Sales activity

[boostpartners]

Has anyone experienced slow sales on Ebay for last couple of weeks ?

[bjlcr]

I have been having very low sales for over a year.I was getting used to selling 8-10 items a month which seemed to be what I was alloted for the month.Sales have been getting slower and slower over the last couple of months.During the last month I have been able to sell nothing.Obviously Ebay is wiping out the smalltime sellers the make way for the big stores..Throttling is in full force.

[chameleon54]

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@bjlcr wrote:

I have been having very low sales for over a year.I was getting used to selling 8-10 items a month which seemed to be what I was alloted for the month.Sales have been getting slower and slower over the last couple of months.During the last month I have been able to sell nothing.Obviously Ebay is wiping out the smalltime sellers the make way for the big stores..Throttling is in full force.

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My sales are under a lot of presure, but managing to hold at consistent levels. I believe that i,m one of the sellers who have an alloted dollar value of sales allowed each month. The figure is less than I could achieve in an unregulated market, but is at least still very worthwhile.

The good side of throttling is that when things are slow, I believe my exposure increases and I still achieve my alloted monthly sales to within 2% of a set figure.. Of course I am aware that my limit could be lowered at any time ( it has clearly happened once ) or allowed to fade to nothing as some other sellers are experiencing.

I suspect ebay treats different sellers in different ways, depending on their size and market share within their respective catagory.  It seems to me that Non store holder, private account sales are unregulated, Smaller stores are under presure of being fazed out. Mid sized stores sales are regulated to a set monthly $$$ figure and larger stores can sell as much as they want ( unregulated  )  On top of this are the " brands" which recieve different "special treatment" again.

This is just a theory, based on observation. Like so many things with ebay, we will probably never know for sure.    

[englishrosegardens]

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@chameleon54 wrote:

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@bjlcr wrote:

I have been having very low sales for over a year.I was getting used to selling 8-10 items a month which seemed to be what I was alloted for the month.Sales have been getting slower and slower over the last couple of months.During the last month I have been able to sell nothing.Obviously Ebay is wiping out the smalltime sellers the make way for the big stores..Throttling is in full force.

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My sales are under a lot of presure, but managing to hold at consistent levels. I believe that i,m one of the sellers who have an alloted dollar value of sales allowed each month. The figure is less than I could achieve in an unregulated market, but is at least still very worthwhile.

The good side of throttling is that when things are slow, I believe my exposure increases and I still achieve my alloted monthly sales to within 2% of a set figure.. Of course I am aware that my limit could be lowered at any time ( it has clearly happened once ) or allowed to fade to nothing as some other sellers are experiencing.

I suspect ebay treats different sellers in different ways, depending on their size and market share within their respective catagory.  It seems to me that Non store holder, private account sales are unregulated, Smaller stores are under presure of being fazed out. Mid sized stores sales are regulated to a set monthly $$$ figure and larger stores can sell as much as they want ( unregulated  )  On top of this are the " brands" which recieve different "special treatment" again.

This is just a theory, based on observation. Like so many things with ebay, we will probably never know for sure.    

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I'm not sure what you call smaller stores but I have a basic store with approx 600 listings (mostly multiples) and I don't believe I experience throttling.  Sales fluctuate from month to month but I believe this is quite normal for the product I sell and I would never expect them to always be the same.  With all their stupid category changes I think it's getting harder for buyers to search my main category but I'm still getting found (I have roughly 5% of the listings in my category).  Sales slowed last month after they made more changes but they're back up again.

[chameleon54]

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@englishrosegardens wrote:

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@chameleon54 wrote:

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@bjlcr wrote:

I have been having very low sales for over a year.I was getting used to selling 8-10 items a month which seemed to be what I was alloted for the month.Sales have been getting slower and slower over the last couple of months.During the last month I have been able to sell nothing.Obviously Ebay is wiping out the smalltime sellers the make way for the big stores..Throttling is in full force.

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My sales are under a lot of presure, but managing to hold at consistent levels. I believe that i,m one of the sellers who have an alloted dollar value of sales allowed each month. The figure is less than I could achieve in an unregulated market, but is at least still very worthwhile.

