Youtubers Documenting Record Low Impressions Starting July 17th, BROKEN SITE

[aldelbertmatthew]

Starting July 17th, my impressions for my listings plummeted to record lows. I'm just now noticing people on Youtube including big verified creators are now talking about this problem. You're getting comments with THOUSANDS of likes supporting contacting the investors of eBay regarding what's going on with the site. People are getting beyond fed up of the near DAILY problems with this site and this two week stretch of barren impressions is finally making people get fed up.

This is not a case of sellers who don't know what they're doing. You're having people with hundreds or even thousands of listings and years of experience suddenly getting 1-2 sales a day or none at all. They're now all scrambling to crosslist or even stop eBay store subscriptions because it's not paying for itself anymore.  Sometimes they receive no sales for days at time while other platforms are behaving normally. I expect summer slowdowns but this is the absolute worst I've ever seen eBay in a decade and it's becoming increasingly obvious it isn't just the economy.

[inhawaii]

Do you know there some CRAZY sellers out there who don't even look at or track impressions?

They are only concerned about sales.

[gone.c-33]

If it’s on YouTube, then it must be true…

[buyselljack2016]

impressions, as we know are generally the 1st step in the process of getting a sale.

Impressions    =   is the item showing up in search.

Views

Sales

[aldelbertmatthew]

Typically, when my sales start to dip. I check my traffic because many of the items I pick up have high sell through rates and try to see what's going on.

I also watch a lot of Youtubers that have been talking about all of the errors and bugs eBay has been going through the past 2 years with July 17th being the biggest gaff yet. Every new update they push on eBay breaks the site further.

Poshmark isn't having gigantic problems like this every time they update their app.

[inhawaii]

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@gone.c-33 wrote:

If it’s on YouTube, then it must be true…

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I forget who it was or who to give the "credit" to, but someone here once said...

"I would rather get advice from my dog than from youtube."   😉

[aldelbertmatthew]

James on My Boring Reseller Life on YT has 51k listings and has said some days the site was in a busted state, he was making 1-2 sales in a 24 hour period. He's shown data and has been responsible for documenting a lot of bugs/errors associated with the site as of lately.

Do you feel like that's supposed to be normal at all? Or am I wasting my time replying to an obvious sockpuppet account?

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@inhawaii Perhaps you missed the statements about how for many of these sellers impressions AND sales have plummeted?

I don't think this has happened to everyone. But a lot of people have seen their SALES impacted by whatever is going on, and most well-managed corporations have teams who are supposed to get out in front of situations like this, before they snowball into a public relations disaster.

It really shouldn't be necessary for this to make the nightly news before ebay provides sellers with a real response.

[cardxcraft]

From what I've gathered this problem is effecting sales.

I stated in an earlier thread, the impression view count precipitous drop occured mid-July.  A small part to play is summer slowdown, which is gradual; while the drop occuring mid July was acute.  

[aldelbertmatthew]

Exactly this. 5,700+ likes on a  post saying they want to contact investors for eBay with evidence of site wide problems isn't the same as some random crying on a forum that their sales suck when they have 10 items listed with low sellthrough rates and 1 year of experience.

There's a lot of people upset about this and it's about to go mainstream soon if eBay doesn't do something.

[cardxcraft]

Its been widely reported, not just on Youtube it must be true.com.  With all due respect, if you're going to dismiss concerns and observations outright, at least have some facts to back-up your position.

From what I've gathered this problem is effecting sales.

I stated in an earlier thread, the impression view count precipitous drop occured mid-July. A small part to play is summer slowdown, which is gradual; while the drop occuring mid July was acute.  

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@inhawaii  perhaps you somehow also missed the numerous threads on this Board about the same subject? 

And I can assure you, it is being discussed on Facebook groups, Reddit groups etc. 

This isn't just YouTubers trying to get attention.

This is a real problem---even if it turns out it is just a reporting glitch, and it is having real repercussions for this site, with many sellers putting their efforts into other sites in the absence of any real explanation, much less help, from ebay.

I'll be the first to say a lot of YouTubers make mountains out of mole hills because that's what gets attention. And some are simply misinformed. But this is not that sort of situation.

ebay needs to step up to the plate and respond to this stuff. Or fix whatever is broken.

[inhawaii]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@inhawaii Perhaps you missed the statements about how for many of these sellers impressions AND sales have plummeted?

---

Understood.

There were also lots of people complaining that GTC, managed payments, promoted listings, broken search engine, EIS, etc. have cause their sales to plummet.

I guess i'm lucky that this is not affecting me.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

Yes, I would say you are lucky in that regard.

I think the issue here is not really the same sort of thing. Most people are just trying to get an answer--- Is this a reporting glitch of some sort? And if so, why does it seem to be effecting sales just as drastically as impression numbers (at least for some people). Is ebay running a test of some sort, and the results have caused this? IS something else going on?

No one really knows what is going on, and ebay is not addressing this. I think low sales are a problem, but at this point the bigger problem is really the silence from ebay....you know, our self described "partner" who believes in "transparency" and "seller engagement".

Frankly, any well run corporation would have already put out a statement to the seller community. This really is beyond the run of the mill grumping about low sales. And ebay just came off a Q2 report that was at best, just OK, with a forecast for Q3 that was less than expected, now is definitely not the time to have the press start talking about this sort of mess. 

[simply-the-best-for-you]

There are many here who are huge sellers too, though some of them use posting ID's (not sock puppets).  You're not going to find a lotta love for YTer's on these boards, but this has been well documented here too.  

For most it was actually on the 16th.  For me, it was the 18th.  You may wanna have a look at this thread, esp, Valueadded's most recent update.  I find it very interesting b/c my impressions had dropped by 1/2 & now suddenly yesterday they are back up to normal.  In fact, almost exactly (within 300 impressions) of where they were before the 18th. 

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Anyone-else-seeing-these-changes-to-Promoted-Listings-on-View/...