Drop in sales - has anyone else noticed a BIG drop WC 8th October 18?

[bbqhqnet]

Hi Guys

Something appears to have changed this week? It may possibly be related to the recent software changes on the eBay seller platform - but I have had a HUGE drop in sales since Monday 8th October 18?

2 x eBay reps have told me that my account is good - no restrictions, etc? I mostly offer Free Express Shipping and am now moving to Same-day Handling. No-one has been able to offer an explanation?

I have been selling for 15 years this December and NEVER had it this bad? Has anyone else noticed this with their store?

Steve

[inkwoodandpaper]

I also am one of those people that has gone from great sales circa $2K/$2.5K  per month  for 3 plus years to as of today my dashboard reports 60% down on sales  and this has been the trend nearly all year.  I have just downgraded my store as I felt I was just donating money to Ebay for absolutely no reason.

Does anyone else feel that having a listing auto-renew is not a good idea.  Some of my listings are heading into over a year of auto renew.  Just wondering if anyone has tested the theory??

I have not had a sale in 5 days!!  I wish we could se a report of web traffic to Ebay to determine if it is just a general down turn in economy so I can evaluate if it is worth the time and energy to work on my listings. 

This is meant to be the busy time of year......

[chameleon54]

I havnt tried cancelling GTC listings and relisting them, but when I was having major sales dramas six weeks ago, I watched youtube videos etc. where high volume sellers in the U.S.A tried it and found it " reset ' their listings in searches. Personally I am still regulartly selling items that have been listed for 5 years or more, so havnt bothered cancelling and relisting. A lot of my specialist listings have been linked to overseas club sites and other websites. If I delist them I lose all of that extra reach that has taken years to build up.

When my account was affected by an ebay technical glitch, I was in contact with CS regularly. One of the tricks they tried was to do a phantom edit on all of my listings. ( Edit them without changing anything ) Obviously CS believe this genuinly works. Another trick I tried with some success was genuinly editing a large number of listings, by just changing the price by a few cents or re-wording descriptions. This definately helped kick start sales. My sales have slowly been climbing back since ebay fixed the glitch with my accounts. I have gone from being down 70% at one point to currently down around 20% on long term average.

My guess is that the weeks of no sales while my account was down, lowered my search ranking once the problems where actually fixed and it is going to take some time and effort to get it back up in search results.

[dazzledayz]

So what you are saying, in essence, is that an eBay glitch caused you to be punished by eBay for slow sales.

That sounds about right for the level of programming chaos we experience on a regular basis.

I wish they'd just stop the makeovers and do a bit of much needed site reliability maintenance.

I've noticed huge problems with search over the last week or so; much worse than usual.

[bbqhqnet]

Yeah - though rather than one glitch - I suspect quite a few glitches are involved? Since computer software is "dumb" I don't believe that I was being punished, rather that was affecting searches - as you said, causing around 35% drop in sales for last week. A royal pain in the butt!

[lyndal1838]

I think I have found one of your problems bbq.

I looked at the category of Marinade Injectors and found that only 3 of the 5 listings could be accessed.  Two were completely dead in the water....that is 40% of your listings in that category alone.

[bbqhqnet]

Hmm - thanks for that.

Can you tell me which ones aren't showing - I have deleted some recently? Also - and I know it's a big ask - anything else not showing. Cheers Steve BBQHQ

[brerrabbit585]

---

@inkwoodandpaper wrote:

I have not had a sale in 5 days!!  I wish we could se a report of web traffic to Ebay to determine if it is just a general down turn in economy so I can evaluate if it is worth the time and energy to work on my listings. 

This is meant to be the busy time of year......

---

Several months ago my sales were down to about 50% of normal and I thought perhaps nobody was buying, but when I checked out my competitors they were going great guns, so it definitely wasn't because of the economy and people not spending money.  As far as I'm concerned it's all about visibility and you just have to wait until ebay decides it's your turn.  A while after that I did get my turn and they were buying things I hadn't sold any of before, and also my slow sellers, which also told me that it just depends what ebay shows people (probably in the 'other items' you see in the thumbnails on every listing).

[gec2002]

eBay are definitely fiddling which is never a good sign.  Lots of little things are just not right.

Added tracking to the Postage details today and checked that the details were correct.  Seller Hub showed it was Received by Australia Post Oct15, 2018 14:16pm.  Ebay shows Tracking Number Provided Oct 14, 2018 21:26pm PDT ie it's tracking on US Pacific Daylight Time.

When they are fiddling, sorry enhancing the Buyer Experience, they generally flip a lot of functions to the US.  If that includes your listings that will screw up the indexing which meanings keyword and categories searches can be impacted.

[chameleon54]

---

@dazzledayz wrote:

So what you are saying, in essence, is that an eBay glitch caused you to be punished by eBay for slow sales.

That sounds about right for the level of programming chaos we experience on a regular basis.

I wish they'd just stop the makeovers and do a bit of much needed site reliability maintenance.

I've noticed huge problems with search over the last week or so; much worse than usual.

---

When I phoned ebay CS about sales stopping dead, they advised that there was a random glitch, caused by programme updates in early August. It affected random id,s making listings invisible in searches. CS forwarded my accounts to their tech department and advised it could take up to 6 weeks to fix. To their credit the problem was fixed within their estimated timeframe and the selling id,s are now going quite well.

Ebay CS also gave me three months free of fees as a gesture of compensation for the inconvenience. OK its not perfect, but handled a heck of a lot better than we have come to expect in the past. ie. they admitted there was a problem, fixed it and gave some minor restitution.

As for sales I,m pleased to report that today has seen brisk non stop ebay action. Almost a blast from the past with questions, offers resulting in purchases and sales coming in at the same pace I can pack them. I feel like I have been transported back in time six years to ebays golden days.................

[eol-products]

Think of sales on ebay like when you went to the easter show and played the game where you place the ball in the clowns mouth. For every buyer there is 10 sellers but unlike the game when it comes to best match ebay control where the ball goes.