What a ridiclous joke!

[es1989]

I know that it has been mentioned often, but just to blow of some steam.

Not last financial year, but the one before we turned over around $1800 a week across our eBay accounts, and had a profit margin of 74.3%.

Last financial year, this dropped to around $785 a week and a profit margin of 69.8%. This was despite during this period offering free postage, subsidised premium postage services and doing many promotions/sales.

So far this financial year the average is $340 per week, with a profit margin of 63.4%. This despite the introduction of a 30 day return policy.

Normally Christmas is a good time of year, but so far it has go quieter not busier this year. We had only one sale last week!

I will be reducing my store levels this week, it has just become a joke. We are now considering to just stop buying new stock, and when our 1200+ items have sold, just closing our accounts. I use to love selling on eBay, it gave us a good income boost. But now, it is just a stressful disappointing smear of siht! I have given up looking for light at the end of the tunnel. EBay doesn't advertise much for small sellers, gumtree seems to be their new focus for everyday sellers, but that place is **bleep** for most things.

RIP traditional eBay. Hello new large retailer eBay.

[chameleon54]

I know how you feel. I was only looking at previous years figures a few days ago and lamenting to the wife on how things had declined.

Two years ago we made a full time living from ebay with our two stores. We had a vibrant, expanding, profitable little business going that was keeping me busy packing and mailing daily, listing new items in the quiter periods and generally bustling. Stock was coming in by the pallet load regularly and going out  again as quick as I could list it. We had large bricks and moratar businesses contacting us, offering their surplus stock and made regular buying trips interstate to view it.

There wasnt actually time for long lunches or days off as things where too busy and I was considering employing someone to help with our ebay business.

Now - Sales are down around 50%, profit margins per sale are lower as I have absorbed some of the recent postage costs and ebay fee rises. With slower sales I have basically had to ease my prices back to keep stock moving. We no longer pack daily and only list new items when I can make a bit of time. Its not really a priority any more.

The only thing that has " saved " me is that I still have a shipping container full of stock that does not owe me anything. I am running this down and not replacing it, so everthing I sell is profit. I expect it will take another two to three years at current rates to clear this stock. Once the shipping container is picked over I will just run down my 1800 listings and say goodbye to ebay..

On the bright side, I could see the changes ebay where making to their business model and the coming effects it would have on small sellers. Two years ago I made an urgent effort to build another business, turning our small hobby farm into a full time sheep grazing business.

This is starting to come together now. We have leased a number of small properties and larger vineyards, sold assets such as a few shares we had and a water licence to buy extra sheep and retained all ewe lambs for breeders. We have gone from 150 sheep three years ago to 1200 now and still expanding. We currently lease 600 acres of high rainfall, hills grazing as well as owning a larger, semi arid, remote rural property 250 km. away. The new business is already returning signifigant profits and within 12 -18 months I expect this business to pay all of our living expenses.

Had we continued to rely on ebay and not taken this early action, we would have literally gone broke by now, losing our home and other assets. I wonder how many small ebay sellers are in financial distress as a result of declining sales ???

[es1989]

Lucky you found another business opportunity. I dodge a bullet in a similar way. We were about to invest $60K into new product lines and go eBay full-time just before the search engine issues, hacking saga and so on. I was about to leave my job. I'm damn glad I didn't. We wouldn't have a roof over our heads if we had gone eBay full-time! I really feel for sellers that do rely on it full-time, and I urge them to diversify.

[kopenhagen5]

You can make all the changes and improvements, new products, promos etc., but if the site is not performing as it was, then that is the reality. Doesn't matter what you do. It is eBay that needs to make changes to suit the current climate.

eBay has slowed, no doubt.

[chameleon54]

---

@es1989 wrote:
Lucky you found another business opportunity. I dodge a bullet in a similar way. We were about to invest $60K into new product lines and go eBay full-time just before the search engine issues, hacking saga and so on. I was about to leave my job. I'm damn glad I didn't. We wouldn't have a roof over our heads if we had gone eBay full-time! I really feel for sellers that do rely on it full-time, and I urge them to diversify.

---

We where in a similar position. We where struggling to keep up with the work our ebay business was generating. We needed to change something and considered employing someone to help out. We got as far as trying a potential employer out for a few weeks and at the time did a lot of soul searching. We where considering diversifying into our own website and continuing to grow our online business as it was highly profitable.

It was during this soul searching period we came to the conclusion that ebay was starting to change direction with an increased focus on large big box sellers at the expense of smaller sellers. There had been a number of concerning decisions made by ebay management that did little to instil confidence in ebays commitment to its army of smaller sellers.

It was really edge of the cliff stuff when we decided to abandon our commitment to expanding our ebay business and go in a completely different direction. A sliding doors moment for sure. Had we continued to invest and expand on ebay I have no doubts it would have ended in tears as sales have been in decline ever since.

On a brighter note sheep prices have had a signifigant rise in the last two years, with the money invested in breeding stock paying signifigant dividends. I purchased 80 SAMM ewe lambs twelve months ago for $97 per head. They are now worth over $200 each as prime young breeders and have cut a fleece of wool and had a lamb for me in that time.  That one little mob of ewe lambs has made around $20,000 profit for me in twelve months.  

[phorum_junkie*]

I too have never sold sol ittle on ebay but I don't think it is just ebay. It used to be difficult to find a parking space in our local shopping village, now you can drive in and park anywhere you want. Even at school finishing time which I used to avoid like the plague if I could it is now dead as a dodo.

When I do have parcels to post the chap in the PO says exactly the same, when is the Christmas increase going to start. We have both stopped holding our breath.

[heihachi_73]

Australia Post being competitive, that will be the day. They know sellers want a small (literally) parcels category but know they can just make a killing when you do have to pay $7.60 at the counter for something 22mm thick and weighing 70 grams.

Come on Officeworks, show them who's boss and give us a $4 parcel rate for small items up to 250g. As long as it's a parcel and not a letter, Australia Post can't do a thing about it as they do not offer such a service! That way I can happily go to your store at 6:00 Sunday afternoon or any other given day of the week, knowing full well you will still be open for business unlike Australia's laziest postal corporation who is only open between 9 and 5 for five-and-a-bit days (LPOs with their own trading hours don't count), drop off my item, receive my tracking number to type into eBay for the buyer to view and wait for [Fastway to screw it all up?!] the buyer to receive their item in the same condition as packed.

[zzrmags]

I'd love to see the small parcel option also...

[clarry100]

Yes it seems the hay-day of ebay has passed for us too.

October-November are normally our two biggest months of the year.

This year we have only seen about 33% of the sales volume as compared to the same two months last year. Way down.

And so far thru this tax year we are down on sales about 50% as compared to last tax year same period.

So for us we are looking to another venture which is just getting off the ground now but looking promising early on.

We have decided to let our ebay stock run down and even to de-stash some of the slower selling lines via Facebook pages.

Hoping to just get back what we paid for the stock.

We are only topping up stock on the very popular lines.

We will keep it alive until our other venture kicks in, but the longer term plan now is to exit ebay selling completely in time and concentrate our efforts elsewhere. Not sheep tho!!

[es1989]

yeah around $3.50-$4.50 for up to 250g would be great, and not an unreasonable request.