The good side of throttling is that when things are slow, I believe my exposure increases and I still achieve my alloted monthly sales to within 2% of a set figure.. Of course I am aware that my limit could be lowered at any time ( it has clearly happened once ) or allowed to fade to nothing as some other sellers are experiencing.

I suspect ebay treats different sellers in different ways, depending on their size and market share within their respective catagory.  It seems to me that Non store holder, private account sales are unregulated, Smaller stores are under presure of being fazed out. Mid sized stores sales are regulated to a set monthly $$$ figure and larger stores can sell as much as they want ( unregulated  )  On top of this are the " brands" which recieve different "special treatment" again.

This is just a theory, based on observation. Like so many things with ebay, we will probably never know for sure.    

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I'm not sure what you call smaller stores but I have a basic store with approx 600 listings (mostly multiples) and I don't believe I experience throttling.  Sales fluctuate from month to month but I believe this is quite normal for the product I sell and I would never expect them to always be the same.  With all their stupid category changes I think it's getting harder for buyers to search my main category but I'm still getting found (I have roughly 5% of the listings in my category).  Sales slowed last month after they made more changes but they're back up again.

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VERY interesting question. The answer is blowed if I know.        Reliable data is almost impossible to find. The only information I have seen was around four years ago and would be completely obsolete by now. It was a press release from ebay stating that at that time there where around 2000 full time ebay sellers Australia wide. ( I would have thought it would be a lot more ) At that time you only needed to sell around $100,000 per annum to be a top 200 seller. ( again very suprising. I would have thought you would need much higher sales. ).

These figures would be irrelevent now as many B & M stores now have an ebay presence with many selling A LOT OF STUFF. Many smaller sellers have seen sales decline considerably, particularly over the last two years. On top of this I suspect ebay rates sellers based on thier presence in thier respective catagory. A seller with 2000 listings in used womans clothing or books would be a small seller compared to some others in the catagory. A seller with 2000 listings in scientific instruments or model trains would be a catagory killer and top of the list.

Before Cassini was introduced I would have regarded our stores as medium sized. We made a full time living from ebay and where selling a reasonable amount in dollar terms. In the last two years, our sales have been regulated to a modest set figure each month and its not enough to make a full time living from. To be honest I would have thought the $$$ per month we sell now would be very small beer for an ebay store and I would regard myself as a very very small fish in a very big pond. We run around 2000 listings most of the time.

The interesting twist is that we sell into highly specialised sub catagories with our smaller store being the largest in its sub catagory based on listing numbers ( around 40% of total sub catagory listings ) and our larger store, second in its sub catagory based on listing numbers.. So are these small or medium sized businesses ?    Based on dollar turnover if you cant make a full time living from a store surely it has to be regarded as a very small business doesnt it ????.

[englishrosegardens]

My question about what you regard as a smaller store was based on your statement that "It seems to me that .... Smaller stores are under presure of being fazed phased out."  I assumed you had something in mind as to what a smaller store is.  Anyway, it's not important, except that I'd imagine ebay would LOVE the smaller stores because there are heaps of little ones that pay their fees every month but have very few listings, or they have heaps of listings and pay listing fees but have very few sales.

I look there very rarely but it's interesting to look through the store directory in different categories.  There are many, many stores that wouldn't have anything like 100 listings, let alone 200.  I know of a few stores that can't possibly be selling enough to pay their store fees, let alone make a profit.  I know of one seller who still has a shop but she hasn't had any listings for probably two years now.  I used to watch her closely because her stupid low prices made it hard for some of us to sell anything for a while (a friend and I both competed with her and she bought & sold on the same ID so we knew exactly what her costs were).  

Ebay must really love people like this!  I think far too many people have this fuzzy feeling about having their own store but it's really just a hobby to them, or they think they won't get any sales if they don't have a store.  Either way, a lot seem to be blissfully unaware of what their bottom line is. 

It seems like a lot of b&m stores have a presence on ebay but I sometimes wonder whether there are as many as what it seems.  Because we hear about some of the really huge ones (eg. Myers, The Good Guys, etc) we assume there are a lot more, but sometimes it's just one or two major players that swamp a category.  There may be a lot in clothing and possibly Home & Garden, but I suspect not so many in other categories.  Some of the really huge sellers aren't from Australia but list on the AU site, and I'm not including those - I think of them as being no different to buying from overseas, because their goods come from overseas.

