eBay

zterx13 · ‎07-06-2018

After about a year of selling on this site the criteria that eBay uses to promote a certain product and deep six another remain a mystery to me. You can sell 500 of product A and 5 of product B where A & B are very similar substitutes for one another. The wild inconsistency of sales and products over time makes it nearly impossible to plan inventory acquistions. You can have one listing that is really hot and another, functionally equivalent in most respects, that never appears in search results. It feels, subjectively like when products are first listed they sell fast and then rather than gaining in popularity over time the next month, once you have been baited to upgrade your store subscription or invest in more inventory, sales just drop off to nearly nothing with no apparent rhyme or reason. It feels like bait and switch or gas lighting. I am beginning to conclude that eBay is a waste of time and effort in terms of a place to do business at. It is too unpredictable.

emerald40 · ‎07-06-2018

@zterx13 wrote:
After about a year of selling on this site the criteria that eBay uses to promote a certain product and deep six another remain a mystery to me. You can sell 500 of product A and 5 of product B where A & B are very similar substitutes for one another. The wild inconsistency of sales and products over time makes it nearly impossible to plan inventory acquistions. You can have one listing that is really hot and another, functionally equivalent in most respects, that never appears in search results. It feels, subjectively like when products are first listed they sell fast and then rather than gaining in popularity over time the next month, once you have been baited to upgrade your store subscription or invest in more inventory, sales just drop off to nearly nothing with no apparent rhyme or reason. It feels like bait and switch or gas lighting. I am beginning to conclude that eBay is a waste of time and effort in terms of a place to do business at. It is too unpredictable.

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Of course new products, especially fads sell faster when they are first listed. People have to own them. Then often quickly these same people move on to the next fad and then the next.

As far as two items that are similar, but not the same, who knows why people prefer one over the other. But that is knowing your audience, not ebay's fault.

Selling has never been consistent for anyone, be it B&M or online. People's tastes change. New competition pops up. Buyers move to a new venue. In the summer they move on to outside activities.

It is the nature of the business. Ome day you do great, tomorrow not so much.

kathieskorner · ‎07-06-2018

So after a whole year of selling on this site, you have come to the conclusion that ebay randomly picks winning and losing products. What would be the advantage to ebay to do that?? Ebay makes money when items sell, and when sellers purchase a store subscription or pays for additional listings to make more sales.

And if you have noticed the stream of technical glitches on ebay over the past several months you would know that their IT staff isn't smart enough to write a program that "randomly picks winning and losing products". They can't even tabulate the number of views an item receives any more.

The one thing you should have learned is that what sold yesterday may not continue to sell today, next week, next month, or next year. Past sales just are not an accurate predictor of future sales.

The biggest mistake many ebay sellers make is in investing in inventory, and that includes buying a large quantity of the same item because they think it is "hot" or spending money they can't afford. The second biggest mistake is blaming ebay for the first mistake.

Selling is always unpredictable unless you are selling items people just can't live without, and even then there will always be the competition to consider. I've had items that get 150 views and don't sell, and items that sell within minutes of being listed. And I don't believe either is due to any manipulation by ebay.

slippinjimmy · ‎07-06-2018

BUYERS decide which items sell and which don't, eBay can attempt to influence them but the bottom line is that the people with the money (buyers) decide which product sell and which don't.

The only real influencing eBay does it to try to make sure that buyers leave with SOMETHING, which seller gets the cash is really irrelevant to them.

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep

zterx13 · ‎07-06-2018

I think it is pretty clear that eBay manipulates its marketplace. It is not just laissez-faire supply and demand. "Best match" is frequently neither the best match for the buyer or the seller. Why would they do that? Probably to manipulate certain business metrics such as "new stores," etc for their quarterly reports for Wall Street. Maybe eBay's internal economists have figured they can maximize their profits in the short run to placate Wall Street by churning through sellers using bait and switch throttling techniques. Maybe I am wrong to a lesser or greater extent but I think it is naieve to immagine that eBay is simply a buyer and seller driven marketplace. Visibility in search results seems to be highly manipulated.

dhbookds · ‎07-06-2018

What a lot of sellers don't realize is that a lot of sellers watch what sells VERY CLOSELY. If they see a hot item, they may move in on it....... So while you may have much more competition the 2nd month than the first........ thus harming sales...... As people say, this is "much faster" than B&M retail.....where it may take a season or a year for other shops to cash in on the cabbage patch doll craze..........

luckythewinner · ‎07-06-2018

You can have one listing that is really hot and another, functionally equivalent in most respects, that never appears in search results.

"Never appears in search results" is painting with a very broad brush, given that many different buyers will search in many different ways using many different search criteria.

Can you give us a specific example of an item that "never appears in search results", and give us the item number and the search criteria you expect to find it with but didn't?