Was September 2018 horrible for many others too?

[jorayjen-1]

Hello all,

I'm just curious as my monthly sales average are usually within a 5% range and here I am on the 30th September and I'm down 48.9% this month.

I've done nothing differently this month.

Is this happening to others as well?

Take Care - Jo

[davewil1964]

Not me. Mine are boringly average.

[outback_blends]

My sales were pretty steady for a while now (Not this ID) . I had 39 items listed and I thought ...if I list more I will get more sales so lets open an ebay store!   (DONT try this at home kids - I am a professional idiot )

WRONG - opened an ebay shop 2 weeks ago and listed a few more items and sales dropped to almost nothing the same day. 2 weeks on and still not a lot. Getting a few sales but nothing like I was before opening the shop. I thought it may take a while for items to re propagate through the system ...but I didnt think it would be this long ...and still waiting.

Checked some of my items on a friends computer and they were so far down the page as to be almost invisible. 

Just my 2 cents. 

[gumleaf_goodies]

I am also down about 50% of my typical monthly average, and in fact have sold NOTHING for the last week. And this is for a total of around 800 items across 2 IDs. 

[jfmgray]

September was strong for me except the last week has been a crawl.

[wide-world-of-stamps]

No, September was OK, around average, thanks to a pretty good second half of the month..

August was quite slow for most of the month.

[jorayjen-1]

to gumleaf_goodies

I'm feeling your pain gumleaf, although I only have 500 items on the one ID.

It just seems unusual as I've been selling for 8 or so years and know when the usual slow months are...

I'm so glad it's not widespread, so good on the ones keeping their heads above water 

Take Care - Jo

[chameleon54]

Like Dave, my sales have been boringly average and reliable for years, regularly within 1% of the previous month.

On August 8th sales on one of my stores stopped and went 12 days without a sale or question. I phoned CS who advised there had been major changes to ebays search algorithms in early August which had the unplanned side effect of making some sellers items almost invisible in searches.

They ran some tests on my store and confirmed it was one of the affected accounts. The account was referred to the tech department to try to restore visibility. It came back to life for one day, with several sales and questions and then died again for another ten days. More calls to CS and they offered me three months free of account fees as compensation. The account has limped along at snails pace since, down 75% on sales. My other two accounts, linked in ebays systems are down around 40% and 60% respectively.

Now when I phone CS they follow the usual ebay line of " there's nothing to see here, follow best listing practice by changing a few words in my titles, offer guaranteed 3 day delivery, have a sale etc." When I point out sales where ticking along just fine before ebays changes they go quiet.

Prior to August 8th,  I had a very active, vibrant, highly profitable ebay business that was contributing an important part of my income, the next day it was gone and unlikely to return.

 Luckily I have another business I started several years ago, as I was concerned about ebays platform reliability and policy uncertainty.

At that time I was a full time ebay seller and relied completely on ebay for my income, paying my mortgage, the kids private school fees, power bills and car repairs, all from ebay sales.. I would have genuinely gone broke and lost my house had my accounts been affected in this way, three years ago. I consider myself very fortunate that my new, non Internet business has just reached maturity this year and is capable of providing a decent income for my family at a time when my ebay business has gone down the loo.

I am not expecting my ebay sales to return to previous levels anytime soon and are now planning a new life, post ebay.

[jorayjen-1]

Gday chameleon,

I'm so glad you saw the writing on the wall and your new income stream is working out so well !!

It's lucky that I'm more of a hobby seller (with lots of books) as I read a heckuva lot and then sell them on so I can buy more - my version of recycling.

But if this keeps up I will be losing money and will have to stop selling and therefore stop my buying.

Sometimes it was the organising books to sell and trying to keep up with eBay that kept my gray matter exercised and turned me into a half computer literate person 

Thanks for your imput, it has given me something to think about but still no real answers.

Take Care

Jo

[ozstockman]

Jo, you are lucky if it is just a month. I have gone from a few thousands a month to a few hundreds over the last 3 years. My sales are only declining, I have had to move to the cheapest store level subscription as their fees were starting to be like 30-40% of my sales.

Ebay has lost from me about $2000 a year in fees so they are not just killing somebody businesses on eBay they are killing their own profits too.

My store outside of eBay stays on the same sales level all these three years so it is what eBay is doing killing sales for me on eBay.