Not the Regular eBay Sales Slump?

by: Paul W

One store up 36%, other by 2.8% over the previous month.  Can't complain.

I might mention, there are millions of eBay sellers and perhaps a few hundred, if that many, that comment on the discussion boards.  I doubt that the results discussed there are representative of the seller world as a whole.

by: DeForce

Getting VERY tired of either PayPal or eBay making changes at all during the busy season.

WHY oh WHY do they make changes at this time of the year and then, when you call them, they consistently deny the faults are with them and their service to Sellers?
Idiots!

eBay send out pathetic emails telling Sellers they are here to help 'grow your business'. The truth is 'mess with your business'.

Help? In other words, mess with your business ENTIRELY.
eBay make it impossible for Buyers to find items in their own country, but ask that you keep paying their fees and tolerate that you SHOULD be selling what is trending, rather than the products you specialise in.

Taking away phone numbers is another bad move.
Who wants to play 3hrs with a customer and their questions when a simple phone call WOULD result in a sale?

Another HUGE problem is the 'Estimated Delivery Date'.
How dare eBay ignore your handling time and listen to Australia's only postal service who cannot even deliver a letter in 13 days to within less than 10 kilometres.
Again, idiots!!

I am so glad we 'invested' in our own website.

by: connie t

“October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to sell on ebay. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.”

by: AlBeSure

So what else is new ?  All sales are down for the last 3 months. venues from feebay and scamazon are a joke. Best to use your own website to make sales, seems to work better without ebay interference.

by: maxmad

When these greedy venues make a change it's always about the money, unfortunately, they not only affect themselves like a normal company, it is the sellers that are impacted, someone will always be the winner and someone will always be the looser,

Unreliable, Unpredictable, Unstable, No future, No control, are all reasons why you cannot under any circumstances build a real business based on ebay,

it's really a scam ebay is running, free listings makes it legal to do what they want, and promoted listings makes them free money for doing nothing

by: maxmad

When these greedy venues make a change it's always about the money, unfortunately, they not only affect themselves like a normal company, it is the sellers that are impacted, someone will always be the winner and someone will always be the looser,

Unreliable, Unpredictable, Unstable, No future, No control, are all reasons why you cannot under any circumstances build a real business based on ebay,

it's really a scam ebay is running, free listings makes it legal to do what they want, and promoted listings makes them free money for doing nothing

by: mindelec

Usually October is a pretty good month, not this year.  One thing I did notice is that what few sales I had only came on weekends.

by: Gemz

Yes it's quite dead out there. Unless of course you are selling what people want to buy which is.... ANYTHING that they can buy for less than 1/2 what you paid for it (oh, providing you are also paying the shipping fees to get it to them!)

Anything that they think they can buy and then call and complain to get you to give them more of a discount off what they already paid and have in their hands!

And of course anything that is very hard to get and usually comes in two parts (like a display, and a computer) where they already have one but want you to split the unit up thus making the remaining piece worthless, sell them the piece they want at 1/6th or less than the entire unit together was priced at, and of course pay the shipping for the honor of their business!

If you meet those requirements, you are going to have more business than you will every be able to keep up with! You won't have any money, but you will have plenty of business!

by: EbayerAmazons Corner

I have to say that sales on Ebay UK have become so bad that I did not re-stock for Christmas and I have just registered with two other platforms and will start listing on them next week.I sold 20 items in September and complained to them bitterly about the slump in traffic and sales.It became my final straw and I sold 26 items in October.
I also had a massive slump last year but this slump in both traffic and sales has pushed me to do something with other platforms that I did not even think I would have done. Selling with just Ebay alone is scary and quite frankly crazy if this is going to be the trend,loyalty is out of the window for me,I've had it..  

by: Dalpal

October has been bad for me: down 52% compared to Oct 2016, down 21% from Sept, which was also down double digits from previous month. I sell vintage collectibles, toys, odds & ends, some apparel/shoes, with average price under $20.  I hate the new ''amazon-style'' listings, showing one main item with xx number of new & used link below.  And I really hate the hiding of full description in listings, requiring a click thru (which too many people don't do) to get details.

