Veteran Sellers is anyone else seemingly being held at an Artificially Preset Monthly Selling Limit?

[greatpartsgooddeals]

I've sold here on ebay now for nearly 20 years and this is NOT my main seller ID this is my posting ID.

Within this last year I have noticed some very strange going ons wherein if my month starts off great , then my end of the month sales absolutely tank, however if my month starts off slowly then my month explodes with sales on the last week. The final dollar amount of sales almost always ends up being within a few hundred dollars of what I did the previous months and it normally matters little at all if I work twice as hard listing new items. Month to month the results are pretty much exactly the same.

Anyone else experiencing the same results?

[divwido]

Actually, I consider my limit to be unattainable.  I'd have to list day and night to acheive that.

[the*dog*ate*my*tablecloth]

I think they're talking about secret hidden throttling not the Ebay limits for each seller.

I had sales of nearly 6K in July then around 1K in August. That's on my website. There are ebbs and flows to everything. If you look for patterns you're sure to find them somewhere.

[divwido]

My apologies.  And no.

[luckythewinner]

---

@greatpartsgooddeals wrote:
The final dollar amount of sales almost always ends up being within a few hundred dollars of what I did the previous months and it normally matters little at all if I work twice as hard listing new items.

---

I find that my sales are a function of what I list and how much I list.

If I list a lot more items with roughly the same appeal, I sell a lot more.

If I list the same number of items but those items are a lot more desirable, I sell a lot more.

[sugarnspice777]

Your not the only one.  Just wait. It will only get worse from here.  I can only hope that one day the truth will come out what is being done here.

[softersilk]

No and please do yourself a favor and don't go looking for conspiracy theories.  

If your sales are so slow that you're thinking that eBay is doing something to your account, take a good hard look at your listings.  Is the price right? Is there market demand? Are your listings fully mobile-optimized and professional?  Might you need better photos?  More keywords?  Work it.

Seeking and discussing conspiracy theories does nothing to help your bottom line and can make you feel powerless against "the man".  Instead, study ecommerce best practices. Study the market demands and pricing.  Study mobile-optimization and why you need it.  Tweak some prices, add keywords.

[softersilk]

---

@sugarnspice777 wrote:

Your not the only one.  Just wait. It will only get worse from here.  I can only hope that one day the truth will come out what is being done here.

---

Here's some "truth".   https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/listing-policies/search-browse-manipulation-policy?id=4243

"Keyword spamming" and why those listings may not be displayed in search.

Sellers have the right to believe and discuss secret conspiracy theories that work against them.  Of course.  The internet is loaded with them.  However:

* They're false.

* Seeking them out and looking for proof does not help you make money.

* Even if they were true, they would not help you make money.

* If you believe them, you lose the incentive to do the work that's needed to build a business and make sales.

[moms**art**window**]

yes,it is what you think it is but give it a week,i see what they are trying to do.by making us poor

[greatpartsgooddeals]

Did I say anything about conspiracy theories?? I just asked if others had experienced a seemingly artificially preset sales limit. If my sales are rolling and I work 16 hour days listing the same type or even better condition products and see my sales FALL off a cliff following all my hard work because I am alreadty at that artificially preset sales total amount, then that is not a conspriacy, that is an actual fact staring me straight between the eyes

[membersinceaug2001]

That's copied directly from Amazon.  For years over there, monthly sales were the same even after I added thousands of new listings.  Skip a few months and add nothing sales stayed the same.  Yearly totals were only $100 difference, out of several thousand total.

[greatpartsgooddeals]

HAHAHAH If you believe ebay is here to actually  help you in ANY WAY then you have to be a very wet behind the ears seller my friend

[greatpartsgooddeals]

Interesting ,we all know a certain nameless individual is trying to make ebay like another certain nameless company despite the denials, so your experience would definitely confirm my similar experience here as well

[richard1rst]

I have seen a lot of comments on these boards about throttling. I have a hard time accepting it. eBay only makes money off of me if I sell something. So throttling my sales only costs them money. The answer I have received on these boards is that they are not really losing the FVF they are just making it off of someone else they are promoting instead of me.

I have also seen reports of TRS sellers complaining that they should be further up in the search results simply because they are TRS and should be better promoted.

So let me take a shot in the dark.

For the sake of this discussion let us refer to Group A sellers who are doing pretty well, and Group B sellers who are struggling a bit.

Someone enters a search term. The search engine algorithm “thinks” to itself: Group A is doing pretty good this month but Group B is a bit behind their normal sales. So let’s promote the Group B sellers this time to sort of help them out. Group A, although it would like the help, doesn’t really need it at this time. I suppose to some that would appear to be throttling, but it is really more like just being sure the sales get spread around so everyone benefits, not just a few.

Now as your sales fluctuate you constantly move back and forth between A and B resulting in your sales fluctuating as the OP stated.

Final thought: If someone is doing, for example, $1000.00 a month, does eBay really want to see then suddenly do $5000.00. The concern would be that they may not be able to handle a suddden 5 times increase in business resulting in a lot of disappointed buyers.

[ekmadonna]

Yes, for the last 6 years, I average $1200-$2000 a month, same thing start off slow or fast it ALWAYS evens out at the end. I can't change this no matter how much new inventory I put up or at what price point. BUT, This month has been so far out of the norm it is scary as I have not even sold $700.00 as of this writing. So, I am off my 6 year average per month by almost $500-$1200 and this is the beggining of what is my peak sales season from now untill May!