So, it's been a couple of weeks since I've posted on this, and a full 5 weeks since reopening with tracked postage, which means my stats for the last 30 days (and year on year) paint a bit more of an accurate picture of what's happening (since it no longer includes the 10-day closure I had before updating everything). Spolier tag for current mood and assessment, but it is still subject to change at any time  😁

Spoiler

issok

Ok, so the reality of the situation is that sales did take a hit, but certainly not as much as I feared (the only other seller I know who has done similar, took an 80% hit to sales immediately), and some buyers have continued to purchase through eBay even though I know they are aware of my other platforms (some have purchased from the website / Etsy instead, too).  To be honest, one of the biggest surprises for me is that so far, not one person has queried why postage is "so high", which I was genuinely expecting to get at least a couple times a week. 

Quiet days are much more stark, if you will - in that previously, on a quiet day I might only have 5 - 10 sales, but now there's been a couple of days where I only had 2-3; however busy days are pretty much as normal (i.e. no discernable increase or decrease in quantity of orders, or average order value, however the discount I set up for higher value orders is starting to be utilised a bit more so average order value may start to climb over time - likely thanks to fixing the postage issue from a couple weeks ago, however I still get 1-item orders where postage is higher than the item price, just not dozens of them like I used to on busy days - I'm actually pleased with this result). 

I feel like some context would probably help a bit here, so that the impact has a bit of meaning - current 30-day revenue is sitting at around 25-30% of what I consider my "normal" average, and 50% of the average I achieved during the peak of covid lockdowns etc, but it is still in the multiple thousands ( without getting too divulge-y, that means turnover for the last 30 days was more than 2k, less than 10k 🤣 ).

Both my website and Etsy are slightly down, but interestingly, they're neck and neck for the top spot over the last 30 days (there's like a $150 difference, with Etsy just sneaking ahead) and they are also, funnily enough, right where my normal eBay average was, but I think Etsy is the fairest comparison because A) I have a lot of items on my website that are not available on either eBay or Etsy, and B) postage jumps up to tracked only on the website when package weights reach a set minimum, while Etsy has the same postage set up I had on eBay, except that I also ship internationally there (average order spend, BTW, is significantly higher on the website than the other two). 

Etsy was actually starting to beat eBay a lot of the time in terms of average revenue, so I feel like this trend may have continued to happen whether I introduced the tracked postage on eBay or not, and I am also having some starkly quiet days over there, so patterns are very similar, regardless.

A quick, and preliminary, pros & cons list for doing this - some of these would obviously carry more weight when making a final decision, lol, and a few of these will overlap with other points - I'll probably think of a bunch more as soon as I post this, but the first things that come to mind: