What all eBay sellers need to know, after 7 years we are leaving eBay.

[scodot]

So are your sales down? Of course they are eBay's sales have been falling for over 12 months now. Well I finally got some insight into why selling on eBay no longer makes sense. After multiple investigations reviewing my account eBay customer service would or could not tell me why my sales are off 40% from the past 3 years. Then today finally I got a customer service rep to explain to me that it has nothing to do with our listings. eBay changed how they promote our listings outside of eBay. I was told that ebay signed a deal with Google that requires all merchandise on eBay to sit for a total of 30 days before it will appear in a Google search. Please check your listing your sales are down because eBay is not competing to get our merchandise out to the buyers. Yes if the buyer goes directly to eBay they may find your product but not if they just type in a generic search. Clearly eBays leadership has decided they are going to try and make their money off all the other little scams i.e. payment processing, charging for promotions & adding additional fraudulent fees to sellers. I don't think I have ever posted before in any of these forums but as I am having to let go 2 employees tomorrow due to eBays terrible leadership I want to warn any other sellers that think their sales are going to come back for the holiday season. They won't! As all this may not be news to some it was news to me and it is disgraceful what eBay leadership has done to this platform. We will be removing our $200K in inventory from eBay over the next couple months. Their are other platforms that actually try to sell our products.

[swappart]

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@greg5000 wrote:

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@kensgiftshop wrote:

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@scodot wrote:

 I was told that ebay signed a deal with Google that requires all merchandise on eBay to sit for a total of 30 days before it will appear in a Google search.

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Could be the reason for GTC.

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Yes, and the revolving "fees" it gleans from all ... cha-ching, cha-ching

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Depends on how many listings you have, but the store subscriptions get you a certain number of free insertions, and reduced fees after you exceed that.  I have the premium store and about 450 listings. I don't have to worry about insertion fees until I hit 1000 listings, and it's been quite some time since I had that many.  I pay on the yearly rate, so it's 59.95 and I get free access to selling manager pro as well as a $50 voucher for shipping supplies quarterly. If you're making money, a store is the way to go. If you have things which are going to sit for years before they sell, maybe they just aren't worth selling.

[gamersbaystore]

What the CS told you is not true. What is true is that ebay's rank in Google search has fallen off a cliff since they cut their marketing budgets earlier this year.

ebay's agreements with Google only pertain to Google Shopping, not to their main search engine.

ebay is mostly ranking on page 2 or worse of search results now. This is why its so slow. Most internet users wont go past page one, and the first few links on the page are the most clicked.

Here's an example. I searched for Gauntlet Seven Sorrows, a classic PS2 game, and despite ebay having multiple copies of this game for sale, Google showed zero results for page one and two collectively.

Notice the result I showed here is at the bottom of page 3 of Google's search results.

Another issue is ebay telling your buyers not to buy from you. ebay has their algorithms set up to show the same identical products from other sellers directly in your own listings. This creates a continuous price war, which causes prices to fall below any profitability.

So there you have it, bad ranking in Google coupled with bad algorithms are bringing about the demise of ebay.

Don't know what the answer is, maybe having a big sale and getting out of this rapidly decaying platform. There are other options out there.

[fashunu4eeuh]

As other posters have cautioned, it is best to take what customer service says with a grain of salt. Ebay is not transparent on its inner workings and it would be odd for the corporation to reveal such information to customer service reps to pass on to its sellers. It is more likely eBay is feeling the pinch of the "diversity tactic" Google employed this summer that has the potential to inhibit organic traffic to eBay from Google. But that is a Google thing, not an eBay choice or decision, where Google may limit the number of listings shown on their site, to enable more diversity from a wider variety of other websites to be shown. 

The irony here is that eBay has cut their marketing and incentive budgets way back this year. And stated that they expected lower sales in the first quarter as a result, which was indeed the case. So it is not a surprise to find that many sellers are still suffering thru this expected(?) downturn. It is alarming to think eBay is seemingly okay with lower sales, but they are still improving stockholder value thru new revenue streams like managed payments and promoted listings. They are keeping the stockholders happy, but at quite an expense to the seller population.

[parkersparrow]

I see my newer listings show up in google search quite often.

[chapeau-noir]

@swappartI did a revamp, too - I felt like I was the lousiest seller on earth a year ago, despite trying this and that, and finally changed up my niche.  It really helped and I realised I wasn't such a failure.

