topic Re: I feel invisible. in Selling

I feel invisible.

jellybirddesigns — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 05:05:12 GMT

It's been the most disheatening 3 months of my 5 years of having my shop here.

My shop had been climbing every single month since I started in 2014. However, in June I changed my subscription to a lower level and within a few days saw an immediate huge drop off. I changed it back to the previous level, but sales did not recover.

A few weeks ago I discovered that Ebay had (in their infinite wisdom), moved over 60% of my cushion covers into the "Childrens Decor" section of the Home and Garden category. Spent 2 days fixing up that little debacle, but sales are not recovering.

Sales are currently down between 40-50% which is an utter disaster.

International sales usually account for about 30-40% of my monthly total, but have fallen off a cliff completely.

When I check my store through other browsers and use search terms a buyer might look for, my stuff does come up.

When I put a VPN on and check on search terms in the US or the UK, my stuff does come up.

Weirdly enough, I am getting some sales of my craft items, but my main products, the cushion covers are simply struggling.

I feel "invisible", yet my items are there.

At a loss to think what else I can do to change things around.

Re: I feel invisible.

kopenhagen5 — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 05:22:33 GMT

Perhaps eBay look after their higher store subs a little better in search results ???

The algorithm for best batch has always been a mystery, maybe level of subs factor in.

Re: I feel invisible.

twyngwyn — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 08:20:05 GMT

https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2019/9/1568775577.html

Re: I feel invisible.

jellybirddesigns — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 09:20:03 GMT

Interesting article, thx Twyngwyn.

I think I could understand if my sales were in a gradual decline over a period of time and I could possibly blame "Best Match" or missing item specifics or some other algorithm, but it was literally like an off switch on the day I changed my subscription level.

Thankfully Ebay is not my only income stream and I do have alternatives, but it does help to pay the rent and keep a roof over our heads. When a growing and thriving shop suddenly falls off a cliff from one day to the next it makes no sense.

Re: I feel invisible.

chameleon54 — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 10:06:57 GMT

I had the same thing happen around 2 years ago. I made numerous calls to CS and most of the time got the " regular " answers. Nothing wrong here, do you offer free postage ? maybe try changing your titles etc. BUT eventually I got one CS rep who actually ran some tests and acknowledged that YES there was really a problem.

He said he would pass it on to the tech people and it might take 6 weeks to fix. The slow / no sales continued for quite awhile ( couple of months ) and I was ready to close the account and give up, but eventually the Tech guys DID fix the problem and gave me three free months store subscription as some kind of recompence. Sure it didnt make up for the lost sales, but I was impressed that they did actually identify a problem, acknowledged it and eventually fixed it. Its been smooth sailing ever since with very healthy sales at the moment.

Re: I feel invisible.

jellybirddesigns — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 10:43:34 GMT

That was a good end result Chameleon.

I wonder what "tests" they ran and what was fixed to bring you back up to scratch.

Do you remember if your original sales drop was triggered by something you did on your side?

It seems to be a real pot luck if you can even get some kind of savvy CS rep who will actually take you seriously, let along send information along to the tech team.

Re: I feel invisible.

*tippy*toes* — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 10:46:50 GMT

Everyone has ups and downs. Some mention the lights on lights off thing. I guess this is your time to be down. Maybe some of those who have been down for awhile might be up for a bit. When they go down again, then it will be your turn to go up again. You've had it way better than most for ages. It's someone else's turn now.

Re: I feel invisible.

chameleon54 — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 11:37:31 GMT

@jellybirddesigns wrote:
That was a good end result Chameleon.

I wonder what "tests" they ran and what was fixed to bring you back up to scratch.
Do you remember if your original sales drop was triggered by something you did on your side?

It seems to be a real pot luck if you can even get some kind of savvy CS rep who will actually take you seriously, let along send information along to the tech team.

