eBay

baydistributionllc · ‎05-10-2019

If you go look at the archives you will find thread after thread of people complaining their sales have dropped off. I will have to admit that I have spent far too much time reading them and have even posted one or two.

For me it was April 2017 when it just fell off. Wasn't all that that long ago I had my first day in 5 years without a sale.

They changed some things, that's for sure. Griping about it won't help us so I thought I would share some ways that I have begun to find an increase in sales.

1. Promoted listings is not a choice. If your complaining your sales fell off and you are not using promoted listings you need to go do a blanket 1% on everything and watch it increase immediately. They found a creative way to increase the fees in a way that looks like its optional. Its not optional.

2. Stagnant Inventory. I have read that sellers have gotten eBay reps to 'reset' their listings. While I believe they may have been told this I don't believe that whatever the rep did had any meaningful effect. I have read that doing a bulk edit and not changing anything gets it going. I don't see that being very effective either. It used to be that if you posted an item you could leave it posted forever and it would eventually sell. I think the new eBay is taking a lot more data points into account like views, watchers, identical solds, and who knows what else. If it doesn't like your listing, it buries it and shows it nobody. I have not been keeping items nearly as long and I have been a lot more aggressive in revising and lowering prices. I revise at least as many items as I post everyday and double most days. Sometimes its a $1 thats the difference in sold and not sold.

3. Offers to buyers. I have sold several items with this new feature. If its not an option on your dashboard you can manually type the link to get to it. Its available to everyone.

4. Offer international shipping outside of GSP. I have had lots of sales this way and printing the label for a first class international (up to 4lbs by the way) is as easy as printing a US one. The only difference is you have to sign it. I have had a couple people do something like pay $150 in shipping to get a $75 item, and that kills me on the fees but that rarely happens and I have yet to loose money on any deal because of it.

5. Returns and cases. I seem to notice a drastic dip in sales directly after I get two returns and/or cases. Just one doesn't seem to have an effect but it seems like if I get two inside of a week, sales suck for several days after. Anyone else notice this? This has led me to a point to where I will not sell anything with a defect. People are looking at the gallery photo and the price and NOTHING ELSE. I will sell new, and fully functional used, and that's it. Sometimes really expensive items still have significant value even if they are only partially working, I will not longer sell that. If I don't feel like the ENTIRE listing can meet the expectation created by just the first photo I don't list it on ebay at all. I guess what I am saying is be more selective with your sourcing.

6. Competition. There are a lot more people selling on ebay. I sure wish I knew how many sellers were on ebay three years ago vs. today. I really have been trying to find items that nobody else is offering or have few comps. I have found myself passing on things not because the margin wasn't there but because there are 3,423 other ones already posted. In the past I would have bought anything that had a sold comp with a good margin, not anymore.

So that was my goal of this post, just to share some ways I am finding a little traction. Hope it helps.

On a side note....

For going on three or four months I noticed a big decrease in return abuse and entitled cheats. I had a period of time with 0 open returns and quite a run with only 1. This weeks I had 2 big fat cheaters. They were all cheap items that had returns anyway, and I got the items back, so not a huge deal. They only stole shipping fees.

One guy asked a silly question about a set of waders I had posted. I referred him to the portion of the listing that answered the question so he couldn't use the semantics of my answer to start a return later. He didn't like that answer so he bought the item with the intent of returning it. Brand New Item. Has UPC. Has same information as all other sellers with same item and same UPC. eBay was kind of enough to remove the defect, but having to call waste my time, kinda aggravating.

I had a somewhat rare bible. It was in pretty rough shape. I wouldn't source or list the same item again. I took good photos of all the damage and described all the damage in detail. If I remember right this bible in good used condition goes for around $40+. This one sold for $20. 30 Day returns, no good reason needed to return it. Shipping was just over $3. Then of course they choose a reason that causes me a defect and say " I love this bibles I would never allow any one do this type of harm to any book let a lone a bible". What a looney toon.

I love how these people can come to ebay and treat it like facebook and at the end of the day it doesn't cost them a dime. They are not shopping for items, they are shopping for a problem to create. eBay does offer us one thing most other platforms don't, the blocked list.

