My sales have dropped off dramatically and wondering if anything has changed in the listings

[rainbow090434]

Over the past 6 weeks my sales have dropped off dramatically and so have the amount of watchers. Has anything changed in the listings or placement of listings? I realise increased competition would have an impact, but wondering if there are other reasons for the lack of consistency in sales.

[clarry100 · Accepted solution]

Rainbow....

We can't figure it out either.... but here are my thoughts on this...

Since about the beginning of March our sales have dropped down by about 70%.

We haven't changed anything on our listings. So its not something we have done wrong.

We comply with all the TRS requirements and all our listings get the TRS badge and fast shipping badge.

Just this week there has been a glimmer of hope tho, probably back up to around 55% down now.

We have a "test search phrase" we always use just to see where our listings are in the results. They are way down in the Best Match rankings at the moment and whenever this happens our sales are down and vice-versa too.

When times are good we ship out about 25-30 packages per day across our two stores. This past 6-weeks or so we have been lucky to get 5/6 per day. So we are hoping whatever has happened it comes good soon.

I have seen other sellers on other threads here saying similar things about sales too, so perhaps it is a lack of shoppers at the moment.

Our components (flowers, bands etc) come in from China and our major distributor over there has also said that his sales are way down too and he is talking acrosss the globe not just Australia. So it may be some kind of global nervousness in buyers for some reason.

[chameleon54]

Clarry, Your comments about your International supplier where very interesting. I must say that while March was very flat, ( Woefull is a word that springs to mind )  April has been a lot more busy, with very good results from auctions with the 500 freebies last week and much improved sales and questions from buyers through the stores. I had hoped we had turned the corner and things where returning to normal ???

[diecastcarsvicki]

just take a walk around most major shopping centres and see how many empty shops with staff numbers dropping.

or even more look at how many shops closed down people are struggling with job security as it is on ever ones mind.

that extra few dollars that use to get spent on some luxuries are now getting held onto.

hope things do start improving but i cant see it getting anywhere what it was pre xmas last year anytime soon. 

[clarry100]

Hi Chameleon...

Yeah we used one day's worth of the 500 freebies. We didnt know about it until the last day so couldn't make full use of it as we might have liked.

So the extra auctions have helped boost us a little bit. As I've said before we don't normally use auctions unless we get freebies as we cant recover the insertion fee losses from the large proportion that fail to sell..

Yes... we found the info from our international supplier to be interesting too. Suggests that it may not be entirely ebay tinkering as we have thought in the past when these slumps happen. eg back in Sept-Oct last year when we had a similar but smaller slump in sales.

[mitty_2010]

My sales too are down too ,  a family member is in shopping centre management and tells me its everyone so you're not doing anything wrong , the clothing company Millers closed down 60 stores recently, and more and more companys are taking their business to China . Phillipines , India as its more cost effective for them  , so there are a lot more unemployed people than last year ,  put in google search engine Australia recession 2014 and have read of those articles , so what can you do , make cut backs where possible personal & business wise too ,  advetise free where possible , use other domains too where possible .

[rainbow090434]

Thank you and this is exactly the same trend for me and particularly being well down in best match rankings. I agree with the other members that generally things are soft out there. However, Ebay normally trends consistently ansd this is the first time that it's obvioulsy down and I feel it's to do with ranking also. This week has been much better and fingers crossed it's getting back to normal.

[haolove13]

This seems to be across the board at present.

the bricks and mortar shops around Adelaide seem to be advertising their stocks of FOR LEASE for sale as there seem to be more shops advertising them

To be seen in Ebay results you have to get past the blinking outside party adverts,the selected irrelevant page of things in your city or preferred market,  then the side adverts for anything you have searched off ebay in the last month or so, then you have to get past the gumtree blinking adverts, then the higher ranked overseas sellers, then the big inventory stores, the cheap knockoffs, the keyword spammers. Then you may be seen but only if somebody has not been giving you low DSR;s

In the Central produce market there is less produce available as people are not even spending on food now. In general the Aussie economy is struggling.

I used to keep tally of page views and when an item got to 100 page views I could be reasonably confident of a sale.

Nowadays I am lucky to get twenty page views on items and with all the distractions there is no such thing anymore as consistent conversion rates.

And when you do sell the cost of sales is significantly more than it used to be.

To sell a twenty dollar item used to cost me fifty cents to list and about 75 cents for FVF

Now it is closer to four dollars than anything else. With the cost of goods ,plus lower conversion rates it is taking more expenditure to make less money. And with paypal and the level playing fields I need to factor in about ten percent loss factor. for fifteen years in the industry I hardly had a loss of anything. But with paypal now I am losing ten percent through claims (Are they real or imaginery?)

And time wise with non paying bidders etc it has become a very marginal business model.

Well I made my first sale this week on Quicksales so maybe the momentum will shift there as it is definitely not a goldmine here.

[creekman51]

maybe people are looking elsewhere eBay's starting too get pretty pricey these days as you probably already know

[harley_babes_hoard]

I have gone back through the last 3 years sales figures and each year Feb & March are down approx 40-50% on the same years figures.