I've noticed that a few b&m stores that sell on ebay are very sloppy about listing.  Innovations has very few items in the right ebay category and I can't see how they'd expect to sell anything.  I know they're not up there with the really big players, but a lot of those places don't seem interested in spending time on their listings, but we all know sales don't happen by magic.

I think many small businesses on ebay (and probably b&m's) would be well below the top limit of the official definition of a small business.  I once knew a girl who quit her job because she felt guilty earning more than her boss (the business owner).

[chameleon54]

Some interesting thoughts there englishrosegardens.

I,ll directly answer your previous question of what I would personally consider a small business. .  Based on B & M stores, I would personally rate anything with a turnover of less than $50,000 a micro business. $50,000 - perhaps $300,000 a small business, $300,000 to $2000,000 a medium sized business  $2000,000 - $20,000,000 a large business and anything bigger a major national player.

On ebay the rules of the real world are changed signifigantly. There are a huge number of very small sellers making a few sales per week and in comparison to the real world it appears not many making hundreds or thousands of sales per week. My statement that many small sellers appear to be in danger of being phased out was in response to the large number of posters on threads such as this one that state that thier sales have fallen dramatically to the point of being unviable. Many of these sellers report maybe  a couple of sales a day or a few a week.

My own store sales appear to be incredibly tightly controlled to sit in a range of 2 % of a set four figure sum each month on a rolling basis. There are other sellers including some on the Powersellers forum and overseas forums who report a similar experience, but this seems limited. WHY ? My only conclusion is that as the stores have a high presence in thier sub catagory and reasonable sales numbers, ebay is rating them and treating them differently to smaller sellers. As stated in the last post, I personally would consider my own stores to be very small beer in the big scheme of things and not large enough now to make a genuine full time income from.  

Ebay seems to be a bit of a parallel universe where the rules of the real world are altered, stretched or dont really apply. 

[englishrosegardens]

I think I'd set the bar for turnover a lot lower for small businesses on ebay than you have, but a lot depends on what percentage your profit is of your sale price.  Some ebay businesses work on a very low mark-up and high volume, others work on a very high mark-up.  I know a lot of b&m businesses would barely be making wages, and of course on ebay the same type of businesses wouldn't have the same overheads (eg. rent) so their turnover could be a lot lower to make the same profit as their b&m counterparts.  If it's a single person like me, I don't need to sell as much as someone supporting a family.

I know there are a lot of people out there making big wages but there are also a lot of people on low wages and many of them would be happy to run their own businesses for a modest return if it was something they enjoyed doing and it got them out of a miserable job.  I have health issues that mean most employers wouldn't want me (and I wouldn't want them!), but at home I can work around this.  I've got all my stock organised very efficiently so that I know exactly where to lay my hands on it when it sells. I also don't have to wear myself out or spend money travelling to work, just a 5-minute walk to the PO every day.  

I'll probably offend a few people when I say this, but a lot of the sellers who complain about their sales drying up are blaming ebay for something that's not their fault.  A lot of the time people just don't want their type of product any more.  You have to go where the money is, ie. you have to pick products that are growing in popularity, not waning, and not something that every Tom, Dick & Harry are selling..  It's no good deciding to sell something just because you think you'd enjoy it - people have to want it, and you have to be able to compete with others.  

What's popular this year may be old hat next year and you can't always expect to sell the same product forever.   Fashions change, and I don't mean in clothing.  This year Pokemon is all the rage, next year it'll be something else and pokemon may be unsaleable.  I won't buy anything that's trendy because I know it can be suddenly un-trendy and I'll be stuck with it.  A lot of my competitors go for trendy so I do quite well, especially in one area that my competitors seem to have ignored.  I've had comments from buyers saying, "It's nice to see it is possible to get nice ... on ebay after all."

