they seemed to be changing algorithm like every 2 weeks.

Each day we come in and hope that this will be changed again. But it's already extended past 2-3 weeks... so we have no choice but to hope for the best. 

[jjrupp]

I agree as well. I used to have no problem selling my items on Ebay. I've been selling for close to 15 years but this last year has been a nightmare! I have decided to step away from Ebay and explore other venues (Where I've Been Selling With NO Problems). I just wasted 48 hours that I'll never get back listing over 200 items that hardly even got a sniff. So goodbye Ebay you were a good platform while you lasted   😞

[bishftl_collectibles]

So what are the other options for sellers who need a change?

My sales are getting worse every week, cannot pay the bills.

Of course this happens right when my subscription is renewed so

I'm screwed either way.

[patd3283]

Zamo, have you all started going to other platforms?

Patd

[canadian_horse]

Ebay has to throttle sales from seller to seller over time to get all sellers into the mix and give them a chance to sell items. I get that, I understand it and I even agree with the tactic employed by Ebay.

The difficulty I have with Ebay throttling my listings is that the difference between my sales when my listings are active to my sales when my listings are not active is a HUGE SWING!!

I can do 10 sales a week or more when I have the green light from Ebay, but then my sales can be ZERO for time periods when Ebay is not showing my listings to prosepctive buyers.

As I said, I understand Ebay's need to throttle each Seller from time-to-time so as to give everyone a chance to make sales, BUT..................PLEASE EBAY....................can you smooth out the difference by maybe averaging out each sellers sales with a sales total per week of  10,8,7,9,10 sequence, for example, instead of a 10,8,7,9,0 sales sequence, as has happened to my account in the past?

I love Ebay for so many reasons, but the HUGE DISCREPENCY in throttling from month to month and the wild swing in sales is very hard for sellers to deal with - cash flow, inventory, projections etc.

[canadian_horse]

Maybe Ebay could show all listings of a particular product to a buyer, with no sellers being throttled, and then the buyer could filter down the results by:

Location (speed of delivery and chance to pickup to save delivery costs)

Price

Sellers Rating

Number of items Sold by this Seller of the product the Buyer is interested in

Years Seller has been on Ebay

Number of other items offered by same Seller (combine shipping discounts opportunities)

Similar products to this item in the same category

New Sellers to Ebay that Offer Similar Product

Etc

Etc

Etc

And the buyer can filter the entire list of ALL SELLERS as much as he/she wants instead of having Ebay filter the list before the buyer sees it.

[canadian_horse]

And Lastly,

Ebay has to invest and develop the LOCAL BUYING category of their website.  I can buy from Facebook, Kijiji and other platforms easily because of the Local buying aspect of those platforms. But Ebay's local platform section/option is very under-developed and needs to be expanded, or marketed better. 

I would love to list things for local pickup through Ebay, just as I do with Facebook and Kijiji, but it seems that Ebay has no interest in developing that area of its e-commerce website.

Please Ebay, your local pickup options can be greatly enhanced to the benefit of all sellers, and of course, buyers.

[canadian_horse]

Sorry, one last thing again,

Ebay should reward sellers who buy alot from the Ebay platform itself. I do alot of buying from other Ebay sellers. So, if I am supporting the community moreso than another seller, and if Sellers are to be ranked as they currently are, Ebay should give preferential standing to those Ebay Sellers than buy alot from other Ebay Sellers.

Thank you for taking the time to read my comments.

[turquoisetulips]

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@urosh69 wrote:
Hi,
I'm aware of up and down periods but what makes me wonder is that happened over the night.
Since you all noticed that my sales increased, except me, I have a question.
Is it possible that someone "kidnapped" my account and make a sales without me knowing it?

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I'd hope not .You'd think  someone would quickly catch on .. . However I totally agree .Something dreadful has happened to plummet sales . My own are down 48 %  from this time last year with no explanation.  The same best sellers that always sold reasonably  well aren't  being viewed  even with the current bump in promotions I tagged on .. About 1/2 of my older listings have had multiple watchers  for weeks  but nobody actually makes a purchase . One e bay rep told me that e bay is aware sales are way down  for a lot of  people  but they placed the blame on things like Spring break [HUH ?}  .. That idea didn't make much sense to me . Not everybody goes on Spring break but even if they did  it wouldn't stop them from buying . I've made one 11 dollar sale in a week  and that was with free shipping . It's a complete disaster at the moment  with no reason to believe it's going to change . All good things must come to an end  so perhaps we all need to accept it . Tulips 

[jewelbiz]

EBay has simply put,

                                                                “Jumped the Shark”

[taxes101]

 I feel like listings are not being seen sometimes. (rolling blackouts?)

To experiment I posted several things on ebay then posted the same things on another site (O-U) within minutes.

HUGE difference.  Ebay will show 2 views compared to 30 views on the other site in the same time period. The views continue to rise nicely on the other site, but, stay stagnant or may go up by only 1 or 2 on Ebay after a whole day goes by.

This makes me think that the items are given a short time-frame for which to be seen and then they don't get seen again for quite some time. 

I honestly don' t know what is happening, but, the views on the other site are clearly wayyyyy more.  If only the viewers over there were BUYERS too! I have sold a few things there, maybe it will get better as more buyers and sellers leave Ebay out of sheer frustration!

Just my experience.