Person 1 had 0 feedback. I think they created a new account to distance what they were about to do from their real account. Person 2 had 1 feedback. Not well established members of the ebay community by any stretch. Returns for users with less than 5 feedback should require a look by an actual person at ebay before they are allowed to apply a defect. Even if it looks like it went through to the user, actual look prior to defect application seems like common sense.

So I know there are some people out there that had a big drop in sales, is there anyone out there that has kept pumping up items and found some success with any new techniques? Get any crazy returns?

Anyone out there sell 20 items instead of 10 and wanna tells us all who say the sales fell off we are crazy because you had a 100% increase? 🙂

For everything that happens conditions exist such that nothing else could have happened.

miyasamaco · ‎09-13-2019

@eze-right1 wrote:
See, and that's where the problem lies, collectibles, antiques, rare items, ITEMS THAT COULD RAKE IN $$$$$ but the bosses at eBay don't seem to think so. I have noticed that folks with less than 100 per cent feedback get a bunch of cash. So eBay likes dishonest and **bleep** sellers more than we who take pride in our work for this crumbling joke of a website??? No wonder their stock is $36 and Amazon's $1800 or more. No way to win.

Agreed. It's pathetic how so many large, China based sellers with terrible feedback are the ones dominating searching results. eBay doesn't care about anything except their cut of the sale and allows duplicate listings, etc. to run rampant.

miyasamaco · ‎09-13-2019

@turquoisetulips wrote:
@laurabeardsley wrote:
I had 1 good week and now silence again. I do not know how it can work like this even though I list new things constantly. I believe my items only get seen randomly.So disgusted with Ebay. I finally started selling on another site and it is so much more seller friendly. Ebay offers NO seller protection and encourages poor treatment by buyers by making the feedback system so 1 sided.
I hate to say this but I believe I'll be quitting too . I think I'll do a '' going out of business '' sale and try and get rid of as much inventory as I can . Since 1996 I haven't seen sales as bad as they are now . Yet e bay just removed 170 dollars out of my bank account for '' sellers fees'' . I wonder who the '' seller '' was ? because it certainly wasn't me. I doubt I made 170 dollars in sales in the last two months . This is just getting ridiculous . Nobody is making any money except for e bay . I'm just as disgusted . Tulips

Same here. Where TF do they get these fee calculations from? I certainly haven't been selling much at all either. What a scam corporation!

turquoisetulips · ‎09-13-2019

@191paula wrote:
An employee of the post office says the decrease in sales because of Amazon.

I sound like a broken record by now but if e bay can't pry open their wallets to invest in more advertising soon they may as well close it down . Tulips

turquoisetulips · ‎09-13-2019

@equid0x wrote:
@turquoisetulips wrote:
Must be a bunch of Millennial third world people that would do something so foolish and killing ebay off - miquelcpoins

You may have a very good point and it may be closer to reality than some may believe . Poor management skills will destroy a company even faster than it has destroyed some nations . Tulips
Yup, sure must be those Millennials who, if they have a corporate job at all, are still on the lowest rungs of the corporate ladder. It couldn't have anything at all to do with the Boomers who still won't retire and have been running the show since the early 90's.

It has much more to do with companies trying not to spend much money by hiring poorly educated and less experienced employees in other countries to do the job . I have no idea what you're talking about when mentioning boomers who won't retire . Most people [ the vast majority ] can not wait to leave the rat race and retire as soon as they are able . If you've got some stats that prove otherwise I'll take a look at them. Tulips

vintageexposition · ‎09-17-2019

I respectfully disagree with the folks downing on sending offers to watchers. I've made plenty of sales doing that. Sometimes moments after I hit send.

myjunqueyourtreasure · ‎09-17-2019

@turquoisetulips wrote:
@equid0x wrote:
@turquoisetulips wrote:
Must be a bunch of Millennial third world people that would do something so foolish and killing ebay off - miquelcpoins

You may have a very good point and it may be closer to reality than some may believe . Poor management skills will destroy a company even faster than it has destroyed some nations . Tulips
Yup, sure must be those Millennials who, if they have a corporate job at all, are still on the lowest rungs of the corporate ladder. It couldn't have anything at all to do with the Boomers who still won't retire and have been running the show since the early 90's.
It has much more to do with companies trying not to spend much money by hiring poorly educated and less experienced employees in other countries to do the job . I have no idea what you're talking about when mentioning boomers who won't retire . Most people [ the vast majority ] can not wait to leave the rat race and retire as soon as they are able . If you've got some stats that prove otherwise I'll take a look at them. Tulips

That's the point too. They're not still working because they want to, they're doing it because they HAVE to.

