where has everyone gone? why is ebay sale dropping 20% year over year? some thoughts.
i cannot understand the situation on ebay for the past 2 years. we look at are results for the past 12 months and i see we outsold december 2022 with the sale from february 2022 by 20%. the same happens year after year, ebay's sales drop almost 20%.
our company sets up at comic cons for the past 30 years and we were up last year from 2021 but ebay is down. face to face sales keeps on improving and online ebay sales is turning into poshmark, will you accept 40-50% off your selling price. we advertise ebay and my website extensively to 1000's of customers at comic con most weeks and we can see the amount of folks visiting from my website and Instagram. we are bringing the customers to my store, my wife runs a post on Instagram and ebay gets 2-3 orders from the post.
the search engines is defective, at times it fails to find my own items in my ebay store. we will type a several words to help the result and some items with those words in the title don't show up. this is common day after day.
but what disappoints me most is your hard work is not rewarded. 3 years ago we would have had 4000 item for sale and today we are shy of 8000 and our sales are less than before. this is what doesn't make sense.
if i add more comic cons my sales go up for that year, but the opposite is occurring to ebay. i can deal with seasons, slow month, but the year over year comparisons, simply doesn't make sense.
ebay has a lot of problems and search engine seems to be one big factor, then there reach on google and others is another, if the other bigger sites, such as amazon and wal-mart do a better job or pay more. ebay is losing customers at a rate that has allowed competitors to vault ahead in sale, and this will continue, if something is not done quickly.
increasing costs internally to your sellers, only masks the drop in sales. if something is not done we will also we forced to sell on the other sites as many have already begun. once more and more sellers begin to sell on other larger sites you will see a comparison as more sellers post this information.
ebay is a brand that we all can respect, but dealers are being forced to make tough decisions about how and where their dollars are being spent. selling online has become very difficult. we pay to sell, and we expect a return on your capital, but the opposite is occurring as the return on investment, keeps dropping year after year. if ebay mimicked a 401k, you would twick the portfolio once or twice a year to maximize the return.
for some that mean leaving for other sites, a lot easier when you are small, but eventually even a large seller, is forced to do the same. i keep trying to justify hiring one more person to work and add more content online, we could easily put 3 to 4 times the amount for sale, but ebay sales keeps falling, killing that thought.
market share is falling, if the ship is not corrected quickly, the loyalty, your sellers have given you for so many year will be lost forever. ask the sears, blockbusters, and so many other giants of the past. we are all watching.
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