WHY HAVE EBAY SALES CRASHED

[pinnacle-agencies]

With  nothing having changed on my end, I don't understand why my ebay sales have crashed ... down to about 15% of what they were before ... profit on my sales now barely cover my monthly ebay anchor store costs ... I'm now earning LESS than $1 per hour !

HELP! HELP! HELP!

[lurehouse]

I do not entirely blame buyers in a way,the customers on my website are far more understanding than ebay customers. It is ebays policies that have made them this way, I have been selling here for 11 years and have noticed in the last 5 years how outrages and rude a lot of ebay customers can be, I dont see that on my website....................... 

[chameleon54]

My theory is that if your general sales are going well, it may lift your rankings in cassini / best match, helping to maintain good general sales. If sales fall away, maybe your cassini / best match rankings drop over everything and your sales stay down.

I have had very good sales for months, even when not listing much new stock. The few new stock items I did list where excellent sellers meaning my sales still held right up not only with the new stock, but across the board including very old listings.. I have finished listing the great selling items and my sales have fallen across the board quite dramatically over the last couple of weeks. I plan to list a few very good, quick sellers again next week to see if this lifts all sales including old listings.

Its all just a theory at the moment, but could help to explain why sellers who are down, struggle so much to get back into strong sales again. If you are relying on regular stock items and dont have the extra spicy items to drag sales back up quickly, it may be very difficult to get things moving again once you are down.

[pinnacle-agencies]

Sadly, I have spent a year getting 12,000 to 14,000 additional products to sell opn ebay at 30% below market price, that I am now ready to list, but I will probably now have to walk away from it all because ebay buyers are not satisfied with only 30% below retail but ebay no longer have the traffic to justify me paying $500 per month for an anchor store. This is becomin g a very sad moment of realisation for me.

[pinnacle-agencies]

Sadly, I have spent a year getting 12,000 to 14,000 additional products to sell on ebay at 30% below market price, that I am now ready to start listing on ebay, but I will probably now have to walk away from it all because ebay buyers are not satisfied with only 30% below retail and ebay no longer have the "fair buyer" traffic to justify me paying $500 per month for an anchor store. This is becoming a very sad moment of realisation for me.

[clarry100]

Yes over the past couple of months we have started selling on other non-ebay venues including our own web site.

I agree with you Lurehouse that the buyers on the other venues are far more pleasant and understanding to deal with and super friendly and rarely complain or try to take you down in some way.

I just don't understand why this kind of buyer is attracted to ebay these days. It can only be these recent MBG (and other) policy changes. Seems to have brought them out of the woodwork.

But we too are about over it and will cease trading on here as soon as the other venues can support us. Or if ebay defect us out of business first.

These days, if asked, I will strongly recommend against selling anything on ebay (most especially if it is a high value item) unless you are prepared to risk losing both your item and your money.

It's just terrible that we have to think like this.

And along with recent crashes in sales volume, the level of stress seems not worth the effort any more. In short we are becoming very despondent.

[helenm777]

Clarry would be really interested in the other selling venues that are available other than Gumtree.

I have also tried Etsy with no luck in a 3 month trial

How do you set up your own website.. and is it expensive to do so and maintain after the initial set up fees.

Like everyone else I have probably thousands of items in stock... bought more as about 6 months ago my sales really took off!

Since the start of this month I have told 7 small items for a total of $77.00!!!!

Any direction you can give would be greatly appreciated

[ourphonecase]

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@clarry100 wrote:

Yes over the past couple of months we have started selling on other non-ebay venues including our own web site.

I agree with you Lurehouse that the buyers on the other venues are far more pleasant and understanding to deal with and super friendly and rarely complain or try to take you down in some way.

I just don't understand why this kind of buyer is attracted to ebay these days. It can only be these recent MBG (and other) policy changes. Seems to have brought them out of the woodwork.

But we too are about over it and will cease trading on here as soon as the other venues can support us. Or if ebay defect us out of business first.

These days, if asked, I will strongly recommend against selling anything on ebay (most especially if it is a high value item) unless you are prepared to risk losing both your item and your money.

It's just terrible that we have to think like this.

And along with recent crashes in sales volume, the level of stress seems not worth the effort any more. In short we are becoming very despondent.

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I've been hearing this for quite a while and quite eagar to hear your results. I've made my website last year, it looks ok, but I've made so much mistakes with it (ie: using png instead of jpg for faster loading etc..), I may need to revamp the whole website when I got time.

I've used google adwords and it does quite well though it doesn't get as much sales as it does on eBay. Also, I don't spend alot on Adwords as I'm too scared to spend $5k a month (which are what fees I pay on eBay) and it will end up in failure, but I really should explore that part to see if it really works.

All in all from my experience, I don't get alot of sales but it has made a small tiny profit that it has been able to pay off the server and have some left over.

[rachelle011273]

I was also thinking of going the website path however I have now opted to use a facebook application called shop tab which is already set up and also includes an integrated shopping cart (I opted paypal)

You create a fan page to attach to your facebook account and then the shop tab application is attached to the fan page

it is easy to use and all I am doing is uploading listings and then updating the fan page also with some images and blurb of which once completed I shall being sharing every where and with every one

this costs 10.00 per month, no other fees involved, they also help with promotion, as I am not technically live yet I cannot at this stage let you know of the outcome however I have listed on the other sites mentioned and have had no real success

just another option to a website at this stage, maybe twitter for me next as well, the social media outlets seem to attract more traffic these days and are obviously heading in the direction of buying and selling

good luck

[pinnacle-agencies]

THANK YOU FOR SOME EXCELLENT ADVICE.

[clarry100]

Hi Helen,

We also have been selling on Etsy now for about 6-weeks. Some initial moderate success and still building up the listings at this point.

My website I did myself using Shopify initially. We have had that running for a couple of months but as I learn more about the SEO side of things I have come to find out that BigCommerce is the leader of the pack in terms of inbuilt SEO. So I am currently changing all our listings over to BigCommerce. Almost half way done now.

Both Shopify and BigCommerce have FREE and PAID themes so you dont need to have any techincal savvy in order to set up the site just choose a FREE theme initially to get started and start listing. The PAID themes are always much better than the FREE ones of course and cost about $USD150 to buy as a one-time fee. They both have the first 15-days FREE of any fees but you will need at least this time to get it started up.

The hosting fees are about $USD30 per month for the basic plans to get you started and on the basic plans they charge a 1.5% transaction fee on top of each sale. BigCommerce will be dropping the 1.5% by the end of the year so I am told.

The features they provide make using the site as admin far far easier than ebay ever thought about. Management of products and stock levels is a breeze. Variation management is sooo  easy to do.

We have purchased our own .com.au URL thru Godaddy so that can be setup so you have your own URL. The cost for that was small from memory about $USD25 and lasts for 2-years after which you need to pay again to keep it going.

You can pay a professional to design and set up a web site for you but that will cost $1,000's and is simply out of our reach at this point in time. But that way you will get a site tailored to your own specifications.

The secret to getting traffic is to have a very good understanding of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and how to apply it to the various listings and categories and pics on your web site. To get started you may have to run a Google Adwords campaign, we have not tried this as yet.

We are still working thru it but hope to have it all working fully prior to the Xmas rush in Sept or so.