Why have my sales nosedived so badly? Is Ebay interfering in the selling process?

[dotchmansilver2016]

Why have my sales nosedived so badly? Is Ebay interfering in the selling process? I have promoted all my listings but made no difference.

[tazzieterror]

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@knewdoors wrote:

ZERO sales over two weeks something is very WRONG...we've done everything..free same day domestic postage...clean concise copy on our lisitings..100% Feedback...good prices..makes NO difference..E-Bay keeps nosediving..but the cut they take from sales doesnt... FIX IT!!! E-Bay

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If you've had "ZERO sales..." then surely "...the cut they take from sales..." is also zero so therefore has nosedived too?

[bimberiretrosystems]

everyone's on facebook or gumtree - here are some statistics i found from one of my items, i had a bundle of ipads/a macbook/and an ipod-over three weeks i had about 68 people look at my listing on ebay, on facebook i had 254 people look at my item in 2 hours. ebay's finished i think except for hard to get rare collectibles, maybe

[plantopia*]

If you've had "ZERO sales..." then surely "...the cut they take from sales..." is also zero so therefore has nosedived too?

Not exactly, ebay still get $1.65 for each item listed, wheather it sells or not. As long as items are being listed, ebay will still be making profit.

[davewil1964]

You only need to pay insertion fees if you don't get the mega weekend promos, and you list more than 40 items per month.

[casbit33]

ZERO sales over two weeks something is very WRONG...we've done everything..free same day domestic postage...clean concise copy on our lisitings..100% Feedback...good prices..makes NO difference..E-Bay keeps nosediving..but the cut they take from sales doesnt... FIX IT!!! E-Bay

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This time of year things usually start picking up but I do wonder if the new GTC fiasco has stopped a lot of sales. People are ending items before they finish, they are so busy trying to avoid a fee and sort out that mess, they don't have time to shop. Sellers are buyers too.

[chameleon54]

Ebay have made some major site changes in the last week or so. I have been using google, internet explorer as my search engine for ebay for years, no probs ( yes I know others have problems with it ) but after ebay mucking around with the site all week, google IE no longer works at all. I have had to move to google chrome.

Thats a minor issue though compared to the biggy. I am 99.8 % sure ebay have recently made dramatic changes to the search criteria for items listed on the site. I believe they have re-rated searches to new listings or listings with extensive sales history and virtually completely hidden items that have been listed for an extended period. Sure we still sell the occasional item that has been listed for awhile, but most of my recent sales have been overwhelmingly new listings or listings with long, regular sales history..

And watch out if you dont keep listing new items constantly. I have one account that I have not done any new listings on for several weeks. It is now completely dead, to the extent I am considering, closing the store and amalgamating listings with one of my other stores.

I suspect ebay is making radical changes in an attempt to clean out stale listings. The recent changes for non stores where fixed term items with 9 free relists have been moved to GTC & fees for relists is an indication of ebays intentions.

Moral of the story is, if you want to keep sales ticking along, you will need to do fresh listings very regularly, or maintain listings with a strong sales history. Old, stagnent listings are just not cutting it any more.

[davewil1964]

30% of my sales have, over several years, been for items I've had listed for more than four years. But they were all 30 day listings with AR enabled, so when they rolled over they showed as a new listing.

With GTC, I will have to wait and see, but my sales so far this month are certainly average or better.

[chameleon54]

I have until recently sold plenty of items that have been listed for several years or more, but the changes lately have been very dramatic and noticable. My sales are still going very well, but most of the sales are coming from fairly recent listings. 

Searches and ratings are much more complex than the simple explanation in my last post, but the re-weighting in favour of new listings seems to be very obvious. I suspect another criteria that has an increased rating is the " sell similar item " type rating. If an item sells, ebay increases the visibility of a sellers items with similar characteristics.

 ie. sell a dog collar and ebay boost all other dog collar listings from that seller for a period of time.

[tangledstitches]

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@chameleon54 wrote:

I have until recently sold plenty of items that have been listed for several years or more, but the changes lately have been very dramatic and noticable. My sales are still going very well, but most of the sales are coming from fairly recent listings. 

Searches and ratings are much more complex than the simple explanation in my last post, but the re-weighting in favour of new listings seems to be very obvious. I suspect another criteria that has an increased rating is the " sell similar item " type rating. If an item sells, ebay increases the visibility of a sellers items with similar characteristics.

 ie. sell a dog collar and ebay boost all other dog collar listings from that seller for a period of time.

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I've got a fairly similar theory.  I'm convinced most of my sales come from ebay advertising my items on other similiar listings, not from being seen in best match (I rarely show near the start) or newly listed or ending soonest.  When I changed to 30 days from 10, I got more views and more sales in the middle of the 30 days than at the start or end.  Of course, if nobody else sells what you sell, your items won't get advertised much on other people's listings.

I read an article recently on how ebay's search engine works and it said that ebay will show you whatever it thinks is most likely to sell, which of course is the products that have recently sold.  In your example that'd be the similar dog collars.  

[kitty-kat-kollection]

I find that certain items I list on Ebay, Gumtree and Facebook get the most views and ridiculously low offers on Gumtree, pretty much ignored on Facebook, and end up selling on Ebay.

I've also noticed my sales have dropped and I wonder if it's this new 30 day listing thing. I used to notice a lot of my items seemed to sell 1-2 days after they had been re-listed after 10 days. So every day I was getting notifications that certain of my 400 items were re-listed after each of their 10 day durations, and once re-listed, they'd go back up to the top of the search results again.

NOW...every time I look at my store items, it looks exactly the same. Same exact items just sitting there for a MONTH, being pushed down and down the pages while new listings are added, before FINALLY being re-listed after 30 days. Must I end listings and forcibly re-list to avoid this?

Does this make sense, or has my brain imploded again?