Reality is the leading cause of stress.

equid0x · ‎09-20-2019

@seattlesportstuff wrote:
Elliot will do a hostile takeover once Aiyden stock aggreement thru forced MP is done. They do not want US Sellers anymore. Cost to much to maintain small accounts. All they would have to require a business license on the account.

One might argue that if eBay backed off with all the new requirements and just let sellers sell their items as they see fit then they wouldn't have to spend as much time arguing with buyers and sellers which is what is costing them money.

I really fail to see how a company that doesn't stock, ship, store or support any of the items they "sell" could have sellers that "cost too much" to keep. Its like saying seller of items cost too much to print the classifieds. If that's what's happening then something is seriously wrong with the business plan. Personally, I'd like to know where all of this money is going that eBay needs to keep raising fees and tacking in new costs. If I were a major stockholder I would be asking some serious questions.

The day-to-day operation of the site as a "listing service" ought to be pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things. I run my own site on my own VPS and it costs me about $7.00/mth. Obviously, its very small scale.

I used to run all of the IT systems for a mid-size company and our total IT operational costs, aside from salaries, was something like $100,000/year and we ran everything in-house. This included hardware, software, databases, sans, maintenance, equipment, battery backups, electricity, internet links, datacenter space, etc, etc and we would carry a peak load of a few thousand users at a time. Tack in salaries to administer systems and develop the software we ran and you were looking at another $240K tops. The whole show was being run by 4 people. Our expenditures were shockingly low for most IT orgs although I will say we were heavily "invested" in open source software which wasn't costing us anything to use, although we did also pay for licensing for things like Windows, Windows Server, Office, etc. and we also invested heavily in business process automation. We also designed and built our own servers which saved a pretty penny over commercial options and as an added bonus, since we built it, we knew exactly what was in it and therefore exactly what to fix when it breaks.

Realize that once the software is in place, very little needs to be done with it unless one decides to change it. Even then, with modern deployment systems... you develop the next ver on Dev... then test and QA it... then push a button and deploy it to all the servers in production. Unless there are drastic changes involved... 10 minutes later you're online with the new code which you may not have to touch again for another 5 or 10 years aside from interim security patches and bug fixes(deployed the same way).

The company I spoke of is still using the software and updated incarnation of the infrastructure to run it I wrote and put in for them 15 years ago with very little modification. It a software implementation of their business processes everything from payroll to inventory to ordering to invoicing, accounting, reporting, etc etc tailor made to their operations much like how Oracle or SAP claim to implement for companies except mine actually works.

equid0x · ‎09-20-2019

@gemstone_merchant wrote:
This thread is basically all the sellers that use ebay are complaining and leaving so I think I'll do the same but first:
I am a small individual seller who was initially hired to setup and run a big box top rated store that specialized in selling rough minerals for making cabochons for jewelry. From what I've been experimenting with is that you cannot make any sales unless you sell for dollars AND run promoted listings with a 1% blanket for over 600 items. Even the store with 600 items made spotty sales since everyone is a cheap a** and expect 25 Lbs Boxes to be shipped to them for free when the market price of the item costs $200+ and its being sold for $30. I've talked on the phone with a buyer who complained that he had to pay for shipping when WE covered over half of the shipping cost. The Top Rated store that I was running was also involved in the Ebay store subscription that costs $60 a month. I did the calculations for the sales to fee ratio and that store was barely scraping by due to the insane ebay fees and market manipulation.

As for me? I'm a smaller seller who specializes in the sale of loose gemstones on the Ebay platform. My store isn't a big box but I have roughly 30 high value items listed at a time so I can avoid B******* insertion fees. People expect me to sell them CUSTOM gemstones for dollars when I already priced them lower than market value to maintain competition. Typically, custom stones will run at a 70%+ PREMIUM on top of standard market value and cost of the rough stone for people who purchase them. But no. The people who use ebay are cheap uncultured bottom feeders who can't afford to part with large sums of money for LUXURY goods. My store policy is "If you pay trash prices, you get trash products." which is common sense. But people who make a $3 order comment that the stone "Wasn't worth the money." Well no S***. You paid $3 for a bulk package of gemstones you 1/2 brain-cell buyer.

