Throttling sucks

I normally sell 15-20 items a week (Under a different account name) but the last 2 weeks has been woeful. Last week I actually sold more items over on the other site (QS) than I did on Ebay. Thats a first.

 

Can someone please tell me why ebay uses throttling - I just cant get my head around the logic of costing themselves the fees from sales that 'could have been' 

 

 

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Throttling sucks

Throttling sucks


@stickerswa wrote:

I normally sell 15-20 items a week (Under a different account name) but the last 2 weeks has been woeful. Last week I actually sold more items over on the other site (QS) than I did on Ebay. Thats a first.

 

Can someone please tell me why ebay uses throttling - I just cant get my head around the logic of costing themselves the fees from sales that 'could have been' 

 

 


NO .........................

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Throttling sucks


@stickerswa wrote:

 

 

Can someone please tell me why ebay uses throttling - I just cant get my head around the logic of costing themselves the fees from sales that 'could have been' 

 

 


In most cases, it would result more in herding than hiding. 

 

This might not necessarily hold true for sellers of items that can not be found anywhere else and substitutes are not an option, but for the majority of items, if a buyer can't see seller A's listing, they'll buy seller B's, so it would rarely mean eBay miss out on anything.

 

If seller A is throttled while seller B isn't, and then the cycle switches and seller B is throttled when seller A isn't, it would be a more equitable practice I suppose (in that, it would regularly increase, then decrease, the chance of a sale for all selllers who have this done).

 

This isn't an attempt at justifying eBay's practices, I believe they do have seller caps in place and that plays a part unfairly, just pointing out that I also think there's more (albeit only slightly) to it that just an insidious plot to make sure sellers can't get sales at regular intervals (especially because eBay search results are only one way for buyers to find listings). 

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Throttling sucks

I have no idea what EBay is thinking of, but this is hands down the worst week for sales I have EVER had on EBay in all the years I've been selling. Pretty obvious I'm being totally throttled. Why, I have no idea? But boy I wish they would just leave us all alone and let us have an even playing field!! 

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Throttling sucks

I've also had a bad week, one of my worst so far.

Went five days without a sale, which is really unusual and then just one sale today.

 

January was pretty good, so I'm rather frustrated by all this!

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Throttling sucks

Well, since sales are fairly poor now, and no more free extra listings , I have now found craft groups on FB and selling over there.

So they have done me a favour. (QS) Tried there again last year, but zilch.

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Throttling sucks

THE FOLLOWING IS ALL A THEORY, BACKED BY POSTS FROM OVERSEAS SITES, I.T. EXPERTS WHO HAVE STUDIED THROTTLING AND THE INFAMOUS EBAY INSIDERS LEAK OF SEVERAL YEARS AGO AND MY OWN OBSERVATIONS.

 

I suspect there is more than one thing going on here, basically a tiered system with at least four tiers. ( and probably many more ) of sellers, based on sales performance, new or used goods and catagories listed.  

 

The "genuine throttling" appears to be used by ebay to average out the monthly sales figures of some store accounts to ensure they sell to a pre determined average figure each month. Under genuine throttling, a seller should not have "bad months" as sales figures over time will always revert to the long term average. Every year or so the pre determined figure for some sellers seems to be reduced by a set amount and a new average is reached. This may be in response to shifting sales from these sellers to support the very large sellers. By studying rolling 120 sales figures it becomes apparent what the pre determined cap is, as sales over this time will always be the same $$$ figure and it is usually a nice round number.

 

If a seller has more than one store, ebay links the stores, so that the cap is spread over all stores. Only some store sellers appear to be affected by genuine throttling. Sellers who are affected by genuine throttling can not increase sales above the set limit, regardless of how many new and interesting listings they do.  I dont know how ebay determines which sellers are affected by genuine throttling, but I have a couple of theories I would prefer not to share. Its not all bad for these sellers as they can rely on recieving a set ebay income over time. This makes financial planning easier.

 

Then there is the " lights on, lights off" thing. This sounds the same as throttling and works in a similar way, but differs slightly in that no set sales cap seems to be in place. Sellers affected by this dont have the safety net of a pre-determined sales cap and can have very bad weeks or months. My guess is the lights come on and off in relation to how sales site wide are going in a certain catagory and the site in general. Ebay appears to be using 'lights on , Lights off" to spread what sales they have between sellers. This is possibly the sales that are left over after ensuring sellers who are genuinly throttled have reached their monthly quota and un-capped larger sellers have taken their share of sales.. If total site sales are down a bit, there may not be that many sales left to share between the sellers who have uncapped selling limits, meaning some weeks could be fairly sad regards sales. When overall site sales are good there could be plenty of sales left to spread between un-capped sellers so a boom and bust cycle appears.

 

I dont believe non store sellers are affected to the same degree by these systems. Our non store, 40 freebies per month account seems to be able to sell without any restrictions at all in a genuine free system. The only limits on this account are the maximum 40 free listings and relying on promotions to list higher numbers of stock, as the account does not recieve the 3 free relists that most sellers recieve. We try to list popular selling, unique items on this account and our sales are still holding very with some auctions recieving animated bidding and BINS going well. Just the way things should be in an unregulated market.

 

My guess is that ebay have a long term plan to encourage large sellers of new items and slowly phase out smaller sellers of used items and auctions. It would be business suicide to do this quickly, so ebay are using a gradual phased strategy to handle the changes. If this is correct, believe it or not, I see this as a responsible way for ebay to handle the process, as it allows its millions of small business sellers plenty of time to adjust to new income sources or change their selling strategies to fit the new ebay business model. It also allows for the natural organic growth of its larger sellers over time.

 

Ebay is not just shutting the door on its sellers, forcing them onto the unemployment scrap pile. Obviosly there is a financial incentive for ebay to manage the process of phasing out small sellers of used items gently, but hey if its going to happen, this is probably as good a way as any to manage the changes.

 

Like I say, its all just a theory though, ebay " aint sayin nothin "..........Smiley Very Happy

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Throttling sucks

A very well thought out analysis of the issue. 

 

I decided to have a quick look at 10 stores within a category and with a range of sales and number of items.  The stores ranged from selling 30 items a month to 3300 items a month and with total items ranging from 760 to 50000.  A quick analyis showed that there was a approx 97% correlation between what they sell in 1 month to 12 months being on average 13.5 times 1 month, which you would expect from christmas sales etc but quite consistent between stores regardless of the number of sales.ie the level of sales over the 12 months is managed by eBay.

 

However there was also a weak correlation between between the number of sales and  the number of items in the store.  So while not a 1:1 relationship between items and sales, in the category I looked at approximately 20 extra items are required to gain 1 extra sale per month. 

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Throttling sucks

I have been selling on Ebay for quite a long time (not this account) and the last two months is the worst I have ever had. My search ranking used to be amazing and all of a sudden I'm getting ranked pretty darn low - if you search for my products every seller in China/HK outranks me.  Which makes no sense as buyers are coming to com.au and not com.hk.  This will result in buyers having a horrible experience as they get delivered factory seconds 4 weeks later and swear off using Ebay.

 

I'm part of the conierge program with Ebay and all they tell me is search ranking is based on a number of factors etc etc...  no help.  There is nothing I can do to improve my ranking as I have done everything they recommend.  The fact we ship same day and get products in customers hands next business day in most cases doesn't mean squat.

 

The game is rigged.  I used to be a huge proponent of Ebay but not any more - just this morning I had Ebay call me from a phone number on my website asking me if I wanted to join Ebay and take part in a free 6 month pro account.  I told her she should have done her research as I am already online and have an established platinum account.  Typical.

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