Howdy All,
Around March 20th, a lot of our sales just disappeared. eBay has claimed that nothing happened and everything is fine, despite countless numbers of complaints, etc. People across all categories sale their sales halve or more literally overnight and despite our best efforts, they did not come back.
I was selling around $1000 a week prior to March 1st. I began adding $14,000 in inventory to my store of $41,000, an increase of 34%. For every $10,000 I have in inventory, I used to have an expected rate of $x, give or take 5-20% a week up or down, but consistent. Over a 30 day period, I could expect to see very little variance in my numbers, as everything would pretty much settle down to 5-10% above or below my average. I've been around for 24 years, have 13,000+ sales, a 100% positive feedback, maybe 15 returns due to postal abuse of packages during the 24 years I've been on eBay and am a Top Rated Seller. I know my inventory and customers and strive to continually buy quality inventory to add to my store. I know my numbers. I know when eBay has done something as they have been doing over the past 3 years under this CEO. And it stinks.
As I began to increase my inventory on March 1st, I got the expected returns coming in. My sales increased proportionately and everything was great. Then came March 20th or thereabouts. Complete crash. My sales disappeared by 50% overnight and stayed there. Normally this indicates an unannounced update and things go back to normal after a week or two of killed sales that you'll never get back. But sales kept going lower and lower. The two weeks prior to March 20th, I had gone up to $1500 a week in sales. The week before June 2nd, I was at $350 for the week. I had lost nearly 80% of my sales. eBay says that everything is working fine despite the HUGE number of people across the message boards, eBay for business on Facebook, and on YouTube.
The only thing I've been able to figure out through a lot of experimentation is that eBay seems to be putting a LOT of crap in between the listings of those who promote at the highest rate versus those at the lower, and those who don't promote, well, expect to see your items buried. I was at the low end of promoted listings as I know that eBay has decided we need to pay MORE to play as they chase extra pennies, forgetting that giving the customer few immediate choices does NOT guarantee sales. Making it harder to find items does not give the customer a positive experience. And based on the number of customers eBay has lost since this CEO took over despite covid leading to huge increases for all other platforms, I'd say I know what eBay's problem is. I can only imagine what the 2nd quarter stock reports are going to look like. My guess is huge drops in revenue from normal fees collected, with the promoted fees being the only thing that this CEO is good at. Basically, taking more money from sellers to feed the stockholders who are losing money from bad policy that is killing sales. Would love for him to explain what happened around March 20th and how it'll lead to a greater eBay, as opposed to higher fees for sellers and worse experiences for customers who continue to leave the platform at 10% a year.
I have had to open a Mercari account as well as a local booth at an antique mall because apparently, according to some at eBay, I don't know what items to buy and sell. The problem with eBay is that there are rules that you must follow in order to be successful on eBay, only, they won't share those rules with you which makes playing the game pretty difficult.
How about you tell us what you did to kill our sales? How about you tell us what we actually have to do to get our sales back? I'm down $1500 a month in sales from BEFORE the time I added 34% more inventory to my store. With that added inventory, I'm down $3000+ from where I should be, which is a huge thing. It's not because I don't offer free shipping, free returns, or haven't filled out all the suggested item specifics. My sales were just fine without these prior to March 20th. It's not the economy that died 50% on the same day nor is it the 'summer slowdown' which started in March. eBay did something to the algorithm and it would be nice to know what it was and if this is the new eBay. If it is, then expect to lose more than just 10% of the customer/seller base this year.
Seriously, pull your head out. You're killing a once great platform.