The buyers are not the only problem. The next problem is Ebay corporate charging fraudulent fees that if you call they immediately refund. Every time I make a sale (Which is not often) I check what I'm being charged and if it checks out I pay directly after the item sold. If you wait for invoices to come in it gives Ebay a chance to slip in additional fees for things you NEVER paid for. I know this because when I was running the big box store Ebay owed them back $300+ from fraudulent fee charges from things they slipped in over the course of several years.

Ebay also allows India and China to knowingly sell fake fraudulent gemstones and market them as authentic and natural. These Two-Bit scammers are allowed to flood the marketplace with their filth which lowers the credibility of real sellers who are running honest businesses. For example, Indian sellers often sell "Natural Emerald" but 100% of the time it is a quartz crystal that was DYED emerald green and sold to buyers. Another is "Natural Ruby" which they sell a lab created synthetic to buyers who unknowingly purchase them. Not everyone is a gemologist so authentic customers are easily taken advantage of on the market by scammers. Which in turn causes them to distrust the market and assume EVERYONE is a scammer.

In a week I'm going to Air Force Basic so I will probably have my family run the store for the time being. But when I get back I'm going to pay the $200 1-yr bond that is refunded if there are no incidents and migrate my wares to Gem Rock Auctions which only specializes in selling real gemstones to collectors and jewelers. They also have people who maintain quality control so if a scammer shows up they are banned off the site and loose their $200 bond so they all stay far far away from that place.

I agree that all the free everything advertising attracts low quality clientele who expect the world on a silver platter for pennies. I don't believe this site has a future as an online dollar store which is where things seem to be going.

You echo my sentiments here over the years that eBay may be better off charging some kind of account opening fee to both buyers and sellers to deter the scammers and fraudsters from the site.

ebay keeps playing it like they're not responsible for what goes on here, yet they blame sellers for the problems and do nothing to stop it. It's eBay's site and it's eBay's responsibility to patrol it and enforce it's own policies.

I think a lot of sellers feel strongly compelled to price to eBay "market rate" which means they lose money, because otherwise they're bringing in nothing at all.

Its totally unfair to force US sellers to compete with Chinese sellers who half the time aren't even really selling what they're claiming in the first place.

This year was the first year I've had 3 bad purchases (things that simply don't work as advertised) in my 19 years here and is another reason I've been compelled to leave. It seems that everyone with real legit product to sell has moved on because there is nothing left to be made here which is leaving only the scammers hanging on to the site.

moldy5 · ‎09-20-2019

Yes, this year has been the worst for sales. It's 9-20-19 & I sold 38 items this month last year. As of today-10 items. Same story every month. So darn depressing.

equid0x · ‎09-20-2019

@turquoisetulips wrote:
@equid0x wrote:
@turquoisetulips wrote:
Must be a bunch of Millennial third world people that would do something so foolish and killing ebay off - miquelcpoins

You may have a very good point and it may be closer to reality than some may believe . Poor management skills will destroy a company even faster than it has destroyed some nations . Tulips
Yup, sure must be those Millennials who, if they have a corporate job at all, are still on the lowest rungs of the corporate ladder. It couldn't have anything at all to do with the Boomers who still won't retire and have been running the show since the early 90's.
It has much more to do with companies trying not to spend much money by hiring poorly educated and less experienced employees in other countries to do the job . I have no idea what you're talking about when mentioning boomers who won't retire . Most people [ the vast majority ] can not wait to leave the rat race and retire as soon as they are able . If you've got some stats that prove otherwise I'll take a look at them. Tulips

Just my experience and from talking to others, at least in my former industry, their experiences are the same. Lots of head honchos in their 70's and 80's who still refuse to retire even though, for them, they'd have been eligible at 55. Even going by today's standard of 65 they're 10 or 15 years beyond that, with no sign of quitting, and if you talk to these people they will make constant excuses about how they just don't feel the younger gens are capable of running things, so they won't retire - yet, won't give anyone else a chance, either.

When the people at the top don't retire, gen x below them don't move up the ladder. When they don't move up the ladder, the millennials below them don't make it into management. When the millennials don't get promoted, Gen Z doesn't even make it into supervisory positions. You see the problem here?

