Sales down 70% on last year... what is going on?

[knewdoors]

Unbelievable...been doing Ebay for 10 years and it's never been this bad..our sales compared to last year are around 70% down...18 days at the moment without a sale, when we usually have around 8-10 per month..This has never happened before..we have 100% rating..All of our listings are free to Aussie customers..we ship same day (business day) pop prepaid satchels in post..reg post the next business day....despite all of the reassurance from the reps..i feel something isn't right..is it the lights on lights off theory?? is that real? or just an urban myth...all i know is things have nosedived compared to previous years..sure there is amazon & facebook..& gumtree..product trends change to..but really 70% so drastic Ebay says everything is fine re: page views traffic is coming..the reps are terrible here..arrogant is a word that comes to mind..sure they cant make people buy..but i still think something ain't right and does one get "blacklisted" if you disagree with their views..ie: they choke your traffic..shrugs i have no idea..then i read ebay makes a stack from google ads and we are just providing content to them..what gives...???

[digital*ghost]

As a buyer, I'm personally attracted to "clearance", because it gives me the impresion the seller wants to clear out the stock one way or another, and prices are about as low as they're going to get - I will almost always click on a 'sale' or 'clearance' link / banner and happily browse for a while. I might not have paid full price for the stuff that is on clearance, but I will often be willing to pay the clearance price. 

Alternatively, 'sale' gives me the impression than a full price item is temporarily reduced and I might not have another chane to get the item at the lower price, and doesn't imply the items were unpopular etc.

You can add in other words to adjust the impression, eg "end of range clearance" - that term more suggests 'these are popular items, but I can't get / make them anymore so I'm clearing out what I have left to make room for new stuff.' 

[jellybirddesigns]

Thanks Digi - those are excellent thought!

I do like the concept of "end of range clearance", which is really what those items are. They are often the last covers I can make out of the fabric I originally bought, especially since many have been discontinued.

[brerrabbit585]

Some people will buy anything if they think the price has been reduced. A seller I bought a lot from a few years ago (and I do mean a LOT) said just putting the word 'sale' in the title seemed to make a huge difference to a lot of her slower items.

[padraicpaul91]

That every person and their dogs have become sellers on various platforms does not help. Even the 'what's happening experts' on breakfast television are spruiking ecommerce as a second job / income source.

Yes, ebay now has more listings than it's search engines can handle. Many searches I do show many hundreds,even thousands, of results but only one  page of items come up. Not always but often.

Looking at your listings, knewdoors, I noticed many have been up for many months. They are likely to appear as very lowly ranked in searches, if at all.

My strategy now is to end a listing after 3 or so months, if it has not sold, and then relist or 'sell similar'. This will push the item up in the searches. This does not apply if I have multiple items in a listing and one sells, as the search ranking goes up anyway. One item that is a best seller has remained unchanged for 3 years.

No guarantee of selling, of course. But I can say this has occurred and I do find views and watches do increase.

[chameleon54]

I,m convinced ebay algorythms work on the principle of " The more you sell, the more you sell, The less you sell the less you sell . "

In other words sellers who are making reasonable sales have all of their listings boosted in visibility, resulting in even more sales, where conversely if sales are slow and dropping, ebay penalises a seller by lowering their visibility even further, resulting in even less sales. 

This would make sense as the site is swamped with more sellers than buyers. Ebay wants to keep the succesful sellers with good items at reasonable prices around, while discouraging those with less popular items or higher price expectations.

This isnt meant as a personal remark on any particular seller, more an observation of how the search system works.

My sales slip away from time to time, particularly if I,m busy with other things and dont list any new items for a month or two. Sales have got that bad on occasions that a stores will become almost comatose and I wonder if I can revive them. What works for me is to spend a couple of days full time listing new items and maybe run a few auctions of desirable items at fair prices. The new listings and auction items are automatically boosted very high in visibility, resulting in sales. This kickstarts sales again and resets ebay algorthyms to push visibility of all items, fixing the low visibilty problem. I have used this technique numerous times and always had success with it.

[chameleon54]

Another thing which may help is to do advanced searches of sold items to establish a current value for the items you have for sale.

You currently have a number of Roger Dean artwork posters for sale for $125 each. A search of sold items shows that plenty have sold recently for around $50 or less. Sure some are overseas, but these can be mailed to Australia for $16 postage, still making them around half the price of your listings.

Prices for " luxury"  or discretionary spend items can change monthly, depending on who is selling and what they are charging.

When times are tough and money is tight, buyers become very discerning about what they will buy and how much they are willing to pay. They search for value and will not pay top money if something is available elsewhere for half the price.

[padi*0409]

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@chameleon54 wrote:

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You currently have a number of Roger Dean artwork posters for sale for $125 each. A search of sold items shows that plenty have sold recently for around $50 or less. Sure some are overseas, but these can be mailed to Australia for $16 postage, still making them around half the price of your listings.

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Good point Chamo, also when you look at a listing there's often "see similar items" furthur down the listing page, so if any of those match the one you're looking at with a better price on it (assuming it's not a "too good to be true price") then the potential buyer for your listing is almost certainly going to go to another seller that offers the item at a better price.

[kitty-kat-kollection]

Last weekend I had a heap of sales, but this week and weekend much less. Aside from the Easter holiday, this drop in sales would not follow the pattern of the more you sell, the more you sell. It would follow the other pattern of the more you sell, the more ebay throttles you so your listings are hidden. 😉

[lyndal1838]

This Easter is far from usual on ebay....even taking into account the usual sales on weekends.

It is in the middle of the school holidays in NSW and the Easter Show is on.

Even the boards are slower than a wet weekend....quite dead even for a normal weekend.

[chameleon54]

I,ve had a handful of sales today, plus an opening bid on an auction item and lets not forget the " wheres my item " enquiry from an OS customer.... .......Nothing to get really excited about, but just another pretty standard day on ebay. Easter doesn't seem to have had much effect.