Do you think Ebay dead now with sales

[fishingsavertackle]

My sales has drop because all the changes on ebay from 2 to 4 lot  a day on a min of 100 lots a month

down too 40 to 50 max a month .

I have noticed that a large company comes along and they put there product on the front page straight away

and i was selling more because they was not selling online they come back and they go stright to the front

So all Ebay helps is large companies than the smaller ones

Plus the large companies have very large prices on postage for there product and they get away with it

So is there some other company in Australia can open up a website so  people can sell there product on there with out all this bull **bleep** that we have to go though with ebay high prices and changes all the time they are kill small business and small sellers  

[dotm2004]

I have been selling on eBay for several years .... it has been a learning experience and I've improved my methods, improved my stock, and kept my prices down.   I have built up a good business.   I intend to continue with eBay, as I think there is no alternative.

BUT,,,,,, the past few months, my sales have dropped considerably  ... if it wasn't for my 'regulars' I think I would have to give up 🙂  Any ideas?

[yeoldecoinco]

Yes, eBay is dead for sales these past few months.

Many reasons, including a sluggish economy.

I have been selling on eBay for nearly 15 years.

The only way to sell material on eBay now is to have the lowest price.

I have low prices, but have to discount them by a further 10% to make any sales now.

It is nothing like it used to be, auctions are dead and it is just a race to the bottom as far as prices are concerned.

Whether this is to do with the economy alone, or whether search engines/Cassini etc are also to blame, I am not sure.

I think it is also to do with the fact that eBay has driven away many sellers.

When this happens, many of those sellers were buyers too.

My website ticks along quite well and I spend absolutely ZERO on SEO and the like.

[kizacks]

 yep, dead as it gets

[lozyginns]

WHAT DID YOU ALL EXPECT WHEN YOU ALL JUST LISTED ANOTHER MILLION ITEMS EACH

SO MANY ITEMS ON EBAY, AND YET NOT ENOUGH WORLD POPULATION TO BUY IT...

[kizacks_online]

Hi pnk_trading,

 

Ebay is a good place to start, but there are many external factors on Ebay today to contend with that make even a small sized investment a risky one. Perhaps these changes have not affected your business yet, but take a look at how many local listings/sellers there are today compared to international listings on Ebay.au, and compare it to say 5 years ago. The stats do not lie. Those small/mid size sellers are being pushed away by Ebay due to their changes. Yes, there are still small/medium size sellers, but they've had to withstand a lot of interference from Ebay. Adapt and survive and all that, but how can you adapt to something (Best Match) that makes no sense or isn't even fair to begin with. I had an international seller the other day sell an identical item to me which placed higher in the search with the exact key words, and they charged $20 more in shipping with an inferior f/b score and ultra slow shipping. I am a Top Rated Seller with 99.9 fb and oftered free shipping and same day service...
 
How about you take one of your items: list one with "Free Postage" and one listing with a P&H fee - with the items being exactly the same in total price. I've done this experiment myself on another account, and most often than not, the item with the postage&handling fee will have a higher rank than the one with "Free Postage". Wasn't that one of the criteria you claimed for gaining top search standing with "Best Match"?

 

[springyzone]

I was wondering if you could tell us more about your website and what SEO means.

Is it expensive to have your own site and how do you attract traffic to it?

[elegant--u]

I like springyzone would love to know more about websites, I tried a free one once and got half a dozen sales in 2 years and was spending more time trying to promote it with meta tags etc and found it so time consuming, it was much easier on ebay. But I am always open to new ways of getting my business out there.

[pnk_trading]

I would recommend shopify it is easy to use. The dashboard is bit similar to ebay you will have option to import your ebay listing directly to your shopify account. It is not free like ebay there is a subscription stars from $30 a month. The other cheap option is a $14 a month which is **bleep** you will have limited access for other plugins.
Once you open up shop don't expect people start purchaseing your products you have to manually start promoting your website. You need to submit your website to google webmaster so the bots can crawl your website and start ranking on Google.
Shopify inbuilt SEO plugins so you can add kerds on each listing. Once you get that out of the way you just wait and see if there's any progress if no sales then you might have to learn SEO or hire someone to optimise your website for you which costs a lot of money and time usually a good SEO method would take upto 3months to see some decent results.Basically it is a lot of work having your own website.
This is why I mentioned on my previous post it is much easier and cost effective selling on eBay. Ebay only charges non store owners once the item sells other than that it is FREE. In which online selling platform will you have that opportunity?
A lot of people complaining about there are not getting any sales. E-comerrce is changing rapidly based on consumer shopping preference. Ebay has no choice but change and adapt to the new market and it expect the ebay sellers to do the same.
If ebay don't make these changes ebay would close up shop and we as pesky sellers will have no place to sell our products and make some easy cash.

[pnk_trading]

Hi Chadbarlowe

Yes I do agree with some of your points mentioned. Any small business start up there's always a risk. I am a professional chef and have food catering business comparing to last 5 years of trading the business is significally lower due to competition. Which I accept that's how the business world works the question I ask my self is how do I do it better than my competitor. yhis is apply to any business big or small it is all about accepting the change. I guess the best match is works just like Google, relevance. Price, sell through,return policy,free shipping and finally DSR. I belive the international seller coming on top of the search result he/she must have sold a lot of products or must have listed the product way before you and have good impressions on clicks. In this case you will see that page rank on top of the best match. Some products you are selling at the moment may come on top as well.
I keep it very simple I offer free shipping and handling to all my products give them 30 - 60 days money back Guarantee.

[toygirl70]

Stamp collecting is old schoool....yet in June 2013 I opted for an anchor store. I accepted the fact that I was going to have to become a bigger seller or just fade away. There are many aspects of ebay/paypal I hate with a passion and just wish that there was a very competitive alternative....there isn't. So I persevere, I price check everything at the time of listing and do this again when I get an influx of stock for any give country that I stock. I do not get sucked in by all the bs that ebay spew out about fakefree postage or extra scan-I do not use photos but choose 600 or 1200 dpi scans and use the required number to satisfy my buyers....not what ebay recommends. Older items have greater detail as some may have faults which are clearly described.....So to sales, lets start with page views as measured by omniture, year on year up between 20-60 percent, hard $$$$ sales up between 40-60 year on year. Current month October better all round than September, despite some very quiet days and year on year up about 70 per cent. I focus on volume rather than high value items....too much risk involved with those and offer genuine free shipping when someone spends over 60aud on 2 or more items. So it is not all bad, but I do agree with so many of the sentiments expressed on here about ebays disasterous business strategy....