Just because something once sold well on ebay doesn't mean it always will.  This is the cry I hear in the forums all the time - "I used to sell X dollars, now I can hardly sell anything".  I'm not talking about people who are throttled but whose sales are continually dwindling.  With some it's because they're being swamped by competitors.  It's no use complaining about the Chinese sellers - they're a fact of life and we have to live with it.  Free trade is a fact of life.  I have a lot of Chinese knock-offs in one of my categories but they're pretty obvious in this particular product, and thankfully most people are wary of them, but you do have to wade through a lot of junk to find the genuine stuff.  Some sellers expect to buy from the Chinese and resell for a high profit, but they don't like it when people decide to buy direct.  They did it so why can't their customers?

Sometimes there are just too many selling the same thing for everyone to get sales.  Take clothing for example - more people are getting in on the act all the time and it's a very competitive market.  If you live in a town where there are two clothing stores in the main street, if ten more open, how many of them are going to survive?  There's only a certain amount of spending money to go around.  Not only that, while there's little competition people will put up with a sloppy or rude seller, but they won't if a more efficient competitor comes along.  I used to sell on another site and when I started out I took a lot of business from my competitors because I had better pictures and more details in the description.  Each listing only took me 10 minutes so how much time did they spend on theirs?  I buy multiples so I get several sales from one listing.  

I've been told by the odd buyer that some of my previous competitors were quite rude, and some sellers are rude but have absolutely no idea how they come across.  I once did a very comprehensive small business course and they said that service and personality are more important than price to customers.  In the same way, some sellers have VERY sloppy listings but they just can't see it so they ignore any advice they're given.

Some sellers have done well by clearing out stuff around the house and then they've decided to go to garage sales and op shops to pick up stock to sell.  This sort of thing used to do well on ebay but that's no guarantee it always will.  As newbies we probably all got carried away to a certain extent and bought too much, which we then had to offload again, but one eventually learns and you're more discerning in what you buy.  There are still a lot of collectors out there but in some areas sales have slowed down because houses and sheds are already overflowing and they have nowhere to put things.  I sold Royal Albert china for a while and that's dead compared to what it used to be.  In other areas, collectors already have full sets and new people aren't coming along to keep sales alive.

 A lot of people (including me) used to buy a lot on ebay but they've gone back to buying from b&m stores where they can see exactly what they're getting, and where they don't have the stress of trying to return things that aren't as described.  I don't buy much on ebay now but would buy more if I knew I'd get what I paid for, but I've been disappointed too many times in the past to risk it, even with the MBG.  From what I see in the forums, a lot of buyers must lead charmed lives, but my experience is that far too many things aren't as described!

[chameleon54]

Excellent post and agree with all you have said.

Just to clarify my response to the original question of what I would regard as a small business. The dollar amounts I listed where for the real B & M  world, not ebay. It seems the bar is set a lot lower on ebay.

The OP mentions their sales on ebay are only a tiny fraction of what they achieved in a B & M store. My sales on ebay are much less than I have achieved in real world businesses, but as you mention there simply is not the same overheads, so a micro business can still achieve very high profit margins.

If I give too much information away it could be easily taken that I am bragging. This is not the case as by the figures I mentioned earlier my own stores now both qualify for my defenition of micro businesses. ( each store now sells less than $50,000 per annum ) Before Cassini was introduced and sellers started to report throttling, one store sold enough to meet my definition of small business. (  quite a bit over $50,000 per annum ) The smaller,  newer store never reached that mark.

But even with these very low sales figures ebay still seems to manage my account differently to smaller sellers. ie. Our sales are regulated to be within 2 % of a set figure each month.

At the end of August I recorded my monthly sales figures for tax purposes at around 6 pm. on the 31st. I noted my sales where $300 below what I believe my monthly set figure to be. Sales had been slow for the previous few days, but when I re-checked sales before going to bed, I had sold the extra $300 in a few hours to bring my total monthly sales to within a few dollars of the set figure.

I suppose the purpose of my threads is to try to better understand how ebay is managing my business.. I also simply find it interesting to try to understand and dissect the way ebay works. ( its a boy thing I know )

[englishrosegardens]

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@chameleon54 wrote:

Excellent post and agree with all you have said.

