eBay is a lost cause - Why I'm leaving

[retro_games_exchange]

I was selling really well for a while in the video games category. I had around 200-500 listings and would sell 5-10 items a day. Promoted listings came out and my sales and impressions tanked by around 80%. I called eBay and complained about my listings being hidden so their solution was to give me a week as if my items were promoted. I already knew at that moment it was so they could sell me on how great promoted listing was. I was not happy but my sales did boost for about a week. After that my sales continued to tank and i was only selling 1-2 items a week and only on weekends for some reason. So i bit, i tried to promote listings. I put a standard 3% promotion across all listings. My sales were back to where they were before all of this and it was going pretty well so i left it how it was. Slowly but surely my sales were tanking again to around 1-2 a week and only on weekends and eventually going to 2 weeks without a sale. I gave up and decided to try something new and ended my subscription and unlisted all my items. Good riddance.

[chapeau-noir]

@mr_lincoln  Strangely, I decided to renew a campaign I had running for some time.  My sales went right into the toilet, and I usually have very steady sales 😭  They're coming back again a bit, but it tells me that I can't predict much of anything these days except if I list regularly, almost daily, I sell - I think that's a reflection of being a small seller in a supersaturated market (clothing and accessories) rather than that being the only way to list - I'm like the little kid in a crowd that has to keep bouncing up and down yelling so I don't get trampled underfoot.

[mr_lincoln]

@chapeau-noir 

It's like a game of Sales Whack-a-mole trying to figure out the right approach to at least maintaining sales.  I am not in saturated categories and outside eBay when I acquire inventory competition is steep.  It's certainly not the economy, otherwise I would have a surplus of inventory acquired at an extremely good price. 

I am on day 7 of NO BIN sales ... all sales have come from Auctions.  The last time this happened was right after the GTC mandate was rolled out ... Sellers notice this kind of stuff.  So I have been switching stuff to Auction format that I normally never would try selling that way ... yep, and some of those items already have bids.  

Here's the problem with the agenda to have most Sellers engaged in the Pay to Play game ... once they are all willing to pay the extra fees the advantage of promoted (sponsored) listings almost becomes null and void meaning nobody has a real advantage because everyone is doing it.  So, in basic terms eBay enjoys an across the board higher FVF on the vast majority of sales regardless of what they are.    

I commented earlier that it's almost like there is too much for sale on the venue so having a large amount of items buried in search doesn't affect the bottom line for them like it would have with fewer items for sale on the site. 

IMHO there is definitely some intentional manipulation going on ... 

[chapeau-noir]

@mr_lincoln - there's no doubt that there will be an end-point to promoted listings - it happened with Google when it became too expensive to bid on clicks, and it happened here with the old Featured Listings campaign in the early oughts when the featured listings became so cluttered that the only way to search on anything was to ignore them. 

People who keep comparing eBay now with eBay 20 years ago are definitely missing the point that there is so much on this site now that many searches will bring up impossible numbers of listings - you can't get "fair and equal visibility" because it's impossible to put 65,000 listings on page one.

[mr_lincoln]

@chapeau-noir   You are right, this isn't your father's eBay LOL!  Or maybe even grandfather's in some cases.

So here it is, many Sellers talking about this new era on eBay and how it is Fee based ontheir approach to Selling and Sellers have to Pay to Play ... so the new PLA Promoted listing campaigns are not for the categories I sell in because they are not saturated in many aspects ... but again today I get the flash page ad for PLA with my categories listed.

The agenda is pretty clear at this point ... 

[pls-consignments]

Been at this for 24 years now so I have years of data to compare. I can truly say that this downturn is legit and more extreme than the numerous times before.  If you're new to the eBay selling party, I would strongly recommend a back-up plan. As it looks so far, eBay 2023 will impact many current, even long-time sellers, putting many at risk. 

[retro_games_exchange]

I used to get sales like crazy amy time I sent a small price drop to watchers. It would usually be around 5-10% and with only a few items being watched, I'd get some bites. Now, I had around 100 watchers on about 50 items and sent out the deals, not a single sale. There is something going on and it smells fishy.

[mike_jayroe]

I had 22 sales in Jan, 11 Sales in Feb. and 8 in March.

Due to a news report I saw about gas prices going up I wonder if I will sell anything in the coming months.

