@quadcitypickers wrote:
Whether or not eBay is guilty of "throttling" and other things people who post here often accuse eBay of isn't my concern, my concern is complete and utter lack of understanding of any outside factors.
1. The slowest months for eCommerce sales are January and February. During this time, some people are financially spent from the holidays, and awaiting for their tax refunds.
2. The launch of new eCommerce platform, like Temu, may temporarily or permanently reduce traffic and sales, depending on what these platforms sell and how much popularity they gain. eBay is not some eCommerce "monolith".
3. During times of economic uncertainty, there is a reduction of spending of "want" items. This does not mean "everyone is now poor", it means that if the amount of people with disposable income is reduced, sales volume would naturally reduce as well. So if 1,000 people are selling the same thing for roughly the same price, and there used to be 1,000 buyers, but now only 500, half of the sellers will not make sales.
4. It is important to research your item. Trends come and go, but luckily you can use eBay's free product research tool to see how many items sold, for what amount, the trends of those sales, and most importantly, the sell through rate. A low STR generally means the more time it will take to sell your particular item.
There are no guarantees in business. Just because last month or the month before was great, doesn't mean every month is guaranteed to be great.
It's a misconception to believe that there's not an understanding of outside factors. I've personally put years in to researching the issues eBay has, I've met with eBay in person (who have came to visit us on site multiple times as we were a top performer in our category). And I'm a software developer who works with the eBay API and can not only see a lot of the data that most people can't, but I'm also to more visibly see exactly what is happening and how glitched and broken the site truly is.
1) In regards to this, I am aware of the yearly trends. In our category of Motors, once tax time comes there's an increase in sales that peaks in April, which is the busiest time of the year. eBay representatives have also brought their own data confirming this, including charts that showed the same, and they would regularly advise to set up promotions to take advantage of that month.
Considering this, what if I told you that for the last two years, these yearly trends have CEASED TO EXIST on eBay? It's been a flatline or slow decline. Meanwhile outside of eBay, those trends still happen. And eBay is still getting those sales. But there's been a consistent flatlining for top sellers in the category?
How do you make sense of that, and what implications does this imply?
2) Agreed. But this also means eBay should be at least somewhat focused on competitiveness with outside marketplaces, correct? Meanwhile, their ad strategy has only increased costs and made eBay less and less competitive. This is a concern sellers have expressed since 2018. eBay has ignored it and focused on short-term gains of revenue, at the sacrifice of GMV and marketplace health. Which, in my opinion, is a valid reason for sellers to give negative feedback regarding the direction eBay has taken, as it's hurting all of us and eBay as a whole.
3) We're aware of this. But the same trends are happening with "necessity" items as well. And it does not match with the numbers eBay are sharing with the sellers.
But there's a lot of data to support that the decline is less about the amount of sellers, and more and more a normalization trend based on the increased focus on ads. > 80% of our sales are from promoted sales now, organic traffic has ceased to exist, and organic traffic is also affected by advertising (which suggests either the traffic is not organic at all and all traffic on eBay is promoted, or there's severe glitches that are making your organic traffic drop with promotions when they shouldn't).
4) Those of us who are top performers do. But this is another thing that shows major issues in how eBay is functioning. One example? We can see our sales reach a certain point every day then stop, which leaves us at around the same "Sales/31 days" as we were left at the day before. But at the exact time our sales stop, suddenly other local sellers who literally purchase from us, will begin getting orders and then picking up their items from us.
Meanwhile, their listings are more expensive than ours, shipping is slower, their metrics are worse, their feedback is worse, and their ad investment is less than ours.
So this begs the question, why on earth are our sales suddenly stopping and they being highlighted in the algorithm ahead of us and receiving sales ahead of us? Because if the customers were aware, they would certainly not be purchasing from listings that are inferior in every way.
In response to your last paragraph, that is a given in business. But there's a difference here. There's an expected amount of fluctuation in sales and real life traffic. eBay no longer has that type of fluctuation. The algorithms keep everything tight. There's no yearly trends. There's no "random fluctuations" in traffic. As I said, I've researched this for years, and I can 100% confirm that it is NOT the customers that drive your success from month to month, it's the algorithms.
This is all besides the fact that there's been enough evidence to suggest that the traffic numbers we see on eBay are calculated and not even the real numbers.
In addition to the fact that there's been major bugs (such as handling time literally not working in our listings and there being TWO DIFFERENT SHIPPING SYSTEMS that eBay is running on every since Guaranteed Delivery was removed and they have NO IDEA that this is the case) which are affecting the algorithm and sales of sellers, and they have not been fixed for YEARS now.
So we are taking all the things you mention in to consideration. But the reality is, eBay has not done their part to keep eBay as a site that is working as intended, they have built algorithm changes ON TOP OF BROKEN CODE AND STATISTICS which means it's impossible for the algorithms to be working as intended, they have become parasitic with their ad strategy to the point that they are no longer competitive with other marketplaces, they have removed any sort of "healthy competition" for eBay sellers, and they have treated sellers very dishonestly, especially after ADMITTING they have done "tests" which affect sellers livelihood on the LIVE EBAY SITE.
Can you honestly say eBay doesn't deserve any blame, or to be held responsible for their wrongs?
