I feel invisible.

[jellybirddesigns]

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.

[kopenhagen5]

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.

[twyngwyn]

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

[jellybirddesigns]

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.

[chameleon54]

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.

[jellybirddesigns]

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.

[*tippy*toes*]

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.

[chameleon54]

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@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.

.

[jellybirddesigns]

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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.

-----

@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.

[purplemon18]

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?