I've been selling on eBay for more than a decade now, and for the past year have noticed ever decreasing sales. It used to be that the more items I listed, the more sales I generateed, and I was quite happy.
But for the past several months, sales have seemed to dry up. I used to average a little more than two sales per day, but now I'm down to about one sale every other day. I'm a Power Seller, and Top Rated seller, yet neither of these ratings seem to mean much when it comes to net sales.
This isn't the first drop I've seen, the last big drop was when eBay and Google got into a spat, and Google stopped putting eBay items on the top of it's search results. That spat cost me some $2500 per month in sales at the time. I eventually compensated for the loss by increasing my number of listings. But lately that doesn't seem to work.
Some months ago I started listing things on Etsy, and got a few sales over the first month. Oddly, my sales on Etsy have now exceeded my sales on eBay, which was something I never expected. Etsy sales have increased, while eBay sales continue to trend downward.
I'm hoping eBay will wake up one day and stop trying to be Amazon. If I want something from Amazon, I will go to Amazon. eBay used to be the world's biggest flea market, and that was not a bad thing, because it was fun. Buying and selling was more risky, but in case eBay never noticed, people like to take risks, however much they may grumble.
If eBay wants to be another Amazon, why should I sell on eBay? eBay's rules and standards are so high that selling from Amazon is now no more difficult, and Amazon has a much larger market than eBay. I'm setting up an Amazon store now, and will try it out just for kicks. If I'm selling more stuff on Etsy than on eBay, perhaps I'll sell even more on Amazon.
Wake up eBay! "Get back to where you once belonged!"
