I posted around a month ago that one of my best performing ebay accounts has been affected by a technical fault resulting in sales and questions completely stopping. After a week or so of no sales or questions I phoned CS who ran some tests on the account and confirmed there was a problem and the account was being reffered to the technical team. It took several more days for the problem to be fixed. All up the account was out of action for 12 days.
When the problem was repaired I suspect CS technical department manually over-road ebays systems and increased my listing visibility for 24 hours in order to kick-start the account again in ebay algorythms. I had great sales the first day and questions from buyers which followed through with sales the following day.
THEN IT ALL FIZZLED OUT AGAIN................
After a few more days I phoned CS again..........several times. ..............
They confirmed the account was operating as it should and suggested I should " follow best listing practice " to achieve sales.
Yeah Right !!!!........... The account was making good sales before the problems.
Over the next eleven days I made three sales and had a couple of questions suggesting the account was fixed, but not gaining any listing visibility, due to no action on the account for the period it really was down.
I was feeling fairly despondant, thinking "sales are dead" " Ebay is stuffed " and all the other things we read here regularly. I was contemplating a good account facing terminal injury and was considering abandoning it and starting a new account.
This weekend, I decided to give it one more go to try to kick start sales again.
I deleted around 20 % of my listings ( slow movers ) and relisted them ( sell similar ) with minor changes to price or desription so that they appeared to be genuine new listings. I then went on a listing spree, listing a number of good selling items that should attract some attention. I also re-worked a number of listings, reducing prices on items that where meeting buyer resistance and where probably over-priced.
RESULT - I have made around half a dozen sales on the account in the last twelve hours, including old listings that I did not fiddle with. I have also recieved a couple of questions on old listings.
I am a firm believer that ebays search algorythms reward account activity, especially new listings, and penalise accounts that are stagnent. This makes sense from ebays position, encouraging good sellers with popular items and forcing those with dud products and sloppy practices from the site. This little experiment seems to be a very clear indication, that this is true.
I will follow up this weekends activity by listing four or five new items on the resurrected account each day to try to maintain and rebuild sales momentum and search visibility.
So if you have an account that was making good sales, but has faded away, it may be worth going on a listing spree to increase search visibility of all items and re-invigorate the account. Reworking old listings and deleting duds may also help.
This is my "I woke up with a headache and I'm in a bit of a cranky mood" reply, because normally I don't feel there's any point in replying to posts which abuse the US and eBay and - overwhelmingly - the fundaments of the English language.
Firstly - the US. It's not the devil. It isn't a perfect country, and because of its power and influence in world politics, its imperfections affect us all, and certainly it's on a "make other countries mediocre in comparison to us" campaign at present, but it's neither better nor worse than most other countries in the world.
South Korea and the US have a solid relationship (한미동맹(韓美同盟). If you were to poll all nations to find the most pro-American country, South Korea would be in the top five. I am puzzled by your introduction of South Korea into your post as a country that "stand[s] up and [is] not scared of USA". You really couldn't have picked a more inappropriate example.
Just for the record, I am no particular admirer of the US, but I'm also not violently anti-America.
You mention more internet seller companies. The trouble is that eBay established itself early in most countries where it has a strong online selling presence, but an example of where it failed is in New Zealand, where TradeMe already had the customer base, loyalty and traffic. It would be great for buyers and sellers if there were other companies that eBay, but on the other hand, seller do have the option of establishing their own merchant sites and attracting online customers that way. There's also Amazon, by no means a teeny-tiny player in the game, and Etsy, a very strong presence for particular types of items.
And then you get to eBay itself. Yes, eBay is unfair. Yes, eBay has some ridiculous practices and policies. Yes, eBay has destroyed some sellers' livelihoods (those sellers presumably having relied solely on eBay for their income). Yes, eBay can shut down your account without cause, notice or warning.
That is why chameleon's approach is such a sensible one, and why I applaud chameleon's way of dealing with such things. Re-read those posts, and you'll see chameleon has a number of accounts, and has an outside-of-eBay business which isn't reliant on eBay at all. Other sellers on eBay have mentioned having their own websites up and running while also continuing on eBay. They spend time building up the outside-eBay presence. This is a way for sellers to get security, because inside ebay they are at the mercy of eBay's whims. But don't just complain about it - do something about it. Establish your selling presence beyond eBay. Use eBay while it works for you, dump it when it doesn't. eBay is no less ruthless than that. To resort to a cliché, you should not put all of your eggs into eBay's basket.
And finally... for your own sake, please pay some sort of attention to your grammar, spelling and punctuation! I had to re-read what you wrote a few times to make sense out of it; your poor spelling and mangling of punctuation is making it harder for you to communicate with people. Communication is pivotal with online businesses; you can't help along your meaning with facial expressions, tone of voice, and general body language when communicating online. If you are misunderstood by potential buyers, you're shooting yourself in your own foot. As I said, I woke up with a headache... My standard position when it comes to other people's spelling and grammar is to butt out and refrain from offering corrections; it's mostly useless, risks causing offence (as no one likes to be corrected in public), and unfortunately gives the impression of being a know-it-all. I definitely don't know it all - I'm a grammar and spelling fiend because I was a precocious bookworm devouring Shakespeare at eight, and you can imagine how that went down among my peers.
Besides, idiosyncratic expressions and spellings can be entertaining and charming, and very expressive of an individual's personality and life history. Language itself is fluid, and English in particular is an incredibly robust language which has gone through stages where spelling was anything but formalised. It would be stupid of me to red-pencil anyone's individuality. After all, I take people's (kind) mockery of my tendency to write scrollers with a grin, and it's become something of a community joke.
But your errors in communicating, with complete disregard for the rules of English, are actually making it very difficult for you to convey your meaning.
So... take grammar and spelling help from any and every source you can. Use those sources like any other tool - for your benefit. When you're an effective communicator, you're in a better position to give potential buyers a feeling of confidence and assurance in your goods and services.
Trust me, eBay is [insert word for bull excrement], and even their Money Back Guarantee is [insert something like "an example of"] [insert word meaning in my anti-American world view point] [insert word for bull excrement] operations.
This is what you can expect; they switch you off at their will.
There should be more [online selling companies].
There should also be more countries, like [insert name of country that is opposed to America], that stand up and [are] not scared of the USA.
When things don't go the USA way, they know how to kill the market in their favour.
What do you expect of [Americans / citizens of the USA / or use the word Yankees if you want to be offensive rather than disinterested]?
May the human race be protected from both this [insert word for bull excrement] and any harm from the USA.
Now I'm going to take paracetamol/codein 500/30 tablets in an attempt to kill my cranky headache. This ends my rather crotchety and splenetic post.
Well said Countess although I suspect it was a waste of your time.....the poster does not seem to be the sort of person to take criticism in his/her stride.
3BrNBBRz4UYdo+!~~60_7.JPG "chameleon54"){kind=avatar}
