eBay Displays Amount Seller Sold in Their eBay Store

by: Ina

Going forward, presumably competitors can track sellers' monthly sales by monitoring the number sold displayed on their eBay Store homepage. Thoughts?

by: thebobman

Number seems to be lifetime number of items sold. Somewhat meaningless. Do you sell $100 items, or USB charging cables. Mine says 15k. I've sold about 10k orders in the last 20 years, but if you add up all the $1 cables that someone bought a 5 pack, 15k seems to be in the ballpark. I sold $7k last month so $15k isn't a sales value

by: Mazdaman

I'd REALLY like to see eBay give us a graph of the month-by-month sales as a one-click button to correlate to the XX Items Sold.  Since we have about 500-600 different items listed at any given time, the number of items sold is pretty much useless.

But if we could click and see how our sales have dropped on eBay, we could then ask eBay why this is the situation, and present to them the same info from our OTHER selling sites, including our own website, all of which have GROWN in the same time eBay has actually chased away buyers!

I'll bet this isn't all eBay is going to use this for, as you can count on something that will benefit eBay, but be of no use to sellers themselves.

by: thebobman

>>I'd REALLY like to see eBay give us a graph of the month-by-month sales as a one-click button to correlate to the XX Items Sold

I have a spreadsheet dating all the way back to 2001. First column is the month, next is gross Amazon sales, then gross ebay sales, then combined. Then is number of Amazon orders, then ebay orders, then total of those 2. Next is average number of orders per day that month. Then per day gross revenue during that month. Then Az average sale amount, then ebay average sale amount, then total average sale amount. Recently, I've starting adding the total value of items listed on each site, and number of individual items.

Many of those values can be calculated automatically, and really only take me 5 minutes a month to update the spreadsheet.

Dragging over cells can give instant totals, so I can pull up the sheet and in 5 seconds can see if I'm doing better during this month/quarter/year compared to previous years in seconds

by: kazaly

Yet another brain fart from some know nothing management nubbins.
Unfortunately, even though there is plenty of work to be done to get the site into some sort of working order, this is exactly the thing we've come to expect.

by: toyspast

It's not dollars, it's items sold, like McDonald's when they used to list how many burgers they sold. I don't have a problem with it. I've sold over 75,000 items. That should make people feel better, I guess.

by: getalife

Knowing Ebay I'm sure there's a ridiculous formula involved like ((% of late shipments/rate of return)+(postage costs+molecular weight of a marble on the lunar surface)*Pi squared/2.67823) = Total Items Sold since store creation - 1.
They throw that minus 1 in there just to demoralize you when you get too excited that you've finally figured out their formula, because the number will always be off by one sale and there's nothing you can do to fix it. Grrr!

by: BobNJ

Totally useless anyway, eBay's stats for my account are totally wrong and not just by a small number. They're stats show much less than half of my true total sales, both dollar amount and numbers of sales. They don't have a clue.

by: Sierra

Etsy has always shown the total number of sales (or at least for manyyyy years). They seem to copy both eBay & Amazon, so it's fun to see eBay copying them!  

by: Zarzuella

I think it is meant to help buyers when they are deciding if they should purchase from that seller.
100% feedback means little if the seller has sold only one item; 100% feedback on 35k units sold gives buyers that warm and fuzzy feeling about buying from that seller.

by: toyman

While I'm not sure of the ''reasoning'' behind the display, I AM sure that it has nothing to do with the monetary status of your account. I have been selling since 1998 and I am currently over 20,000 items sold, which is what is reflected by the number listed on my store.

I see it as a positive, as it shows that I am a consistent seller and that I have 100% feedback, so I can be trusted to give you competent service, so there should be a built in confidence to purchase from my Store.

They've done some screwy things over the years, but this one does not rate a big Hoopla over its insertion. Now, if they DID show the DOLLARS I earned, I might have a problem...

by: Lightning

Agree with @toyman and @DTSM, it's no big deal, a whatever.

Agree with everyone that it was totally unnecessary.  Energy misplaced when there are more important things to work out.

EBay wanders blindfolded in the dark.  The blindfold is in case the lights come on.  They want to make sure they stay lost and confused under any circumstances.

by: Marie

It appears to be an attempt to tell buyers how many transactions we have processed on this account.  However I know my is very low compared to my personal records.  It must be excluding repeat buyers or something.

This is a transaction count not how much money we have earned on Ebay.

by: Rexford

"Going forward, presumably competitors can track sellers' monthly sales by monitoring the number sold displayed on their eBay Store homepage. Thoughts?"

When I read the article I immediately thought it was a huge invasion of privacy. It is really none of anybody's business, and that includes competitors, how much a seller sells.  But as we all know, this is eBay.   The seem to delight in annoying sellers.

by: ChristyM

This number is based on your sales number not Price from the date you sold your first item.  You can look at your sales record number by clicking on your last sales order number and it will give you the "sales record number".  The number shown (minus) any canceled orders equals your sales record number.  

by: MichaelP

At least they aren't putting my full name and home address for all the world to see (like Amazon), such as any angry or jealous competitors or customers.  

by: Chel

Mine says, "229 Items sold" and that's def' for all time since I only started selling last year. It's depressing enough for me, I don't need anyone else to see it! lol. I just don't understand eBay. All I can say is thank goodness for Poshmark & Mercari. Pretty bad when Mercari is passing eBay for sales & average sales price even with their lame shipping options.

by: Snapped

‘member, back in the day, when one of the ‘draws’ to eCom was that one couldn’t tell a two-dude(ette) show from a two continent enterprise.  They made TV commercials about it.  Point was, eCom was a ‘leveler’.  

Point ALSO is, eBay has tossed that hook out too. Play like the ‘big boys’ they say. That’s what the FEES are for.

So how does THIS little ‘disclosure’, involuntary at that, contribute to this ‘leveling’?  Looks more like ‘targeting’, no?  

Competitive interference indeed.

by: Actual Seller

What's the problem?

I am proud to have this large number by my name on my multiple accounts.

It says nothing confidential, only that I am big time.
Gives buyers confidence that I am not an eBay scammer like many sellers are.