No the sales crash came out of no-where. The CS rep did say that a few other sellers where having similar problems and while I dont know what tests they ran, I suspect it was a known issue by at least some in house CS people. I still got denial and nothing wrong here responses most of the time, but the fact that they gave me three months free store fees indicates maybe some reps knew more than they where telling me.

On the seperate issue of down grading a store from featured to basic, I did the same to my smallest selling account some time ago. I had the opposite experience to you, in that the store immediately had dramatically INCREASED sales ( up over 100% ) It seemed as though a hand brake had been released and sales where flowing more naturally.

I had considered closing that store as sales had faded to the point where it made more sense to consolidate under two selling id,s, but since downgrading to basic, the store is at least viable and worth continuing with. Listing numbers have dropped from 330 a year ago to around 270 now, so I am still winding it back, but while it sells $600 - $900 a month, I might as well keep it ticking over and list just enough to keep it visible in searches. The stock I sell on that store owes me absolutely nothing, so any sale is all profit and I am gradually cleaning up old obsolete stock that is just laying around cluttering up my storage.

Re: I feel invisible.

jellybirddesigns — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 12:48:07 GMT

-----

@tippy - you're right in that I've had a good run, but I don't think there's anything such as "taking turns" to be trending upwards.

I've worked literally 6-7 days a week for the last 5 years to get where I am - it didn't happen out of nowhere. There wasn't some random algorithm saying "lets give jellybirddesigns a 5 year run at someone elses expense and then suddenly randomly turn the lights off".

Every single bit of growth I've had in this shop has been through my own hard work (90% of my items are handmade), blood, sweat and tears and I'm pretty sure that other shops weren't suppressed along the way just because my shop was growing. There's room on Ebay for everybody.

The only thing that sparked this was the change in subscription level. Nothing else.

Re: I feel invisible.

purplemon18 — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 13:08:18 GMT

You may as well harass eBay CS, what have you got to lose? Only time which I guess you have lots of at the moment 😞

Other than that, maybe take the opportunity to spring clean your house and sell some stuff you don't want anymore? Maybe some old books or DVDs or nic-nacs?

Re: I feel invisible.

bjlcr — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 01:10:03 GMT

felt this way all year.Ebay dont care about smaller sellers.they want to get rid of us .almost have.they'll be happy

Re: I feel invisible.

unique_pre-driven — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 02:46:21 GMT

Welcome to my world. I have tried everything, changing titles, putting different items up for sale, looking for changing trends etc but sales are hard to find. Sometimes I wonder if we sellers from Perth get left behind with the postage situation. Everyone wants things now and from here we are at the mercy of the post and freight people. Ovenight is just a dream.

Re: I feel invisible.

stylesilver — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 03:46:56 GMT

No ones doubting your hard work Jellybird... But unfortunately this lights off happens to all of us at some point here..EBay sales are seem to go up down for reasons we'll never know! Like last Xmas for me..I'm usually flat out in December, but last Dec it was like My store was cliosed- no explanation from EBay CS ... But I've just had my BEST 5 weeks ever I think! And it was all because of selling Ooshies! All those extra eyes on my listings was the obvious reason. Now the craze has stopped - so have my sales😟Nearly all of my items are handmade too..And it's a lot of work making things & then listing them...But there's no def answers that anyone can find that def will help during a downturn BUT there are things to try! List other items that you don't usually sell ( something totally different, something you don't want anymore) & say "check out my handmade home decorator items while you're here" Bulk edit your items & change something little in them, or just bulk edit without changing anything.😑. Something people here sometimes says works. Put a sale on a few catogories..

They might help to bring yr items up the search results... Apart from that Welcome to the Club!!

Re: I feel invisible.

etb321 — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 05:21:07 GMT

Have a look to see if items similar to yours are being offered at a lower price, perhaps you now have competition. It's hard on the emotions I know. My situation changed, from muliple items sold per day, to multiple days between sold items. But your not alone, soldier on!

