Is it just me or has your eBay shop died too???

[ehairsupplies]

In the past 2 months my sales have dropped dramatically!

I was selling $3000/wk now am lucky to sell $300/wk.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

The Chinese have killed my category, this place will end up just being full of Chinese factories from what I am seeing and no Aussies will be able to make any money if the product comes from China.

[everard6920]

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@knewdoors wrote:

there's a difference to fact & "xenophobia" everard... sales drops have nothing to do with "xenophobia"..it's simply the poor experience that is Ebay today..if you want to whine about political correctness suggest you go to some other suitable forum for handwringers..

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I agree, there is a difference between fact and xenophobia. There's also a difference between what I was saying, and whining about political correctness.

If you'd actually read my post in its entirety, you'd know that it has absolutely nothing to do with the latter.

[digital*ghost]

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@everard6920 wrote:

However, in my category, the Chinese sellers most definitely influence sales (and search results) by selling poor quality rip-offs of my (and other seller's) products.

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Some sellers can blame eBay for that - quote from article published just over a year ago:

"We send [manufacturers] data about what people are looking for on eBay and they respond and turn it around incredibly quickly," president of eBay Marketplaces Devin Wenig told me. "We have a really big China export business to Europe and the United States. And they respond very, very quickly to consumer taste, whatever it might be. It's really remarkable to see how quickly the manufacturing base adapts to the demand signals they get."

Why Ebay Tells Manufacturers in China What You're Searching For

I personally ditto your first comment - I make a lot of my products, but the bulk of my business is imported items. I started off in saturated area but with a specialised niche very few sellers (even Chinese) offered, now they technically cater for it better than I do (in terms of sheer variety), but I don't have the time or energy (not to mention the right 😄 ) to begrudge them that. I know the product(s) better than they seem to, anyway, and can provide more specialised and experienced information / advice to my customers. 

[auto2retro]

Well said re use of stock photos & taking too long to get to the important stuff about the item being sold! All frustrate me too when buying! It is surprising the number of professional or "professional" looking sellers that fall into this trap. 

[clarry100]

We buy our raw materials from China. My wife being Chinese chats with them quite often. They are suffering in sales volume too just as we are and they sell across the world. We are finding they are more willing to bargain in order to secure s sale these days. This helps us offset the bad exchange rate to some extent.
So we think the decline in sales is a global thing and not just endemic to eBay.

[maxbelltrading]

It is a google problem.

They recently pushed yet another index "update" designed to push online businesses to spend more on adwords ads. In short, google are making it hard to find ecommerce product pages unless you advertise heavily with them...especially during this time of the year.

I have 2 ebay stores and 5 ecommerce personal websites.... i see the major downward trend on all. It is like someone has turned the lights off. On all. Lots of lost window shoppers (and watchers) but no sales.

It can be only google... the main traffic driving source to most online businesses. Whenever they (intentionally or accidently)  play with their index, the entire internet catches a cold.

[*tippy*toes*]

Anyone who uses any of the Adblock add ons don't see the ads anyway. Only time I see any ads is the rare occasion the program crashes. That's why I'd never fork out for google ads, or any other ads because more and more people are blocking them.

[geoffd7744]

October has been very average. But October everywhere is always bad, just ask share day traders.

Its an opportunity to fine tune your listings, update photos revisit some prices. After you have done that go and watch a bit of telly!