Has Anyone Else Experienced Low Sales Since The Beginning of the Year?

[nadjahughes]

My sales are at an all time low.  Is it just me or is everyone experiencing this?  I sell, new, nearly new brands and designer and vintage women's clothing but have found since Christmas sales are REALLY LOW!  I can't afford to offer free postage, and my prices are very low as it is!  Can anyone suggest something?

[redders_60]

Sorry to reply to my own post! But when you get only 1 sale for an auction & they don't pay for a $10 item,  that is bad! I can close the case @ 4pm today for a fee credit. 

Sadly Ebay has already charged my fee for this sale to my credit card - The card is only used for Ebay. 

Still no sales on both my Ebay accounts. Nothing to generate any monies here since late January! 

[mbselections00]

when you get only 1 sale for an auction & they don't pay for a $10 item,  that is bad! I

Yep, it's shocking !!!

Dead here also. If I don't get a sale today, I will have had another full 7 days without a sale.  This will only be the third time this has happened since I've been selling, but what scares the you know what out of me, the 3 times have occurred in roughly the last 2 months !!

This place has become a

[redders_60]

I hope things pick up for you MB! You have some cute items! I'd have thought they'd sell well!

I especially liked your tumbleweed town pic (above) That's about all ebay has become for me! There's just no incentive to list anymore!

As I'm no Spring chicken & without Superannuation due to disability; I had hoped ebay & the Aussie site would help me through my retirement. 

New management on the Aus site in April 2013 saw my sales quickly pitch down; then slowly grind to a halt during that year. After having & cultivating a good client base of repeat customers. I'm lucky to sell an item a month there now (Whereas I was posting dozens of parcels per week). & didn't use ebay for nearly 12 months for selling.

Now the same grinding halt has happened to me on ebay! 90 days without a legitimate sale! 2 accounts with excellent F/B. One is dedicated pop culture & rare books etc (not this ID) - Things you'd think would be very popular. I inherited that one from my daughter. She'd like some profit, but there are no sales to be had!

[chameleon54]

My sales where holding up reasonably well, but I am currently living four days a week at a remote location without the internet. Our teenage son has moved there to start a new job and I'm helping him get settled into the house and off to work on time.

This means no new listings and I,m slow to answer questions. Result - my sales have taken a major dive off a cliff and  into oblivion. Worst ever in fact. Its a bit of a worry as I still need the ebay income. I might have to set a couple of days aside next week and try to get 80-100 new listings up to try to kickstart things again.

[pnc75]

Redders, it makes you wonder if the powers that be at ebay are aware of this. Surely they must have figures that show a huge decline in listings and sales; and sellers leaving? Just doesn't seem to make good business sense to me, with everything I've read on the forums about people's poor sales, shutting up shop, etc.

[transport-posters]

Yeah, but imagine how much those big contracts with the big names are worth.  Surely it would be very lucrative custom arrangements, especially with all the extra promotion going on into our inboxes.

So I imagine eBay aren't worried about losing smaller sellers to other sites, the ones who are targets of scammers and who complain and tie up their support staff with legit problems they just may not want to spend money on dealing with anymore.  If someone bought something from The Good Guys and had an issue, they'd probably go to contact TGG rather than eBay about a problem.

I noticed the thread discussing a certain art-based selling website got removed, however.

[pnc75]

Yes, I agree, but am wondering just how long they can sustain all of the discounts they're throwing their way, and I imagine on top of that they're giving them huge fee discounts. Eventually something has to give. I'm glad i don't have shares in ebay right now.

I wonder how long people like TGG will hang around - surely they could discount more on the ir own websites rather than on ebay, you'd think.

Also, ebay is currently sending out surveys about online grocery shopping on ebay, so that looks and sounds as though they might want to take on the big A (think river) when it opens in Australia. Foolish, I think. They had a formula where people came to ebay for unique and unusual, interesting things that they couldn't find in b&m shops, but that's no longer the case. And, if private sellers aren't selling, then they won't have the money to spend on buying, either.

I'd love to know how ebay's profits are going. Does anyone know?

[*tippy*toes*]

Tonight I was having a browse at nothing in particular. One non store in Thailand, with 143 feedback, had nearly 4,000 listings, average price $15. That's nearly 4,000 insetion fees each month! They are selling between 10 and 15 items a day. Certainly not enough to cover the insertion fees and FVFs. They seem to be selling, yet we're not.

[padi*0409]

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@pnc75 wrote:

Yes, I agree, but am wondering just how long they can sustain all of the discounts they're throwing their way, and I imagine on top of that they're giving them huge fee discounts. Eventually something has to give. I'm glad i don't have shares in ebay right now.

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Maybe they're doing it this way, I have been watching steam mops on eBay for a little while and for the one I wanted, I noticed the biggest seller of that model was increasing their price by about 20% a few days before the offer came in, twice in a row................

A coincidence? Maybe, but I think not - more likely eBay was giving them the heads-up about the offer.

Needless to say I bought the same model from their smaller competitor at the (much) better price.

[go-tazz]

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@*tippy*toes* wrote:

Tonight I was having a browse at nothing in particular. One non store in Thailand, with 143 feedback, had nearly 4,000 listings, average price $15. That's nearly 4,000 insetion fees each month! They are selling between 10 and 15 items a day. Certainly not enough to cover the insertion fees and FVFs. They seem to be selling, yet we're not.

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Are they paying an insertion fee?

Considering how many cheap items that are listed by Thailand,China,Hong Kong,etc,would they be paying a

listing fee and if they do have one it's obviously a lot lower compared to here,(it may only be as little as 5

cents or nothing at all),