Tom

Re: I feel invisible.

digital*ghost — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 05:42:37 GMT

@jellybirddesigns wrote:
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The only thing that sparked this was the change in subscription level. Nothing else.

Sellers have said the opposite as well (that is, they dropped from a featured store to basic and sales suddenly increased), so I wouldn't put too much stock in that being the sole (or even a major) contributing factor.

A lot of sellers are experiencing similar (I had my worst week in years recently), things picked up quite a bit after I listed a bunch of new items though, and I do think that new listings helps a lot, particularly with eBay's dislike of older listings that rarely sell (a large part of my strategy was volume and variety, which doesn't work as well with eBay trying to push out / down listings that don't convert often enough - I also started to concentrate a bit more on my chosen niche a while back, phasing out some of the decently popular (and not so popular) items that were in same general category, but not part of my specialty, and I've come to realise that while the bulk of my sales were within my niche, the other items drew in a broader range of customers... It might sound obvious in retrospect, but I didn't think so at the time, as I was doing great and most of my sales were not those items, plus customer requests always centred around my specialty, so I figured my store would be more cohesive without them).

So, now (at least for me) I figure it's time to diversify a bit more again, give people more choice, get in a few more loss leaders and just generally try to keep a steady stream of new items being listed, as well as culling more lemons than I used to.

Re: visiblity, try a soft or ghost edit via loading listings into the bulk editor and not making any changes, but submitting them anyway. I'd also try ending some older listings without recent sales and re-listing them through sell similar - I wouldn't worry about watchers, as you're looking for buyers, and if they've been on a watch list for months but not sold, it's unlikely someone who watched it ages ago will suddenly decide to buy (that's my theory, anyway).

Re: I feel invisible.

jellybirddesigns — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 06:18:18 GMT

Thank you all for your input, I appreciate it.

I have tried the "soft edit" option in the bulk editor a few times, but that hasn't made any difference.

I've also tweaked some of the titles and gone through everything to make sure the listings are optimised for search via their specifics.

I've put a few more things on sale and offered free postage to more items (although the vast majority of my buyers do NOT buy these items - 95% of my sales are with buyers happy to pay postage).

I'm also diversifying again into a couple of new items/range and we'll see how those go.

I will get ask CS to give me a call back on Monday and see if they have anything valuable to contribute (not holding my breath though)

I might even lower the subscription again to the Basic shop. After all there doesn't seem much point in paying $60+ a month if I'm not getting much value out of it.

The other thing is that I have an older Ebay ID which I haven't used for more than 5 years. On that account I get the 40 free listings a month, so I might start transferring some items over to that account and see what happens. If there is something weird going on with this store, it might come in useful to bulk up another ID and see if those items start selling.

Re: I feel invisible.

stylesilver — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 06:56:24 GMT

Thanks etb321.. I havent checked on competitors for a while so I just did it.. And I dont think thats it cos mine compares well to others (Larger pearls & solid sterling silver, whereas others are mostly silver plated)

And like I said I just had my best month ever.. but now no sales.. So I think its more to do with Ebay OR just people not spending right now! Your things are what I would have thought people are still collecting - music collectables were still doing OK I would have thought. Heard that original cassettes from the 70's were getting good prices lately ! If only we'd kept them in a box somewhere!

I think whats happening to Jellybird has been happening to all of us over the last few years

Re: I feel invisible.

stylesilver — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 06:57:55 GMT

Im trying that this week ....adding a lot of new things to see if it starts moving things again!

Re: I feel invisible.

purchasenetwork — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 15:42:09 GMT

welcome to a saturated marketplace.. its only getting worst

Re: I feel invisible.

purplemon18 — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 03:51:27 GMT

I know this was a while ago and I hope your sales have improved, but it occured to me that you could check the traffic metrics under performance in the seller hub.

If there really is/was a problem with your account, your listing impressions would have dropped off a cliff when the problem first occurred. A sudden, massive and consistant drop in impressions suggests that you are no longer showing up in search results.