What is wrong with eBay these days? Why is everyone seeing lower than normal sales?

[gwzcomps]

    So this month has been one of the worst months on the site for me and many others.  No matter who you talk to in support they deny anything going on and want to blame us sellers for our low sales numbers.  I have a hunch that these issues with item specifics in the clothing and collectables categories are causing issues for all the other categories.  Also the search engine keeps getting worse and spams results that aren't even close which I suspect is hurting sales. 

    I have been toying with "promoted listings" which is extortion IMO.  I find it irritating that they can't even keep the language straight.  I mean is it a promoted listing or a sponsored listing?  Like seriously people?  I have found in the promoted listings they don't show up as sponsored under the keywords that matter.  From what I can tell the promoted listings are only useful if your buyer has no clue what they are buying and don't care what they get.

    I do know my listings aren't perfect, but things have been working fine for the last 10 years I have been selling.  There are just certain things that are not feasible for me a s a small business.  It genuinely seems like eBay is trying to sabotage small sellers so they can be more like Amazon.  Maybe at one point there was a chance of them competing but those days are long gone.  I wish eBay valued us smaller sellers more and was willing to focus on what used to make this a great place to be.  So many of us are seeing a 30-60% drop in sales this month.  The general sentiment is, it is time to shut down the business or move somewhere else.

[trustedbasset]

Everybody has a theory why sales are slumping. I know enough to know I don’t know!
I do know as a buyer I hate the search, why oh why doesn’t the words I use to search, search the words I use?

[gwzcomps]

I have been complaining to customer support for 3 years now about the search engine. It has gotten progressively worse. If us sellers can't figure it out I don't know how the buyers have any hope of finding what they want.

[mam98031]

Everyone isn't.  But a whole lot are.  It is a mixed bag.  It always is.  There can be a multitude of reasons for it.  The possibilities are endless.  And no one knows for sure.  It is all just guesswork based on experience and observations.  But no one has the answers.  If we did, we would know how to fix the issue.

[fer.9285]

Please, can you give a good
Example about the searchengine problem?

[gwzcomps]

Of you search for Optiplex 320 or 256GB mSATA those are my go to searches at the moment. I like the 256GB mSATA one because there are less excuses for why there are erroneous results.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=256gb+msata&_sacat=0&_sop=15

Item number: 143415694913 is a 120GB 2.5" SATA SSD. It shows up on the results even though the capacity is not 256GB and the type of drive is completely different.

This doesn't cover the fact that they suppress listings under that whole "We removed some search results to show you the most relevant listings. View all results" message. Some of my listings have been hidden by that even though they are relevant and there weren't an excessive amount of results from the search.

[coolections]

It is not Ebay. The seller of that item chose in item specifics to show up as the 256gb even though it is not. Message the seller and tell them to fix their listing and stop scamming search results. (insert sarcasm font here). Ebay would have to hire a whole crew of full time employees to stop the madness and that will never happen. 

With that said you can click on the advanced search (upper right corner)

Type 120gb in the space provided and you will no longer see any with 120gb

[laurabeardsley]

Sales are dismal but the question is ,where is it better? If someone opened a new site similar to the old Ebay I think now would be a great time for it to be really successful.

[analog215]

I knew that sales would end up slowing down for me later in the year because of the new " Good Till Cancelled" policy on buy it now items.  Im not sure which idiot came up with the idea that the good till cancelled would help sell items faster.  I used to do most of my listings for 10 days and a lot of my items would sell in that time frame because of a sense of urgency for the buyer to purchase before it ended.  I know some of you are thinking that most buyers know that sellers relist items that dont sell but a lot of buyers dont know that either.   When the announcement of this policy hit there was a ton of flack in the forums because of it.  So in my opinion the main cause for my slow sales at the moment is the lack of sense of urgency to purchase before the listing ends.  All of my items have tons of watchers but thats all they are doing is watching and not buying.  

[bill11223]

There are multible causes for the decline in sales but one that stands out is the collection of local sales tax.   Local gov'ts instated these collections for exactly that purpose. To prevrnt tax evasion and to return sales to local merchants.

[gwzcomps]

You are wrong though. If you actually look at that item number they didn't keyword spam. Not of the item specifics match the keywords being searched.

[gwzcomps]

I don't know the rules for this forum, but there are other sites people are being successful on. I won't post them so I don't get in trouble, but read through the "eBay for Business page" and you will see a bunch of sites you may have never heard of. I have 2 I will be trying more than likely.

[trustedbasset]

Some sites are limited to clothing and accessories,  vintage and handmade items, good auction sites are few and far between. 
I have tried 3 different sites and my own website. In the past nothing came close to eBay, except now they are all about  equal. Small sales once in a while. But my inventory is less here by about half and the other place I have more listed. 

[mam98031]

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@gwzcomps wrote:
I don't know the rules for this forum, but there are other sites people are being successful on. I won't post them so I don't get in trouble, but read through the "eBay for Business page" and you will see a bunch of sites you may have never heard of. I have 2 I will be trying more than likely.

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https://community.ebay.com/t5/About-the-Community/Rules-of-Engagement/td-p/26164369

@gwzcomps 

[coolections]

@gwzcomps 

When you get to the page you are showing us you will see that Ebay gave you a "suggestion because of too much competition amongst sellers by showing on the most relevant listings. I agree they are not always most relevant. Click see "ALL" listing on the link provided and you will see sellers putting items with the wrong memory into item specifics.