"invisible" sales caps and store subscription levels

[Anonymous]

Hey guys im looking for a bit of input

I have a basic store and at the moment around 600 items for sale. That can fluctuate at times but no matter how many items i have, i seem have around the same amount of sales every month. Even when i had 300 items for sale i still had around the same amount of sales. I just cant crack any higher no matter how much i list.

Does anyone have any theories about whether ebay put a "invisible" cap on the amount of sales they will allow you depending on what store level you have?

What im wondering, is if i upgrade to a featured store would that likely see my "cap" lifted and have more sales?

i have heard of some people opening a second store on another ID and basically doubling their sales.. im not sure i want to try that one yet though

thoughts?

[Anonymous]

Nah a sale of any item generates fees regardless, I still do not see how that would benefit Ebay to limit traffic to certain sellters. It is Ebays life blood income stream to generate fees from sales. Bigger sellers would naturally require more internal foot print. The more listed for sale naturally the more exposure a seller would have. 

[mbselections00]

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@gtx305 wrote:

More info HERE too

HERE

I have heard of one seller who made a script (against Ebays policy, obviously they dont want to be caught out) to monitor traffic, limits etc on their listings and confronted Ebay with evidence of throttling -  Ebay backed down and removed any throttling from their account - they are now doing EXTREMELY well on Ebay... 

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they are now doing EXTREMELY well on Ebay... 

Good on them. (Not meant as sarcasm, I genuinely congratulate them)

Everything you say makes absolute sense

Of course I'm only a small seller (and it seems will remain that way !) although I did start selling with aspirations of becoming bigger.  This throttling is soooooooo deceptive, but at least if it was visible to all sellers on their Dashboard, we could make more educated decisions regarding our business's.

I either read that article or a similar one a while ago & went off in search of Selling Limits - I couldn't find them anywhere.  Can someone tell us where they are HIDING please ?

[saarzi]

Business 101 - Sales are ONE *small* aspect of how any large company makes money.

Would you prefer:

A. a seller who sells 100 items a week, and you get fees from it to the tune of $100 a week.

B. a seller who sells 100 items a week, you get the fees, and is contracted to you (eliminating them going via rivals), included in contracts are various affiliate programs, they also provide kickbacks (huge btw), and draws more customers via branding plus a whole bunchof other ways I cant even begin to describe here.... to the tune of $5,000 a week.

Small sellers do not and will not make a great deal of money in their business, or, work ten times harder than the need to to do so, until they understand larger business management. This probably wont happen because usually they do not know what they need to be looking up, in order to look it up.

[Anonymous]

You are lecturing me about stuff  you have limited knowledge about looking through domestic eyes that is clear, and does not directly apply to Ebay. LOL

End Volume sales is where it matters, income generation/profit margins, being a listed company Ebay would prefer all sellers selling at their maximum capacity, which increases their profit margin to please guess who? I will let you figure that one out.

the more sellers ebay attracts, the more buyers ebay will attract.  However I do agree incentives are given to high volume sellers. I still do not see how it would PROFIT EBAY to reduce a sellers selling capacity? 

I think you are peddling conspiracy through speculation about something you cannot prove.

[clarry100]

Last tax year we were operating two basic stores selling pretty much the same kind of items.

This tax year we have opened up three more selling IDs. One is yet another basic store and the other two are auction IDs.

Overall we have probably about doubled the number of listings we had last tax year.

But doing this has not made one iota of difference. Our monthly sales average is almost exactly what it was last tax year.

So it means either there really are less customers visiting the site or there is some kind of throttling at play here.

But you would have no chance of proving anything like this.

So we are developing our own web site and will give that a try along with Betsy.

[dylan11235813]

You forgot to mention that a lot of these large business selling on ebay, that are given preferential treatment, are in fact the ones driving a lot of customers away.

I think ebay have forgotten or dont know why customers are coming here in the first place, IMO it aint the Dick Smiths or Barbeque Galore. Intrestingly they had a BBQ sale a few months back with "50% OFF" where all the big sellers just inflated the prices for the so called sale. Anything that "was as it should have been" was sold out.

Also I have never come to ebay to find a brand name product (or big box retailer) for obvious reasons.

[dylan11235813]

Actually I lie, I have come to ebay to find a brand name product because it was that or purchase directly from overseas and I would have had to stuff around with import taxes and the rest.

[sagalaenterprises]

I have noticed that too. Started my business on ebay 4 months ago with 100 items after 4 months my listings are 200 items but my selling average remained same from the 1st day. I statred bleiving that there is somehting -fishy....

[van_werkhoven]

I started selling about 9 months ago now. 6 months ago I hit a certain total, with 200ish items in stock. I now have 800ish items in stock and that amount has not changed

I'm going to try a second store this month, need to anyway as I am passing 200 listings every month right now anyway. Lets see what happens

[sueken4812]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Nah a sale of any item generates fees regardless, I still do not see how that would benefit Ebay to limit traffic to certain sellters. It is Ebays life blood income stream to generate fees from sales. Bigger sellers would naturally require more internal foot print. The more listed for sale naturally the more exposure a seller would have. 

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I believe it's all to do with Bandwidth.