Recent changes to Ebay and my sales have almost come to a stop

[hairkidsbeauty]

With the recent changes to Ebay: Ebay premium service and so on, my sales have halted dramatically. I am a Top Rated Powerseller, but I'm hardly getting any sales or even watchers anymore. I have noticed when searching on particular items to check where my listings stand in 'Best Match' that new sellers or listings with no sales are ahead of me, which wasn't the case before the changes. It seems that not a lot of sellers have made the changes to premium service as I thought this might be the reason. Has anyone else noticed the same?

[camelot_rose]

"Free express post"!

The minimum cost for this being about $10.55 - not only would you be running at a loss,  but you would be sure to get the odd interstate customer on the other side of the country expecting it to get there "next day" and still  deciding to leave a low score for postage time accordingly!

Ridiculous suggestion on Ebay's part.

[lurehouse]

I truelly believe ebay will put in place obstacles such as these so that this place will be impossable to survive for us smaller sellers,you will see large companies ans cheap chinese sellers on ebay in the coming years.I am considering leaving soon to start up my own website,it might fail but at least I wont have people telling me how to run my buisness.

Changes,changes changes,rules rules rules,I am fed up with it....................

[sj_wedding_stationery]

Sales have been like this for the last month. First noticed a drop in my ranking mid Sept and now I'm not featured at all in the top 1000. I have started selling more stuff on my 2nd account, which is not a store so I pay more fees per sale. This is the only thing that's saving me at the moment. So far this month 90% sales are from my casual account and 10% from my main.

I suggest you do afew keyword on list analytics and see how your listing comes up, and then take that to ebay. I did this last weekend and to my surprise the person said afew ppl have reported this and they are looking into it. So I encourage everyone to raise it with ebay!

[clarry100]

We have 2 stores. Both selling same kind of items. One store sells bulk quantities (wholesale).

About Sept 17th sales suddenly and inexplicably plummetted about 60%. We had been typically shipping out about 20 packages per day. Now we struggle to get 12/13.

Since then one store (the wholesale one)  has come back up to nearly where it was while the other is still languishing low in the rankings.

100% of our BIN listings are now compliant with the new requirements but that has made zilch difference.

So we are now moving towards starting up our own site. 

In the next few months we will be closing out our eBay stores and focussing on building our own site.

We are sick and tired of the priority being given to cheap Chinese sellers who sell rubbish quality and take all their profits off-shore while our profits stay here. And if something goes wrong try and get the support we give. LOL.

So if eBay are moving towards bigger companies and cheap O/S sellers than they are welcome to it. Customers (buyers) will dictate if/not it is successful in the end.

We have about had enough of it all now!

[lurehouse]

Heres Ebays responce when I emailed them and asked why my sales have dropped 80% and has the search criteria changed.

Hello John,

Thanks for contacting eBay regarding your selling performance.

Please know that the search criteria have not change. Our buyers’ expectations of what makes a great online shopping experience has changed due to competition from local and international sites and via the mobile shopping experience. eBay wants buyers to see sellers that offer a level of service that reflects those changes so their businesses can continue to grow and compete.

As long as you’re still a Top rated seller, your listings will still receive increased visibility in Best match.

The best thing that you can do is to qualify of the eBay Premium Service badge. To qualify, your listings need to meet the following listing requirements for eBay Premium Service badging:

1. Free postage to AU buyers.
2. 0-1 day handling.
3. Express postage option offered.
4. 30-day money back returns.
5. Seller must have Top Rated Seller status.


The free postage requirement is for a standard postage service and express delivery requirement is designed to offer buyers more choice in case they need to get their item quickly.


If you are able to comply with the requirements for eBay Premium Service, you will then get the following benefits:

1. Prominent eBay Premium Service badging on all listing pages.
2. Increased visibility of your Fixed Price listings in Best Match search results.


It is your decision whether to offer the listing level requirements on all, some or none of your listings. However, please know that only those that meet the requirements will get the eBay Premium Service badging and benefits.


For you to know more about eBay Premium Service, you can click on the link below:

I wish you all the best in the site.

[i-once-was-bump]

I have noticed some sellers only list items for 1 day and continually relist the item because it will always be near the top of the search.

I don't know anything about the fees involved or if they are using free listings to do this but they are a bit annoying because they are always on the front page with the same items but it must work for them, I finally succumbed. 

[the_billycan]

Is it really just me? I never, ever pay attention to the so-called "best match". I simply change the guidelines to cheapest inclusive of postage and do a re-search. Then I look at the first few items listed till I find the one I want based on price, end date and seller's experience and go after that item. Best match is BS even if it works for you and it certainly isn't worth all the hoops sellers have to go through to get it. As far as I am concerned a buyer who is too lazy to do some homework before purchase is probably going to be too lazy to pay for it.

[clarry100]

Same answer we got.

But it's total BS because our rankings and sales absolutely dropped suddenly on Sept 17th and we had done nothing to the listings at that point.

We changed them after that to comply 100% with Premium Service requirements but doing that still made no difference. And we changed them becasue of the response we got from them.

And there are many sellers (mostly O/S) now above us who do not have the badge on their listings too.

Ebay are so full of it you can see their eyes turning brown.

[lurehouse]

I agree this is a complete lie and these changes are targeting smaller sellers in order to get rid of us.

11 years on ebay with a perfect record and 10s of thousands of dollars in there kitty from me and this is how we are treated?..........

[clarry100]

Yep... that's how it's looking.

So we are talking with a website developer at the moment to come up with a strategy to move into our own site.

We will use the sales we can get from ebay for now to help fund the startup of our own site.

But once it is running then we will dump ebay and go it alone.

I thyink buyers will get sick of only being able to find rubbish and no good customer service from ebay and in the longer term it will die off I believe. So better bail now and hopefully take some of our good returning customers with us.

And if you are a shareholder better sell them soon too.