Ebay sales dropped dramatically 60% in the last month

[jthompson845]

Hi everyone,

been a seller now on eBay for 10years. Never had this happened before my selling has dropped 60% in the last month. Has anyone else experiencing this.

[toysthattingle]

Yes for 8 weeks a number of my 2700 products are not showing in searches.  EBAY has not been able to help despite contacting them constantly and for the last 2 weeks they have not replied.  At one point I was told it was a EBAY IT issue.  I am certainly not selling enough to cover my fees on both stores of $1100 per month and EBAY does not want to discuss that.

[jellybirddesigns]

I would say that these past 2 months have been pretty choppy, especially because I'm seeing big gaps of days and days where there are no sales, sometimes even up to a week. Having had my store since 2014, it's definitely not the norm. In the past I would have weekends where I would get a dozen or so orders, but lately I'm lucky if I get one Ebay order on a weekend.

The  other thing for me is that I re-started international shipping about 2 months ago (which I stopped last year around May), and have not yet one single overseas order. International orders used to account for around 30% of my sales, so it's a big loss. On another site I sell on, I get regular international orders, so I can only assume that for some reason my listings are either not showing or are being suppressed for international buyers on Ebay.

[zhhn992000]

is it possible due to the ebay managed payment? I as a private buyer and seller, always wondering what if the buyer doesn't have a bank a/c linked to ebay?

I still buy stuff from ebay and still use Paypal, not sure what's happening here, thought ebay set a deadline of 18-June to move onto ebay management payment.

[davewil1964]

Buyers have many payment options. Look at any of your listings to find out which. MP is seller-centric.

[everard6920]

I saw a drop in sales beginning in May, and it was to such an extent that I brought forward my plans to sell elsewhere alongside eBay.

Since then, I've been doing quite well on another site (despite it being a new account with far fewer items and feedback than what I have here) and I can only conclude that it's eBay. Maybe others have different experiences across platforms, but this is my experience.

Other than the pandemic, I've been thinking about it and IMO there are two factors affecting my sales here:

1.  Some buyers think they need to sign up for managed payments to buy and don't want to (and a significant amount of hybrid users (sellers/buyers) didn't want to sign up, either) so overall, fewer buyers.

2. To be blunt, eBay is becoming increasingly seen as an outdated platform for online/buying and selling. I know this from speaking to younger relatives - all of them know about, and use, that other site, but they pretty much universally consider eBay to be filled with junk and for older people. IMO eBay needs to find a way to integrate with social media like that other site has, instead of threatening to punish or ban any seller who dares make any reference to it on this site. Social media is a part of modern e-commerce and there's no getting around it, as much as eBay wants to. It's getting left in the dust as a result by a lot of younger buyers. I guess it depends who your market is, but a large portion of my market is definitely comprised of under 30s, which is why I think I'm doing so well on the other site.

[padraicpaul91]

I continued selling internationally over the past 15 months, and those sales have continued to decline. For a year I offered only express and thought that may have been the issue. However, since I  began to offer standard international again, three months ago, there has been no increase in sales. Those that do buy continue to prefer the expense of express.

Perhaps buyers have lost confidence in international deliveries, barring all the other issues that may be impacting upon buyers.

ps Sales over the past three months have been very poor generally. Lots of views and watchers but not many pushing the buy button.

[offroad7400]

Same here - sales fallen off a cliff.  When this happens I go find an external device without logging in to see where my listings are ranking in searches.  If everything appears normal it's an 'economy' issue and suspect lock down uncertainty and EOFY where buyers are looking for bigger bargains elsewhere.

[jellybirddesigns]

After my initial reply to this topic on the 23rd, I now realise that I have not had a sale since the 22nd of June. That sale was a grand total of $4.95.

Eight flipping days - it's ridiculous!

My Seller Hub shows me as 70% down 😞

[chameleon54]

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@jellybirddesigns wrote:

I would say that these past 2 months have been pretty choppy, especially because I'm seeing big gaps of days and days where there are no sales, sometimes even up to a week. Having had my store since 2014, it's definitely not the norm. In the past I would have weekends where I would get a dozen or so orders, but lately I'm lucky if I get one Ebay order on a weekend.

The  other thing for me is that I re-started international shipping about 2 months ago (which I stopped last year around May), and have not yet one single overseas order. International orders used to account for around 30% of my sales, so it's a big loss. On another site I sell on, I get regular international orders, so I can only assume that for some reason my listings are either not showing or are being suppressed for international buyers on Ebay.

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" Choppy " is how I would describe my sales too. If I have a very good day it can be three days before I sell anything else and while its always been a bit like this, its very noticable at the moment. It seems the algorythms are very clunky at the moment and not even working like ebay wants them too.

Sales averaged out are pretty reasonable but all over the shop if taken on a weekly basis.

Like you, international sales are normally around 30% of my business. I have removed international postage options from my largest account due to Covid, but I,m still getting consistent enquiries from OS customers. I,ve just started to really crank up international postage with a couple of extra security measures and OS sales are going very smoothly. I,m sending all international items with tracking, alerting buyers to possible covid delivery delays through messages and photographing the customs dec. / delivery address of each OS parcel and sending the buyers a copy of the photo when the item is mailed. This seems to be doing the trick. Touch wood.