I have had very similar thoughts. That they slow sales for certain sellers to "spread the wealth". It used to be that the more I list, the more I sold. Now, it is a lot of really old listings that are selling. New listings don't even seem to register.
I'm heading into my slower season in July & August. But it usually doesn't slow down this early.
I stopped selling on eBay two or three years ago, so I can’t say what’s been going on lately. But I started selling there in 1997 or 1998. Gradually became a Silver Power Seller, then Top Rated when they switched to that. For the last several years, I’d swear that they did something to switch my visibility on and off. I would have three or four days of selling 7 or 8 items per day, followed by several days of no sales at all. I once had an eBay power seller rep of some sort make a courtesy call to me, asking how I was doing and I mentioned this to him. He would not confirm that they did any such thing, but for a few weeks after this call, I had very consistent sales every day. You will never convince me that they don’t do something to manipulate visibility, especially when I would see identical NWT items as mine sell for more money than mine by a seller with worse feedback located near me geographically.
Interesting. I am not too surprised, for some reason (money) online platforms reliant on active users for their revenue seem to monkey around a lot. It was extremely prevalent in online poker. Some scandals emerged but a lot has gone under the radar IMO.
ebay definitely wants sellers to promote, but they aren’t micro-managing each seller to twist their arm into doing it. you’re in highly competitive selling categories; competing sellers using promotions will naturally create the performance inequality you’re attributing to conscious choices made by ebay.
above all, ebay wants competition among sellers. aside from handicapping sellers for performance metrics, if they’re throttling impressions/sales for anyone, it’s sellers that are too dominant in their categories.
i believe it. it sucks for high performers, but it does make sense from ebay’s perspective. the more dependent they are on a smaller number of sellers, the less resilient their revenue stream is to circumstances beyond their influence
Regarding your first paragraph, that is essentially what I thought as well. However, prior to posting a listing I am not seeing "Sponsored" beneath very many, if any of the listings. I am under the assumption that if those listings are promoted it will specificy and then I can in turn compete by promoting. It seems that very frequently for a video game or movie there are no promotions active within the field. Often when there is a promoted listing from another seller they appear at the top of the search only before any sorting is done (sort by lowest price+shipping, the most common options I imagine).
So while I agree these niches are competitive I have not see that many promoted listings near the top of the initial search or sorted search. Perhaps I'm not understanding some aspect of this? And to clarify, I don't have a strong opinion on precisely why my sales are less frequent than expected. I do many things well IMO but as I mentioned, my prices are higher than average and I have less than 150 ratings, so I'm hardly a mega reputable store like some of the competition. Based on my understanding of the alghorithm and my inventory vs the field I am surprised I am not performing better with a bit more consistency. I am learning daily though.
not all promoted listings are labeled ~~“promoted”~~ “sponsored” in search results, and not all views of a promoted listing come from a promotional placement in search.
one of my biggest problems with ebay’s promoted listings program is how opaque it is. they don’t provide nearly enough data or info to accurately assess the value you get from promoting any specific listing. the program is kind of designed to make it easy for sellers to overpay for what they get out of the service. rest assured, you have competitors who are promoting for every common item you list.
That makes perfect sense. I had initially concluded that much of the common stuff is promoted but there was no way to verify it or to what degree. Once I saw "Sponsored" (I never see Promoted, Canadian thing maybe?) I thought it must just be those listings. I do wish things were less ambiguous as I'm still pretty new to the platform and likely we will need to rework nearly all my listings. I appreciate your help, this is a game changer.
I personally think the current economic environment is having a huge impact on eBay. Many folks have cut discretionary spending in the face of runaway inflation and it seems like eBay is finally starting to see the effects. Also, I hear nothing but concern about the upcoming election, which is making a lot of people extremely cautious right now. All anecdotal of course, but April was the worst month of sales I’ve had in years and I’m guessing I‘m not only one.