It also seems like the already wonky search engine is even worse recently.  On most ''normal'' search engines, if you put in a word or phrase, results will be everything that has that word in it.  Just discovered the other night that for ebay, unless you search the exact ENTIRE word, sometimes zero results come up.  Example:  I searched Trib Force Audio Book, zero results.  Tribulation Force Audio, 29 results.  Similar for searching Pom figurine vs Pomeranian. Has it always been this defective?

by: blrug

We have seen it every 6-7 months -  30-40%  down.  However,  this time is 66%  down compare to the last Oct.  It normally starts after a a period of  very good week and drops like a rock for 2-4 weeks.  Another strange pattern in selling is that   sometimes after 3-4 hours no activity all of the sudden 3-5 sells happen in 30-50 minutes and again stops. Have talked to "experts" in ebay they have no clue why.

by: Chicago48

Selling with just Ebay alone is scary and quite frankly crazy if this is going to be the trend,loyalty is out of the window for me,I've had it.
^^
I'm surprised at the sellers who ONLY use Ebay as their platform, when there are others.  Now with me, I'm selling on about 4 platforms and EB and Amaz outsell the other two I'm with.  And those two are dedicated sites, one for women, one for men.  But the clothing sales are coming from Ebay, can't complain; AMZ won't let us sell clothes.  Electronics are turning out to be a good sale for me too.

by: Alfabarn1

A non-seller forum that serves the car owners in my niche market has an ongoing thread about Ebay losing it's ''Mojo'' and perhaps the best explanation.

1 too much junk from China and far too many listings to wade through to find anything else
2 The sellers that have the material the community really wants no longer sell on Ebay for several reasons. one of which is the ease with which a seller can be robbed.

For my part I no longer sell NOS on Ebay, so of course Ebay sales are down, But thanks to shopify, and a newsletter. Sales of NOS are actually up.

by: Rexford

Ming says "OR...Devin and Brian may be trying to teach those of us who are refusing Promoted Listings and 60 day free returns a lesson by sinking us all so low in search that we won't be found."

I think you are right Ming. Once I raised he** with them about being forced into Seller Hub they removed it, but I saw a drastic reduction in sales right after that. Fine by me. I sell elsewhere and I don't need them anymore.

And to Pace306's point, yes, I am sure traffic is driven to exactly who they want to have traffic.  What a way to run a company.  

In answer to Ina's question though, yes, this is the worst that I have seen it in 15 years.

by: GretchensFetchins

I killed my inventory in the middle  of the the month for vacation but things are picking back up.

The PayPal decision to break their shipping app bothers me more than any game eBay plays.

by: Beth

In June of 2008 I was on track for $7000 a month.  Since then it's been all down hill but I managed to plateau at $3000 a month.  Since Last December I can't hit $1000 a month and if I call I get thank for being a longtime seller. But still no sales.

I'm on Amazon - $2600 a month doing about 4 hrs work a week. Which leaves me time to edit my 2000 listings on ebay endlessly.   I think I hear Sayonara playing in the back ground.  

by: simerivergun

My sales are down 47% in Jewelry Sales for the year and Ebay is allowing new sellers to promote knockoffs using the High Brand Name and won't do anything about it.  I have reported at least 20 sellers, new accounts, that are false advertising.  I reported to Ebay, but nothing done.  The Chinese are the worst offenders, but now USA sellers are using ''preowned'' to peddle fakes.  Ebay wants me to PROMOTE for a percentage of my sales plus the usual Ebay fee.  In order to make any money at all I must raise my prices to cover the outlandish cost of Ebay and therefore I promote myself out of the ''Best Match''--Cheap List.  The Ebay people are NOT business people.  We sellers must cover our expenses plus shipping, plus fees and still make a profit. How many sellers are breaking even on any sales they make.  Wish someone would buy Ebay that can turn around this downward spiral.


 

by: Snapped

Everything is relative of course, and there will always be 'outside' influences on sales tied to market demographics or the season.

However, those impacts are typically predictable and temporary, and adaptation strategies can be applied.  

And apparently in what is also now an 'adaptation' requirement on eBay, are 'regular' eBay sales slumps to deal with.  Like it's something 'normal' to expect VENUE caused loss of sales.  And normal to expect nothing will ever be done to correct it, much less even acknowledge it.

And only 'newsworthy' when even that 'setback expectation' one should come to expect from using eBay now is exceeded by venue machinations designed to (wish to) increase venue margins at the expense of the customers who pay for the boardroom table's polish.

Read it and weep.  For what might have been.

by: Two Southerndivas

October is usually very good, due to crafters beginning to make Christmas cards, but this month stunk, down 50%from Last year and views are way way down.

by: comments

Ebay sales are down across the board. The likely reason why is because of the promoted listings. We noticed our slump when Ebay expanded promoted listings. We used to get pretty good exposure in the "customers frequently looked at this item" that has now been replaced with sponsored listings.