Updates are happening to some item specifics and category structures

[community_team]

We announced in our most recent Seller Update that we’ve revised some categories and item specifics to help make your listings easier to find on eBay and by external search engines. 

Starting today, you’ll see updates to the following categories:

Business & Industrial (Sinks)

Collectibles & Toys 

Electronics (Cameras)

Health & Beauty (Covid tests)

Home & Garden

Parts & Accessories (Wheels & Tires)

Sporting Goods (Golf & Cycling)

Watches

During this transition, your listing experience could be temporarily impacted, as well as the visibility of your listings.  You may notice some item specifics changing names, listings moved to different categories, or some listings temporarily not appearing in searches. 

Any affected listings should return to normal within a week, though some effects to listings’ visibility in searches may continue for up to three weeks. 

Once these changes are complete, we recommend checking your listings in the above categories to see if any were affected.  Learn more about category changes → please scroll down the page to see the links for the specific category changes.

We understand these updates will take extra time and may cause some frustration, but our goal is to help you increase your listings’ visibility and sales. 

Keep an eye on this page over the coming days—we’ll be sharing up-to-date information on affected categories and listings, and answering any questions you have. 

[albany_sellers]

Add me to the list too. Sales have nosedived in a big way. 

I am having an unusual amount of low sales or no sales days. Like most others, I am down about the same 40%

[del_boy-trotters_independent_trading_co]

Hi,

I am also having dramatic drop in sales

del_boy-trotters_independent_trading_co

Kind regards

Tesh

[del_boy-trotters_independent_trading_co]

My sales have completely stopped dead. Please also add me to this list.

I don't know if they want us to now "promote" our listings at a cost.

This means they would not only want approximately 12.9 in fees + international fees + listing fees + promotional fees, then that would amount to 20-25%. If you are working on a 10% margin, then you would be at loss.

I spoke to a representative and said to them, that they may as well be a shareholder in my company and in fact why don't they just take over and I'll come and work for them.

[gurlcat]

If it's any consolation, NO, promoting or increasing the promotion rate doesn't seem to make a difference, not for me anyway.  Thing is, you don't pay for the promotion if the item doesn't sell anyway, but I've tried swallowing the bitter pill and UPPING my promotion rate just trying to GET items sold like they used to, but it doesn't even seem to make a difference.  

[gurlcat]

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@dhbookds wrote:

I see about 88 solds so far this month.......last 90 days 336, average of 112.........do you call this a stall? 

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If you're just a hobby seller and don't rely on sales for your living expenses (let alone if you are paying one or more employees to do this), if your income here is just "fun" money, and if you sell only a few items per month, then 88 might seem like a lot, but for someone whose full time business this is, it might be catastrophic.  You are also citing sold item figures as if the price of each item is not a factor, lol. 

I assume the people whose worry you question are too busy scrambling for recovery to answer your question, but here's one for you: if someone says their sales are stalling, why would they be lying???

[oneglassman]

You hit the nail right smack dab on the head. Some sellers are businesses, and some are hobbyist.  My sales have been up & down for months, and some of the problems were caused by Ebay changing the Item & Specifications Categories. But it made me very aware to check every listing I have on Ebay for mistakes and things that were changed when Ebay reset their system. I found a lot of items had been changed to the wrong category, so I have corrected them, and sales are picking back up little by little.

With the economy on a spiral, buyers are thinking twice about want they need or want. 

[gurlcat]

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@oneglassman wrote:

With the economy on a spiral, buyers are thinking twice about want they need or want. 

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Anyone would be a fool to expect their sales to have NO impact from people tightening their belts due to inflation, of course.  But I find it very frustrating when someone offers that as the only answer to what some of us have observed, that is, literal OVERNIGHT dropoffs, namely in view counts (mine occurred on May 12th and has not recovered).  And no it didn't have anything to do with the change Ebay made with no longer showing bot views; that already happened back in February or March.  Something has happened to the actual visibility of (some) sellers' listings, and happened suddenly.  Even increasing my promoted rates hasn't helped.  I can see right on my Traffic page where my impressions have gone way up (the green portion of the bar) since I hiked my promotion rates, but Views have stayed stagnant. 