I suppose the purpose of my threads is to try to better understand how ebay is managing my business.. I also simply find it interesting to try to understand and dissect the way ebay works. ( its a boy thing I know )

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Ha ha!  I'm female but I've often been told "you're thinking with the left side of your brain again" (men use the left more than the right, women are the opposite).  My friends get a bit tired of me analysing everything to death but that's the way I'm made.  I've got two books with different tests in them to determine personality types and with both I get the same result - that I like to analyse things.  I think in any sort of business it's essential to do some evualation/analysis, and that's why so many fail.

It's a pity ebay has to manage your business and doesn't leave it to you to do it.  In a free market the person who has the best service and best products deserves to get the best sales, in my opinion.  I could sell a lot more if I didn't have health issues but I've learnt what my limitations are and I pay the price if I ignore them.  I'm certainly not going to bust myself selling for little to no profit, as so many do without realising it.

That's something else I meant to say.  In some categories price isn't much of an issue, but in other categories if you can't match your competitors' prices it's a waste of time thinking about selling the same products.  Prices in my main category are all over the place but the dearest ones sell just as much as the cheapest ones, but there are variations between each item and people buy what they like, not what's cheapest.  I used to be one of the cheapest but now I'm one of the dearest, so I do only two-thirds of the work I used to in order to make the same sales.  I probably only do half the amount of work to make the same profit.

[chameleon54]

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@englishrosegardens wrote:

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@chameleon54 wrote:

Excellent post and agree with all you have said.

I suppose the purpose of my threads is to try to better understand how ebay is managing my business.. I also simply find it interesting to try to understand and dissect the way ebay works. ( its a boy thing I know )

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Ha ha!  I'm female but I've often been told "you're thinking with the left side of your brain again" (men use the left more than the right, women are the opposite).  My friends get a bit tired of me analysing everything to death but that's the way I'm made.  I've got two books with different tests in them to determine personality types and with both I get the same result - that I like to analyse things.  I think in any sort of business it's essential to do some evualation/analysis, and that's why so many fail.

It's a pity ebay has to manage your business and doesn't leave it to you to do it.  In a free market the person who has the best service and best products deserves to get the best sales, in my opinion.  I could sell a lot more if I didn't have health issues but I've learnt what my limitations are and I pay the price if I ignore them.  I'm certainly not going to bust myself selling for little to no profit, as so many do without realising it.

That's something else I meant to say.  In some categories price isn't much of an issue, but in other categories if you can't match your competitors' prices it's a waste of time thinking about selling the same products.  Prices in my main category are all over the place but the dearest ones sell just as much as the cheapest ones, but there are variations between each item and people buy what they like, not what's cheapest.  I used to be one of the cheapest but now I'm one of the dearest, so I do only two-thirds of the work I used to in order to make the same sales.  I probably only do half the amount of work to make the same profit.

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I structure my sales the same as you. My prices are at the higher end in my catagory which means I make a lot more pofit per item sold than sellers who discount.

This leads to another little theory.  Does my relatively low sell through rate affect my sales limits. ???

The original purpose of this thread was to explore, how to increase sales on ebay to a sustainable level.  The OP and many other new sellers come to ebay with the hope of making a living from their online business. If sales are regulated once a certain turnover is reached, it makes it impossible to grow a business past a certain point.

The only way I can see that a seller may be able to possibly side step this block is to have a high sell through rate. ( this again is based on observing and anylising other stores sales. )  To have a high sell through rate a seller either needs a product everyone wants, but no-one supplies ( the holy grail ) or they need to cut margins to the bone ( which suits ebays need for cheap products. ) . This may grow a business but is unsustainable to the seller in the long term.

Personally in answer to the OP I think the way ebay is structured at the moment, it is incredibly difficult to build a business here that can replace a full time income, due to the way ebay appears to manage store sales. 

There are two ways I could do it at the moment. One is to open several more non store accounts and sell collectables using the 40 monthly freebies and other free listings from forum links. The reason being that I believe non store accounts are not regulated in the same way as medium sized ( for ebay ) store accounts are. While this would work, it is not building a long term sustainable, specialised ebay business.

The other option would be to reduce the prices of the items in my stores to increase sell through rate. This would substantially affect the $$$ profit per hour that I make now, meaning instead of working for $35 an hour as I do now, I would be working a lot harder and getting a lot more stressed for $12-$15 per hour. Again this is not really sustainable long term.