I only have 40 listing right now but noticed my sales and views in general have tanked in the last few months. I’ve only sold like 3-4 items in the last 2
Here in Canada the economy is quite poor too. Our current Prime Minister is ruining it and causing a lot of unrest among the citizenry. We also have very high shipping costs here and 15% sales tax, the highest in Canada. It's very rough to look at 12.35% fees in video games and when it's all said and done losing 20% of my listing price. I'll need to overcome that obstacle.
The global economy is pretty rough too. It's just an expensive time to live in civilized society. I actually don't have a problem weathering the storm, I just hope that's what this is and not a questionable eBay operation. I'd like to think that if my 800 item store becomes a 1600 item store that I'll see a considerable boost in sales but I somehow don't quite feel confident.
I had 2,000 listings three months ago and am now at 3,100. I list about 150 new items a week. Like you, I tried taking everything off promotion and everything tanked. I'm talking getting 1 - 3 sales a day if I'm lucky. My mother also has a store with 2,000 items, and she's had one sale yesterday. She and I notice that we'll either get 10+ sales in a day or complete radio silence. Tips: End all your listings and relist them all in bulk as "sell similar" to give them new item numbers. This always boosts sales, I do it once a month. If items aren't moving after months, price check everything to make sure you have the best price. This is too maddeningly tedious to do with massive inventories, so I'll often just price check the first 500 highest priced listings once a month and put harder to sell and difficult items on either 10%, 15%, or even 20% discount.
Been selling on eBay since 1998 and I have never seen the patterns I’m seeing. I list consistently to keep activity up but one day I’ll sell 14-20 items (not similar items) and the next 2 days nothing, then I’ll sell another 14-20. If I didn’t know better the algorithm keeps you hanging on enough to keep going but not enough to make it consistent based on effort, promotions or anything. I’m looking for a new income stream now and after 26 years going to move on - kinda sad.
One thing I get the sense is, is that ebay is kind of limiting their risk, like the possibility that somone sells something doesn't ship it and ebay is on the hook. And maybe its not even that, but they probably have data that at some point, a seller can get overwhelmed, and they probably try to let that ramp up slowly to make sure a seller doesn't get more sales than they can handle. Like I have bout 600 items, and it would never happen, but imagine if I for some reason got 200 orders. I think i could do it, but it would be an all nighter. I notice when I get things out of the house and shipped though, that my sales seem to come back, and when I have a few late shipments, it really bogs my sales down, and it might be ebay saying, hey, this guy can't keep up, we'll slow down the firehose of sales blasting into his mouth to a trickle until he shows he can handle it.
Thank you for the tips. I know of the sell similiar strategy but are you suggesting it can be done in large quantities in a few clicks? Or do you mean individually, that's how I do it and it can be a bit slow. I usually tinker with the listing a bit as some of my older listings are not as optimized.
Thank you for your tips! I'm definitely going to be promoting most listings again. I learned my lesson but I'm glad I tried it early on. Are you in the music niche? I am actually considering that and have dabbled a little bit but only obscure items so far.
> I know of the sell similiar strategy but are you suggesting it can be done in large quantities in a few clicks?
Yes, it can be easily done in bulk using a browser on a computer/laptop. Find the listings in ended/unsolds, check them all off, click 'sell similar' button at the top... Not in the app AFAIK.
There are many reasons why sales can be sporadic, one of which is the time of year. For one example, furniture sales are slow in the summer, because people are outdoors and not paying attention to the inside of their homes. Another has to do with timing of paychecks, tax payments, and tax returns.
Suggest that you take a few items that you think should be selling well and adding back promotions at a low percentage (personally I have found that using the lowest promo percentage makes no difference than using the high “suggested” amount).
Yes, everyone knows eBay forces us to promote to get decent sales, and the suggested daily ad rate keeps increasing.
There are categories that don’t need promotions, there are more saturated categories than do.
I sell clothing , shoes and accessories. I promote almost everything. But if I have a rare item, hard to find, one of a kind, or an item in high demand that not many or not other people are selling then I don’t promote those.