I used to sell parts and miss it - sell bike parts and old car parts, as well as oddball stuff - lids for pots, etc.  Stuff people would lose or break and need a replacement so their widget would work again.  eBay is the place to find it, I don't care how much NEW NEW NEW they push here, it's here where people first thing to go when they need to unusual replacement item.  My sources dried up and I really miss it.  Went into clothing because I used to do alterations professionally.  HUGE learning curve, but honestly, one has to keep moving forward.

[gracieallen01]

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@coolections wrote:

The good news is very few go to google and then Ebay. Since Ebay has been around for over 20 years most who shop Ebay go directly to Ebay. I've never used google to shop Ebay on 20 years.

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With all due respect, I'm not sure that is necessarily true.  I know when I search, I use google first because I put in a search criteria on ebay and get, perhaps, 10% of what I'm looking for and the rest is what ebay 'thinks' I'm looking to find.  'Fraid I don't have time for that - of course, I'm old and getting older by the hour and time may mean more to me.

[chapeau-noir]

I use Google as a primary search unless I KNOW that something will probably be on eBay or Amazon and go there first.

[swappart]

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

@swappartI did a revamp, too - I felt like I was the lousiest seller on earth a year ago, despite trying this and that, and finally changed up my niche.  It really helped and I realised I wasn't such a failure.

I used to sell parts and miss it - sell bike parts and old car parts, as well as oddball stuff - lids for pots, etc.  Stuff people would lose or break and need a replacement so their widget would work again.  eBay is the place to find it, I don't care how much NEW NEW NEW they push here, it's here where people first thing to go when they need to unusual replacement item.  My sources dried up and I really miss it.  Went into clothing because I used to do alterations professionally.  HUGE learning curve, but honestly, one has to keep moving forward.

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I know exactly how you felt. My TV part business was getting $3500-4500 a month in sales back in 2015. Then right after Black Friday that year, it went into a tailspin. Value of my parts dropped drastically. Postal rates just keep going up. The new LED TVs ended up being misdiagnosed at alarming rates by my buyers. They open a TV and see two boards, so it must be one of them. Well, it's most commonly neither because the LEDs themselves are usually what fails now. I didn't know what to do. My motivation was killed. It caused problems in my relationship. My son was born in July, 2017. So then I had a baby to support, and business was failing. His mother is like, why don't you just give it up and get a job. And I'm like, this is my job. I didn't come this far to quit now. I even spent years writing my own custom listing and inventory management software. I have way too much invested to just give it up. But that's something only we understand. I'm just lucky I rent from a good friend, my mother was willing to loan me about $4000 over the course of two years, and PayPal Working Capital kept giving me loans. Stress is not a strong enough word. I'm good now, but I'm sure I have a bit less hair.

[sell-more]

Also the GTC doesn't show an END date so buyers will wait & wait.  I use to sell most my items in the 28th or 29th day.  Now because I dont want the listings to FLIP again  I try to post an expiration date but most buyers dont read anyhow..  Gonna run out my stock of stuff and sell on EB till summer of 2020. 

[gamersbaystore]

Most is not all. According to similar web, 28.93% of ebay's total traffic comes from search engines outside of the platform, namely Google. That's a very significant amount of traffic. Those numbers would be much higher, probably closer to 50% if they didn't rank so poorly in Google search.

[thanhcon-77]

Wish you find the right path for yourself.

[tienhu-66]

I am very sad about the problem with you. Wish you quickly overcome.

[dive_plus]

i will add to you . .

know many fraud people buying from as valued product +1000$ and when receive complain receiving empty box . 

ebay take your money and just refund them ?? 

no seller protection .. no insurance .. 

I'm sure ebay will not continue like that . 

[fern*wood]

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@greg5000 wrote:

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@fern*wood wrote:

Sorry your sales are down.  I hope you aren't basing much of your decision on anything a random phone rep told you.

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It sounded like there were numerous reasons, with the main concern being slow sales.

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I don't need, nor appreciate, any interpretation of the original post by you.  I did not say the call to ebay was the only reason. 

[18704d]

" I don't have much confidence in the way their AI/software actually behaves at all. Even the 'look' of this discussion forum changed from how it looked last week."

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The 'look' of this discussion board

looks the same to me.. as it has for the last couple years since Lithium took it over.

fwiw

Lynn