Throttling sucks

[stickerswa]

I normally sell 15-20 items a week (Under a different account name) but the last 2 weeks has been woeful. Last week I actually sold more items over on the other site (QS) than I did on Ebay. Thats a first.

Can someone please tell me why ebay uses throttling - I just cant get my head around the logic of costing themselves the fees from sales that 'could have been' 

[rachelle011273]

for the past year or so my sales have been the same give or take a few $

basically as soon as I hit that magic number ... game over for me for the month

yet ebay keeps sending me emails on how to grow my business lol

slowly I am winding down my store and as soon as the new store pricing comes into effect I shall downgrade to a cheaper store option

might try that QS site again as not much happens here these days either

[chameleon54]

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@rachelle011273 wrote:

for the past year or so my sales have been the same give or take a few $

basically as soon as I hit that magic number ... game over for me for the month

yet ebay keeps sending me emails on how to grow my business lol

slowly I am winding down my store and as soon as the new store pricing comes into effect I shall downgrade to a cheaper store option

might try that QS site again as not much happens here these days either

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I,m the same. The combined total for my two stores is always the same each month to within a few dollars. This is on thousands of dollars turnover, so not what you would expect from an unregulated market.

I noticed late last year that my monthly target seemed to have dropped and figures where inconsistent. This happens every twelve months or so, as ebay lower genuinly throttled stores monthly sales allowances. ( I have seen this happen before ) . Things have now settled down and my new monthly sales are consistently sitting 17.5 % below the previous level.

Are there any other genuinly throttled sellers who closely moniter their sales and have worked out their monthly sales figures allocation ????  Have you had a  comparable % drop recently  ? If so it would provide an interesting timeline into ebays possible intentions for throttled store sellers. ( If things continue at this pace we have maybe 5-6 years before we have no sales left )

Luckily our unregulated, non store account is having a very succesful run of sales and this is helping to keep things busy and the finances on an even keel.

[rachelle011273]

I think I may have to look into cancelling store subscription and see how I fair trading just as a normal account ... I have heard others who dont have a store seem to fair better, might have to give this a go and see if any magic happens lol

[lyndal1838]

If you want to list everything you have in your store now you will incur huge listing fees without the store.

[chameleon54]

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@rachelle011273 wrote:
I think I may have to look into cancelling store subscription and see how I fair trading just as a normal account ... I have heard others who dont have a store seem to fair better, might have to give this a go and see if any magic happens lol

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Lyndals words of caution are probably worth thinking about.

You are still making some sales on the store and while  I dont know your profit margins etc. I would have thought you would still be covering the cost of a basic store and still making a profit. If you have sold more than $10,000 in the last 12 months you would not be eligable for the three free relists on a non store account and would be relying on the extra freebies offers to list reasonable numbers of stock. Many sellers dont have luck with these, so you could be stuck on 40 free listings a month.

Would it be better to start another seperate non store account.???  Sure it will take awhile to build up feedback and overcome the 21 day hold on your money, but if you link it to your store, that should help get up and running quicker. This way you can try it without sacrificing your existing listings.  .

I have definately had a good run on the non store account lately and I am putting quite a bit of work into it. I dont recieve the three free relists, but I have been fortunate to recieve the 150 free listing offer virtually every month, so can run 190 listings per month on the account. Currently around a third of these sell each month giving average weekly sales of around $350 - $400. 

The items I sell are a mixture of rare vintage car parts, specialist and collectable books, magazines and ephemera and shed collectables of interest to males my age. Most of the items are rare or unique, so this helps with attracting buyers. The fact that many of the items I list are not commonly available is certianly part of the reason they sell well. Clothing is a highly competative market on ebay and it may be a bit harder to stand out from the crowd in this sector.

[rachelle011273]

yes agree, at this point in time would not be viable to close store and list all my current listings as a non store account and not quite sure I want to open another account so I shall bide my time and continue winding my stock levels down ... thanks

[jameshouseofstyle]

Hi rachelle,

you have a fantastic photos in all your listings!

You must have a great studio & camera equipment - they are faulous! When we compare them to our miserable photos - no wander we are not selling anything.

But I was wandering about your pictures with email and face book  addies - did you have to get a special permission from Ebay?

Or is that just a standard thing that anyone can do?

We have been on Ebay for years - but still don't know any of their rules if I tripped over them - never read them! Much easier to sit tight, if we any break any  rules out of ignorance - they soon let us know I suppose.

Again, congrats on a beautiful pictures & merchandise - most impressive.

[rachelle011273]

thank you for your comments

I have set facebook up to divert any buyers to ebay and so I do not think ebay could complain as I am actually encouraging sales offsite to onsite so to speak ... I have with each item on fb included the ebay link to each particular item as I found it was easier as I have a listing already set up and also I am sure people feel a lot more secure buying of a well known site plus they can also see my feedback

both my facebook and ebay store are a work in progress, when not selling I sort need to get inspired to work on it lol

[cr.love]

Oh my goodness....! This answers so many discussions I have had. Each month you can almost draw a line in the sand at around halfway through the month. Sell sell sell then boom nothing. 

I think I am going to have to look at stopping my store. When I had 200 items listed I would average 2 sales a day....worked really hard to get to 900-1000 items (currently just under that as I have been making a few changes) and only increased across the board by 30%. So if I increased my listings to five times the original amount you would certainly expect profit and sales etc to also increase by 5, not by 0.3.

My nearest competitor (not even close to volume and variety) is kicking goals while I have to consider what I do as this is my job and I have little poeple to raise and support in more ways than one.

[cr.love]

Can I assume we are not affected if the buyer searches in a more specific nature...

for example 'lowest price' or 'nearest first'

or will I be dissapointed again....