You do realize that the oldest millennials are now in their late 30's? Where do you think they should be by now? I'd say, those who took the corporate ladder should at least be in the lower rungs of management by now if that was their ambition but its not possible because all the Gen X'ers are still in those positions because the middle and upper management Boomers won't retire.

The last corp I worked with had a ton of Boomers in upper-mgmt & c-level all over 70 years old. These people were all multi-millionaires I'm sure with retirement funds that would make you drool... but retiring? Nope. Won't hear of it.

I'm not trying to toss aside boomers or slight their accomplishments but every generation in this world deserves its "time in the sun" so to speak. At the rate things have been moving by the time I'd be eligible to move into an upper management position I'd already be at retirement age. Its stuff like this that made me leave the industry after 17 years.

I had bosses who flat out told me that I was a candidate for promotion and that they wanted to move me into management but there was simply nowhere to put me until someone above moved on.

equid0x · ‎09-20-2019

@myjunqueyourtreasure wrote:
@turquoisetulips wrote:
@equid0x wrote:
@turquoisetulips wrote:
Must be a bunch of Millennial third world people that would do something so foolish and killing ebay off - miquelcpoins

You may have a very good point and it may be closer to reality than some may believe . Poor management skills will destroy a company even faster than it has destroyed some nations . Tulips
Yup, sure must be those Millennials who, if they have a corporate job at all, are still on the lowest rungs of the corporate ladder. It couldn't have anything at all to do with the Boomers who still won't retire and have been running the show since the early 90's.
It has much more to do with companies trying not to spend much money by hiring poorly educated and less experienced employees in other countries to do the job . I have no idea what you're talking about when mentioning boomers who won't retire . Most people [ the vast majority ] can not wait to leave the rat race and retire as soon as they are able . If you've got some stats that prove otherwise I'll take a look at them. Tulips
That's the point too. They're not still working because they want to, they're doing it because they HAVE to.

Sorry, I can't really agree with that. The stock market was down to what... 7500 at the deepest pits of the great recession? We're at 26000 now so if you'd held on to those retirement investments you'd have nearly quadrupled your money by now.

This would have been a huge issue for people who were trying to retire exactly at the time that the market crashed but frankly only the earliest of boomers would have been entering retirement at that time.

equid0x · ‎09-20-2019

@moldy5 wrote:
Yes, this year has been the worst for sales. It's 9-20-19 & I sold 38 items this month last year. As of today-10 items. Same story every month. So darn depressing.

I don't have anything listed here anymore... but a couple of years ago I was selling 50-100 items every month and during peak seasons more than that. I tend to sell larger and more expensive items so I'd say that's pretty decent. There were mondays where I would walk into USPS with 8 or 10 large boxes where I'd have to make a couple trips to the car to bring them all inside and it wasn't unusual to be bringing 2 or 4 boxes into USPS every single day.

My last full month on eBay was July and I show a total of 16 items sold. Total yearly profit margin is down from 57% in 2017 to 18.8% in 2019.

joshuacbraun · ‎09-20-2019

My sales remain 20-25 items sold on average per month, but the thing that really irritates me is that I can't get past 25 items sold a month. I know I could buy better lighting, use mannequin's and other techniques but based on how well my items sell (1 per day on avg) from the 1st of the month to the 15th, I know I'm posting them with good enough descriptions and photos to see. Maybe it's that Americans are spending their welfare checks in the first half of the month and have no more income in the 2nd half. Who knows? I just wish I could improve my selling performance in the 2nd half of each month.

I don't have an eBay store and I haven't used the option to promote my listings. I've read comments about both options causing as much pain as gain for selling on ebay. I just try to list items that will net at least $10 after all expenses; otherwise, I don't buy it in the first place.

on_any_sunday_1961 · ‎09-20-2019

Hi, how do you share your store/listings with Face B. Thanks.

equid0x · ‎09-20-2019

@vintageexposition wrote:
I respectfully disagree with the folks downing on sending offers to watchers. I've made plenty of sales doing that. Sometimes moments after I hit send.

I'm curious what you sell? I'm mainly in consumer electronics and have done several rounds of sending out such offers and nobody ever bought anything.

I'm not saying its a bad idea but I'm curious who it works for because it sure doesn't work for me.