[nuclearomen]

---

@retro_games_exchange wrote:

I used to get sales like crazy amy time I sent a small price drop to watchers. It would usually be around 5-10% and with only a few items being watched, I'd get some bites. Now, I had around 100 watchers on about 50 items and sent out the deals, not a single sale. There is something going on and it smells fishy.

---

@retro_games_exchange yeah...to make that even more trivial (lol), I not only did coupons/markdowns but I also sent those coupons out privately via "Send Coupon" link on Orders page and Groups (approx reach was suppose to be 418) - then sent one out on Newseltter that has 240+ followers/subscribers - and - nothing... not a sale... which leads to believe they never got them. Usually I get sales from that not last week. 

[yuzuha]

---

@chapeau-noir wrote:

People who keep comparing eBay now with eBay 20 years ago are definitely missing the point that there is so much on this site now that many searches will bring up impossible numbers of listings - you can't get "fair and equal visibility" because it's impossible to put 65,000 listings on page one.

---

Heck, I remember when I used to be able to look through the entire category I used to collect in in under half an hour! There's absolutely no way I could do that now.

[mr_lincoln]

---

@yuzuha wrote:

---

@chapeau-noir wrote:

People who keep comparing eBay now with eBay 20 years ago are definitely missing the point that there is so much on this site now that many searches will bring up impossible numbers of listings - you can't get "fair and equal visibility" because it's impossible to put 65,000 listings on page one.

---

Heck, I remember when I used to be able to look through the entire category I used to collect in in under half an hour! There's absolutely no way I could do that now.

---

@yuzuha   Job ONE of course would be finding the category ... good luck.

[nooksandcranniesllc]

I am right there with you, ebay policies and bowing to scammers is really out of hand, a buyer made purchases from me and then demanded refunds and discounts they saw on Mercari. They then left a negative because I would not give them the refund they demanded, did not even try to hide it in the feedback comment ,blatant extortion yet ebay refused to remove the negative. I reported the buyer several times for their behavior and ebay did nothing. This is one of the many reasons why good sellers are leaving and buyers are following them. I have since moved all of my listings to Mercari and I am doing much better there,as my buyers are following me. Mercari does not bow to scammers, if a scam is verified, the scammer is booted off the site immediately, they also only give 3 days for a return request, not 30 or more like ebay does, I have left ebay and will not be returning

[isaiah53-57]

---

@retro_games_exchange wrote:

I was selling really well for a while in the video games category. I had around 200-500 listings and would sell 5-10 items a day. Promoted listings came out and my sales and impressions tanked by around 80%. I called eBay and complained about my listings being hidden so their solution was to give me a week as if my items were promoted. I already knew at that moment it was so they could sell me on how great promoted listing was. I was not happy but my sales did boost for about a week. After that my sales continued to tank and i was only selling 1-2 items a week and only on weekends for some reason. So i bit, i tried to promote listings. I put a standard 3% promotion across all listings. My sales were back to where they were before all of this and it was going pretty well so i left it how it was. Slowly but surely my sales were tanking again to around 1-2 a week and only on weekends and eventually going to 2 weeks without a sale. I gave up and decided to try something new and ended my subscription and unlisted all my items. Good riddance.

---

@retro_games_exchange

Thank you for your show of self respect and righteous indignation. Actions like this will keep you sane and help others from being exploited in the long run - If more people did this it would quicken the demise of offensive institutions, or cause them to change their ways for the betterment of their patrons.

We gradually stopped listing before the site really ramped up promoted listings, seeing clearly where things would lead with this heinous money grab disguised as an advertising program - A program with virtually no limits or no control that feeds off the desperation and paranoia of the sites average seller - which tend to be people with little business acumen who believe they can just simply add all their costs to their already bloated items prices with no effect - or those who became deeply vested without paying attention or caring about the sites trends and path, that now simply don't feel they have a choice but to cave to what we believe is borderline extortion.

Healthy competition is good - It drives prices down and keeps quality up - The effects of this program is the opposite of that, driving prices up and quality down, running off savvy buyers and sellers on one hand, and exploiting or trapping unsophisticated buyers and sellers on the other. Eventually though all patrons have limitations or awakenings to injustice and slowly but surely this site and its patrons will continue to pay for their greed(a conundrum in itself)...

[kh-stanley1]

Hi everyone,

Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread HERE if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.

Thank you for understanding.