[dhbookds]

if someone says their sales are stalling, why would they be lying???

Let's be clear about one thing............I never accused anyone of lying.....

I do think some sellers have a knee jerk reaction to differences in sales and assume there is something drastically wrong......  I've certainly done it myself about myself.......  When I actually checked the numbers, they weren't down either that much or sometimes they were actually greater than a like time the last year. 

If you check the seller to whom I referred......as of now, he has 118 sales in June/345 in 90 days/average of 115 per month........ 

I won't reiterate all the reasons that anyone's sales can be down.......outside of any Ebay actions.....I think all of us understand the state of the world.  As far as Ebay's actions, anything they can do can affect any of us in a good or bad way, either for a short time or  longer.  Watching & adjusting, is a constant necessity (my opinion) on Ebay.......as it is with retail anywhere....to ignore that is be imperil your business.....whether it's full time or a hobby...........

[gracieallen01]

@community_team  wrote back on the 18th of May:

"Any affected listings should return to normal within a week, though some effects to listings’ visibility in searches may continue for up to three weeks."

It is really amazing just how long 1-3 weeks can be when waiting for something good to happen - like visibility of listings to return, a fever to break or the flu to pass, etc., etc.

It almost makes one think that hobbyists do have their places, just not in computer programming or design.

[gurlcat]

But how do you know they didn't average a lot MORE than 115/mo before?  And just because it turned out you were wrong about a "knee jerk reaction" you had in the past doesn't mean that's what's happening now, to other sellers.  There are people in this thread who've seen far more than you, and know a real Ebay-caused problem when they see it.  For example, to me this looks a lot like 'The Glitch That Stole Christmas' late fall and winter of 2019, which only affected clothing people (me included at the time). 
Just have some humility about possibility that people know what they're talking about, that's all I'm saying.   

[gurlcat]

Another thing, which I only touched on before, but I'll elaborate on it --the sale AMOUNT per item.  If you look at my sales purely in terms of items sold, heck there might not be much of a difference since they down-throttled my visibility.  But if I've sold about as many items as usual, it's only because I've had to do SHARP discounts, sending out offers that would have made me laugh in the past, and had auctions of extremely collectible items close at heartbreakingly low winning bids.   And it's NOT just because people have less money to spend.  Anyone in advertising knows, people will "window shop" even without a penny in their pockets.  That is not happening even with items that would have gotten me insane view counts in the past.  
And dude, they ADMITTED there was a visibility issue back in May, so ....... I just don't get why you still doubt it.  

[tlcfloral]

How do I go about getting added to the list of sellers who have had a very large drop in sales over the last month or two?

Tracy (TLC Floral).

Thanks

[ci1000]

You can add me to the list too.  I had a sudden drop in sales mid May and still haven't recovered. Something is not right with eBay right now and it began mid May.

Not sure if this is related to the current problems but on May 13th there was a major disruption.  Couldn't log on or do anything in my store.  Couldn't print labels without refreshing about 10 to 15 times.  Received the same error message a couple of times today (July 1st)

This is the error message everyone was receiving:

upstream connect error or disconnect/reset before headers.reset reason:overflow

Here is one of the links to the tech forum threads on May 13.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Payments/upstream-connect-error-or-disconnect-reset-before-headers-res...

What's interesting is that my sales tanked that weekend and still haven't recovered.  May sales were down 30 to 40% for the remainder of May - June sales were down 50 to 60% - as of today (July 1st) sales are down about 58%.

Please help.... thanks

[kirt-77]

Experiencing sudden drop in sales for 8 weeks now? Kirt-77

[ci1000]

and it continues today.... down 68%.... record low for me!

Major fear and anxiety here!