Sellers have been reporting the phenomena you outline for at least a couple of years. It only seems to effect some individual sellers at a time, not a complete site problem. No one seems to have any major insights into fixing the problem, except that new listing activity may help.
Recently I have not spent the time on ebay that I normally would and so have not had the new account activity I would normally have. The result was one of my selling id's hit the wall with no sales for three weeks. I suspected this might happen, but the abrupt and dramatic nature of the fall was a bit of a shock.
My take on this is that ebay have recently re-jigged its search algorythms to place even greater emphasis in regular account activity. The more you sell, the higher your visibility and so the more you sell. Conversely, the less you sell, the lower your search ranking and so the less you sell, sometimes to the point of ebay oblivion.
My response was to do 40 new auction listings, including cheap and cheerful items. Three day auctions with relists at a BIN fixed price. I also sent out a number of offers to watchers on existing BINS. This had some impact with 12 items selling on that account in the last ten days or so. Most of these sales have come from the auctions which seem to rank more highly in visibility than BINS but I have sold a couple of the old BINS as well, so it seems to be lifting the visibility of existing listings as well.
Its still not back to normal and I will keep the pressure up with new listings to try to keep account activity happening, but the signs are there that it may be possible to return this account from the dead.
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