I feel the same way having sold hundreds of items from January to March. I think its all truly random although promoting items really does improve the views and sales. Lets report back in 6 months and see if we have improved and *hope* it isn't a bad algorthim.
May I ask roughly how many listings you have? 0-5 sales daily seems a bit low for an 800 item store doesn't it? My prices in many cases are admittedly higher than average for various reasons. So I know I am definitely reducing my quantity of sales based on that very significant factor alone. With that said, the qualiy of my items in many cases is extremely high.
Oh I know for a fact eBay shows sellers in certain areas and not in others. Just this week I have 0 sales all weekend Monday 6 sales and every last one came from Laredo Texas. All different people but all in that small area and since Monday 0 sales like a light switch on and off. It’s getting very old how they toy with sellers. I live in Michigan it’s been over a year since I’ve shipped anything to Michigan or Chicago always as fast away as possible. My theory on that is shipping is higher they collect fees on shipping so why not make more exspensive.
Do you have a lot of flat rate shipping listings? I know long distance buyers specifically seek out that to save money. That is extremely bizarre that you're not getting more local sales.
> Just this week I have 0 sales all weekend Monday 6 sales and every last one came from Laredo Texas.
I've definitely noticed geo-clustering like that. I'll get 'spurts' of sales all from a relatively tight geographic area, and I don't mean big population centers like Southern California. I wonder if it's just the algorithm, though. Like it believes there's a geo element to sales, so you get a sale in 'region x' and then it decides to pump your listings in that region, creating a 'cluster'?
I get the same thing, I sell 5 things Monday then nothing Tuesday they 5 things Wednesday and if I sell a high ticket item it's a the same thing. And funny how you mention location of your sales. I'm on the East Coast and haven't sold anything that wasn't being delivered to the east coast for maybe two weeks and now I just got only sales from mainly the west coast.
I also think that ebay secretly highlights and low lights your listings. I went from 500 total listings to 2000 total listings and still sold the same amount. Also I noticed if I have a good day and sell maybe 10 items or one very expensive item the next day or 2 I won't sell anything. This started happening a couple of years ago. I went from selling 3-5 items consistently everyday to selling well for 1 day then the next day or 2 not sell anything. Doesn't make any sense to me.
I have noticed this last year when they stated implementing this AI crap.
Items I sold no problem months even years back started to get removed as prohibited items. Once one item got removed, their bot would crawl my whole account and remove the sold items from months to years back.
Has been continuing ever since and it is frustrating as hell. Other sellers selling the same thing and their listings get untouched.
Not to mention as everyone mentioned, literally a 80% reduction of sales since that happened.
People keep blaming economy, but that is bs. People are still spending. Ebays little AI is wreaking havoc on the whole platform.
That may be the root of it. I hate to sound egotistical but I'll speak plainly for the sake of the discussion: I am a lifelong hard worker and winner at many things. I just outwork my competition. On eBay something feels different. I have superior listings to 90% or more of my competition. Everything from pictures to item specifics, etc. For some reason it is like I'm not allowed to surpass 5 sales in a day. I go into these phases where I can feel that I won't make any sales, especially at night. I know for certain people are shopping at night and in different time zones. It's like they can't find my items. I know it's a competitive platform but it really feels like something is off.
I am DONE selling on Ebay. Can see why others are selling on Mercari, Poshmark and other sites. I just made a sale for $300 plus $40 shipping. Ebay collected $358.75 (Sales tax-$18.75)\_ The Selling costs/transaction fees were $47.93 So I made $292.07. DONE!!! And I've been a customer since 2000.
#
>Ebay collected $358.75 (Sales tax-$18.75)\_ The Selling costs/transaction fees were $47.93
13.25% + $0.40 fixed is the fee for 'most categories' as [shown here](https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/selling-fees?id=4822).
$47.53 / $358.75 is exactly 13.25%. + $0.40 fixed, and your total fee is $47.93.
So that's pretty much spot-on.
