Was September 2018 horrible for many others too?

[jorayjen-1]

Hello all,

I'm just curious as my monthly sales average are usually within a 5% range and here I am on the 30th September and I'm down 48.9% this month.

I've done nothing differently this month.

Is this happening to others as well?

Take Care - Jo

[jorayjen-1]

Gday ozstockman,

I can trace my sales and profit decline back to when fees on postage was brought in - can't change things so I just adapted, and so as not to lose money, I increased my prices on what is not a need but basically a want/would like type of item.

I know that pre postage fees I wasn't selling hundreds of dollars a week but I could save enough over a year to buy a ticket to Canada to see my daughter - my last visit was in July 2015 

Hopefully things improve for you very soon.

Take Care - Jo

[melbourneclearance]

ebay changed the Best Match search algorithm (the one that I have noticed at least) to show more diverse sellers in top items. I dominated several categories previously, now these categories only show my items in the top 2 or 3 and a whole list of other sellers with no recent sales before showing my items again.

On the other hand, I have a new shop which was struggling to be visible. The items there are all of a sudden showing in Best Match.

[dazzledayz]

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@melbourneclearance wrote:

ebay changed the Best Match search algorithm (the one that I have noticed at least) to show more diverse sellers in top items. I dominated several categories previously, now these categories only show my items in the top 2 or 3 and a whole list of other sellers with no recent sales before showing my items again.

On the other hand, I have a new shop which was struggling to be visible. The items there are all of a sudden showing in Best Match.

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I noticed that too; it looks like they are trying to encourage newbie sellers from what I can see.

High DSR's over a high volume means little it would seem, though from what I can see, a lot of these newbie sellers, even though their reputation points start out high, won't stay that way for long.

The old method, when we had to start out slowly and prove reliable, worked a lot better from a customer satisfaction point of view.

eBay may often complain about their "flea market" label but they do very little to dispel the notion by not insisting on high standards.

[padraicpaul91]

September has been good for me but I have had 4 seriously bad months this year, with sales drops of up to 75% compared to my average.

There seems to have been such drops with many sellers this year, world wide, but when it happens seems to have been dependent on your categories and your country.

I believe other sellers are correct in stating the problem is within searches, particularly 'best match'.One tactic I have now employed is to end items and relist using 'sell similar' and not 'relist'. I now do this to items every two/three months unless there has been a sale. If I do relist, again I use 'sell similar'.

Using 'sell similar' appears to put my items at the top of the Best Match searches, as they are treated as new items. On one search, my entire inventory of 250+ appeared in the first two search pages. Same happens with items sold with which I have multiples. New listings are being given priority within the search. This may not be the case if you just relist.

[everard6920]

My September was down about 60% on last year.

I tried to sign up for Etsy, but they couldn't verify my identity and wanted me to scan my driver's licence and/or passport, which I thought was above and beyond what should be expected. I appreciate that they're trying to stop scamming, etc, but I'm not comfortable sending photo ID over the internet to strangers in foreign countries. Especially given all the recent big company data breaches, and that I recently had someone in Chicago fraudulently try to charge $300 to my credit card.

I'm now looking at Shopify. The fees seem very reasonable, although sales do seem to be dependent, to an extent, on being able to drive your own traffic. Maybe I'm misunderstanding but it seems like you set up a website to sell from, using your FB account, and then you drive your traffic using a business page, Google, etc.  

I've tried to hang on here at eBay, but I'm losing patience. I'm tired of how inflexible the store setup is (inability to specify minimum order amounts, the never-fixed problem with combining postage via the app, and so forth). So I'll probably move the bulk of my inventory elsewhere and just sell bits 'n' pieces on here without a store to drive traffic to my other platforms.

[stylesilver]

Don't like to tell you this but I tried shopify about 2 yrs ago.... For me anyway it was a big waste of time!!! Couldn't drive any traffic there .... eBay was sooo much better🙂

[everard6920]

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@stylesilver wrote:

Don't like to tell you this but I tried shopify about 2 yrs ago.... For me anyway it was a big waste of time!!! Couldn't drive any traffic there .... eBay was sooo much better🙂

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Oh, I don't really have any expectations; was just planning on trying it. My biggest problem seems to be exposure. Mine is a niche market which is slowly but surely gaining popularity in Australia. So I figure the more platforms I have, the better.

I have over 900 followers on my store's FB page so I will attempt to drive them to Shopify and see what happens. 

[dazzledayz]

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@everard6920 wrote:

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@stylesilver wrote:

Don't like to tell you this but I tried shopify about 2 yrs ago.... For me anyway it was a big waste of time!!! Couldn't drive any traffic there .... eBay was sooo much better🙂

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Oh, I don't really have any expectations; was just planning on trying it. My biggest problem seems to be exposure. Mine is a niche market which is slowly but surely gaining popularity in Australia. So I figure the more platforms I have, the better.

I have over 900 followers on my store's FB page so I will attempt to drive them to Shopify and see what happens. 

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I'm pretty sure both Shopify and BigCommerce have Facebook and also Instagram plugins so you should be able to get some quick traction.

[digital*ghost]

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@everard6920 wrote:

I tried to sign up for Etsy, but they couldn't verify my identity and wanted me to scan my driver's licence and/or passport, which I thought was above and beyond what should be expected. I appreciate that they're trying to stop scamming, etc, but I'm not comfortable sending photo ID over the internet to strangers in foreign countries.

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I didn't have to do that when I opened my first store (2014), but I did when I opened the second (2015). I sent them a scan of a proof of age card that had an older address on it, which was still accepted - they didn't get any more info from that than what needs to be provided, anyway, aside from someone being able to see what I look like. 

I don't know much about Shopify Lite (which is the one where your store is on FB, not an independent website), but they required just as much information with the plan I went for, though I didn't have to send photo ID (they want name, address, DOB, bank account details for payments etc). Since business pages are run by personal pages, the actual amount of data accessible by Shopify likely far exceeds what Etsy will access from a photo ID.