topic Re: Throttling sucks in Selling

Throttling sucks

stickerswa — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 01:58:57 GMT

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'

Re: Throttling sucks

twyngwyn — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 02:29:02 GMT

2016 discussion:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/What-Throttling-Means-to-Ebay-Sellers/td-p/25064090

Re: Throttling sucks

chameleon54 — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 03:37:08 GMT

@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 .........................

Re: Throttling sucks

digital*ghost — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 03:49:19 GMT

@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).

Re: Throttling sucks

2*much*cute*stuff — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 03:57:51 GMT

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!!

Re: Throttling sucks

jellybirddesigns — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 04:38:16 GMT

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!

Re: Throttling sucks

lowanacrafts — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 21:50:15 GMT

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.

Re: Throttling sucks

chameleon54 — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 23:17:19 GMT

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 "..........

Re: Throttling sucks

gec2002 — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 05:06:01 GMT

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.

Re: Throttling sucks

applejackguy — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 06:02:21 GMT

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.

Re: Throttling sucks

rachelle011273 — Sat, 11 Feb 2017 08:56:51 GMT

for the past year or so my sales have been the same give or take a few $

basically as soon as I hit that magic number ... game over for me for the month

yet ebay keeps sending me emails on how to grow my business lol

slowly I am winding down my store and as soon as the new store pricing comes into effect I shall downgrade to a cheaper store option

might try that QS site again as not much happens here these days either

Re: Throttling sucks

chameleon54 — Sat, 18 Feb 2017 22:14:07 GMT

@rachelle011273 wrote:
for the past year or so my sales have been the same give or take a few $

basically as soon as I hit that magic number ... game over for me for the month

yet ebay keeps sending me emails on how to grow my business lol

slowly I am winding down my store and as soon as the new store pricing comes into effect I shall downgrade to a cheaper store option

might try that QS site again as not much happens here these days either

I,m the same. The combined total for my two stores is always the same each month to within a few dollars. This is on thousands of dollars turnover, so not what you would expect from an unregulated market.

I noticed late last year that my monthly target seemed to have dropped and figures where inconsistent. This happens every twelve months or so, as ebay lower genuinly throttled stores monthly sales allowances. ( I have seen this happen before ) . Things have now settled down and my new monthly sales are consistently sitting 17.5 % below the previous level.

Are there any other genuinly throttled sellers who closely moniter their sales and have worked out their monthly sales figures allocation ???? Have you had a comparable % drop recently ? If so it would provide an interesting timeline into ebays possible intentions for throttled store sellers. ( If things continue at this pace we have maybe 5-6 years before we have no sales left )

Luckily our unregulated, non store account is having a very succesful run of sales and this is helping to keep things busy and the finances on an even keel.

Re: Throttling sucks

rachelle011273 — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 03:08:02 GMT

I think I may have to look into cancelling store subscription and see how I fair trading just as a normal account ... I have heard others who dont have a store seem to fair better, might have to give this a go and see if any magic happens lol

Re: Throttling sucks

lyndal1838 — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 03:45:52 GMT

If you want to list everything you have in your store now you will incur huge listing fees without the store.

Re: Throttling sucks

chameleon54 — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 10:29:45 GMT

@rachelle011273 wrote:
I think I may have to look into cancelling store subscription and see how I fair trading just as a normal account ... I have heard others who dont have a store seem to fair better, might have to give this a go and see if any magic happens lol

Lyndals words of caution are probably worth thinking about.

You are still making some sales on the store and while I dont know your profit margins etc. I would have thought you would still be covering the cost of a basic store and still making a profit. If you have sold more than $10,000 in the last 12 months you would not be eligable for the three free relists on a non store account and would be relying on the extra freebies offers to list reasonable numbers of stock. Many sellers dont have luck with these, so you could be stuck on 40 free listings a month.

Would it be better to start another seperate non store account.??? Sure it will take awhile to build up feedback and overcome the 21 day hold on your money, but if you link it to your store, that should help get up and running quicker. This way you can try it without sacrificing your existing listings. .

I have definately had a good run on the non store account lately and I am putting quite a bit of work into it. I dont recieve the three free relists, but I have been fortunate to recieve the 150 free listing offer virtually every month, so can run 190 listings per month on the account. Currently around a third of these sell each month giving average weekly sales of around $350 - $400.

The items I sell are a mixture of rare vintage car parts, specialist and collectable books, magazines and ephemera and shed collectables of interest to males my age. Most of the items are rare or unique, so this helps with attracting buyers. The fact that many of the items I list are not commonly available is certianly part of the reason they sell well. Clothing is a highly competative market on ebay and it may be a bit harder to stand out from the crowd in this sector.

Re: Throttling sucks

rachelle011273 — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 10:38:40 GMT

yes agree, at this point in time would not be viable to close store and list all my current listings as a non store account and not quite sure I want to open another account so I shall bide my time and continue winding my stock levels down ... thanks

Re: Throttling sucks

jameshouseofstyle — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 00:13:40 GMT

Hi rachelle,

you have a fantastic photos in all your listings!

You must have a great studio & camera equipment - they are faulous! When we compare them to our miserable photos - no wander we are not selling anything.

But I was wandering about your pictures with email and face book addies - did you have to get a special permission from Ebay?

Or is that just a standard thing that anyone can do?

We have been on Ebay for years - but still don't know any of their rules if I tripped over them - never read them! Much easier to sit tight, if we any break any rules out of ignorance - they soon let us know I suppose.

Again, congrats on a beautiful pictures & merchandise - most impressive.

Re: Throttling sucks

rachelle011273 — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 07:50:31 GMT

thank you for your comments

I have set facebook up to divert any buyers to ebay and so I do not think ebay could complain as I am actually encouraging sales offsite to onsite so to speak ... I have with each item on fb included the ebay link to each particular item as I found it was easier as I have a listing already set up and also I am sure people feel a lot more secure buying of a well known site plus they can also see my feedback

both my facebook and ebay store are a work in progress, when not selling I sort need to get inspired to work on it lol

Re: Throttling sucks

cr.love — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 01:37:27 GMT

Oh my goodness....! This answers so many discussions I have had. Each month you can almost draw a line in the sand at around halfway through the month. Sell sell sell then boom nothing.

I think I am going to have to look at stopping my store. When I had 200 items listed I would average 2 sales a day....worked really hard to get to 900-1000 items (currently just under that as I have been making a few changes) and only increased across the board by 30%. So if I increased my listings to five times the original amount you would certainly expect profit and sales etc to also increase by 5, not by 0.3.

My nearest competitor (not even close to volume and variety) is kicking goals while I have to consider what I do as this is my job and I have little poeple to raise and support in more ways than one.

Re: Throttling sucks

cr.love — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 01:55:34 GMT

Can I assume we are not affected if the buyer searches in a more specific nature...

for example 'lowest price' or 'nearest first'

or will I be dissapointed again....