eBay

richardwillardcollection · ‎01-19-2024

I sell 4 things in a week then nothing for a month. It does not make sense, these gaps in selling, then no offers and no views. It is if my visibility has been turned off, switched off. I chatted with them and they said list more items. Did that and it did not help, still just 3 or 4 sales then a long dry period. I would like to buy things with the sales money on eBay, but because of the 2 month return window, I must keep the sales funds in my account in case of returns. It would be great to have steady sales so I can spend some money on eBay items for my household needs, because returns are few, but when there is the occasional return, I must be ready to fork back someone's dough. I have been selling on eBay for ten years and have a score of 1000, you would think I would have more sales by now. What I do get is just not enough for me to restock with high quality items like I want.

tobaccocardyahoo · ‎01-19-2024

@redlinear wrote:
@tobaccocardyahoo
And we have pretty close to the same amount of listings.
Three(ish) years ago, On my way to 1000 listings. I noticed if I had 800 or so, I'd average 8 a day.
900 would be 9 a day. 1000 avg 10 a day.
SO, I'm no dummy.
I now have 5000 and average.........10 a day (ugh..LOL)

My items have lots where interest has dropped over the years. And the number of potential buyers in the entire world has been reduced.

I am selling with this limited number of listings as much as I sold on Amazon with 20k listings, so it is clear the buyers are more likely to be on Ebay.

I do not know much about your business, other than my past experience with shop manuals in my merchandise mix. Obama's cash for clunkers program permanently damaged my sales of shop manuals.

I also know that cars are more reliable than they were. I've owned some real clunkers in the past, including some with a reputation for reliability because preventive maintenance included many major repairs. I had a 1970s Mercedes which had a recommended valve job at 50k miles.

In selling on Ebay, I am fortunate to have some loyal repeat customers, and am not dependent on the search for all of my sales. Not everyone sells items which will bring repeat buyers and I feel for them.

All complaints and suggestions relative to the search will harm as many sellers as they help and not increase total sales significantly. Why Ebay would pay attention to any of them, spending money for a zero sum situation is beyond what I consider worthwhile for them.

Would I like a bias in my favor, of course I would. Could it be implemented, I doubt it could. Would it put more money in my pocket, perhaps but not guaranteed.

retro_entertainment_collectibles · ‎01-19-2024

@redlinear wrote:
@retro_entertainment_collectibles
When I have a Part Number in a listing 6 times (title, description, and everywhere item specifics asked for a part number). AND knowing that a Part Number is super important to eBay and Search. There are four Part Number places in item specifics. FOUR, it must be important.
And I search that unique part number.
Sort Low to High.
And my item is down there at the bottom, cheaper than all those above it, and it's UNDER the words "results matching fewer words".
Looks a bit manipulated to me.
AND I get it.....Promoted Listings have to be search manipulated (somebody is paying for better placement).
BUT, not when you filter Low$ to High$ (that's being manipulate also, which is wrong for shoppers)

In part I'd not be surprised when it comes to the vehicle parts of "eBay Motors" that it's using a completely different set of algorithms than rest of the venue. It'd only make sense from a software engineering aspect. There's thousands or parts that comprise a vehicle and thousands of vehicles and many years thereof. Whilst results of the search inputs may bubble back through the search engine "Cassini" towards the presentation layers its quite likely the actual search is completely different codebase than that of the rest of eBay.

redlinear · ‎01-19-2024

@luckythewinner wrote:
It would be great to have steady sales so I can spend some money on eBay items
If making steady money on eBay were easy, everyone would be rich. Big box stores spend countless millions paying experts to figure out what will make a profit, and even they get it wrong sometimes.

Yes, but big stores don't tend to move around much

retro_entertainment_collectibles · ‎01-19-2024

@tobaccocardyahoo wrote:
The Amazon A9 search has always shown a bias toward items with a strong sales history.

An item which was frequently bought when a specific search was done, has gotten better placement.

Some believe that that is no longer the case. But I believe that it is, although there are provisions for category managers to put their thumb on the scale.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of folklore about the Amazon search, most of which would be a challenge for any programmer to implement. And Amazon software engineers aren't up to those tasks.

I've been out that grid so long just no clue. At one time early in AWS Amazon managed draw some of Microsoft's best developers away even some from the Visual Studio/compiler platforms but as you know, best of the best developers like hookers LOL.

Funny story. We'd fella moved here from the left coast really really IT savvy, did Micro Code for nVidia's Cuda Core. His wife was runnin' for office how we met as my ex a politician. He and I hit it right off so he's the like INTENSE Star Trek Fan... Like the living Star Trek bible understand? So we're supposed to go to a birthday party for his lady at a park and I found all these really old (I mean old) Star Trek Fan-oh!-belia stuff I had. Made a plan programmer style me the ex plant the stuff around the park with logic goals to find the next article right? OH MY GOSH SO FUNNY. Made riddles of some them like having to decode jumbled words that result in code. Sentences all in ASCII binary he had to do letter by letter. SO FUNNY! But he did it! I was no match at all! HE LOVED IT.

Aside, people think enterprise (or not for that matter) search is simple because the user side of it seems so simple. Yet, its gruesomely complex hence why most cherished assets in enterprise public facing (and not!) environments.

Like I'd coded a plugin for Wordpress (Turd-Press) that allow you to key certain words of phrases. Scroll over the highlighted word and and it'd pop a little dialog box, bunch little icons in it. Scroll over each icon know its function click one and off ya go. Might be definition, associated terms, web links, internal support pages etc. It was all for a Multiple Sclerosis site so a family member or patient better understand what they are reading... Like say Tremors, a symptom, I'd easy peasy, advanced and clinical level information so the user better navigate and understand terminology this/that. Was quite savvy actually! It'd even pop external to the site pages in iFrames (invisible frames, just an embedded page) so they never go "offsite" per se.

OH MY GOSH... Well needless to say the database tables (mySQL) became GIGANTIC in about a years time. I went through design after design of search engines, database re-organizations on and on on trying get that performance curve up. DANG! I finally bit the bullet and asked a friend of a friend who's an Enterprise DB engineer take a look. What's he tell me? "Cant do it like it is AT ALL." Need have ALL of it just in respect to that plugin on a dedicated DB server. Well that completely negate everything come along with TurdPress security, software interfaces the works. So... With that I just decided it get used in specific areas (like the symptoms), just cant use it for things like descriptivism of Central Nervous System works, Neurons, Proteins on and on...

ALL that said, what eBay need do make what I was doing look like childs play.