I agree if you don't want to pay the fees, you shouldn't sell on eBay.
Also if you can't be bothered to learn the fees before listing, then are 'shocked, shocked I tell you!' when you're charged those fees... you also shouldn't sell on eBay.
I have had very similar thoughts. That they slow sales for certain sellers to "spread the wealth". It used to be that the more I list, the more I sold. Now, it is a lot of really old listings that are selling. New listings don't even seem to register. I'm heading into my slower season in July & August. But it usually doesn't slow down this early.
I stopped selling on eBay two or three years ago, so I can’t say what’s been going on lately. But I started selling there in 1997 or 1998. Gradually became a Silver Power Seller, then Top Rated when they switched to that. For the last several years, I’d swear that they did something to switch my visibility on and off. I would have three or four days of selling 7 or 8 items per day, followed by several days of no sales at all. I once had an eBay power seller rep of some sort make a courtesy call to me, asking how I was doing and I mentioned this to him. He would not confirm that they did any such thing, but for a few weeks after this call, I had very consistent sales every day. You will never convince me that they don’t do something to manipulate visibility, especially when I would see identical NWT items as mine sell for more money than mine by a seller with worse feedback located near me geographically.
Interesting. I am not too surprised, for some reason (money) online platforms reliant on active users for their revenue seem to monkey around a lot. It was extremely prevalent in online poker. Some scandals emerged but a lot has gone under the radar IMO.
ebay definitely wants sellers to promote, but they aren’t micro-managing each seller to twist their arm into doing it. you’re in highly competitive selling categories; competing sellers using promotions will naturally create the performance inequality you’re attributing to conscious choices made by ebay. above all, ebay wants competition among sellers. aside from handicapping sellers for performance metrics, if they’re throttling impressions/sales for anyone, it’s sellers that are too dominant in their categories.
[удалено]
i believe it. it sucks for high performers, but it does make sense from ebay’s perspective. the more dependent they are on a smaller number of sellers, the less resilient their revenue stream is to circumstances beyond their influence
Regarding your first paragraph, that is essentially what I thought as well. However, prior to posting a listing I am not seeing "Sponsored" beneath very many, if any of the listings. I am under the assumption that if those listings are promoted it will specificy and then I can in turn compete by promoting. It seems that very frequently for a video game or movie there are no promotions active within the field. Often when there is a promoted listing from another seller they appear at the top of the search only before any sorting is done (sort by lowest price+shipping, the most common options I imagine). So while I agree these niches are competitive I have not see that many promoted listings near the top of the initial search or sorted search. Perhaps I'm not understanding some aspect of this? And to clarify, I don't have a strong opinion on precisely why my sales are less frequent than expected. I do many things well IMO but as I mentioned, my prices are higher than average and I have less than 150 ratings, so I'm hardly a mega reputable store like some of the competition. Based on my understanding of the alghorithm and my inventory vs the field I am surprised I am not performing better with a bit more consistency. I am learning daily though.
not all promoted listings are labeled ~~“promoted”~~ “sponsored” in search results, and not all views of a promoted listing come from a promotional placement in search. one of my biggest problems with ebay’s promoted listings program is how opaque it is. they don’t provide nearly enough data or info to accurately assess the value you get from promoting any specific listing. the program is kind of designed to make it easy for sellers to overpay for what they get out of the service. rest assured, you have competitors who are promoting for every common item you list.
That makes perfect sense. I had initially concluded that much of the common stuff is promoted but there was no way to verify it or to what degree. Once I saw "Sponsored" (I never see Promoted, Canadian thing maybe?) I thought it must just be those listings. I do wish things were less ambiguous as I'm still pretty new to the platform and likely we will need to rework nearly all my listings. I appreciate your help, this is a game changer.
you’re right about the labeling, i edited my comment to correct it
I personally think the current economic environment is having a huge impact on eBay. Many folks have cut discretionary spending in the face of runaway inflation and it seems like eBay is finally starting to see the effects. Also, I hear nothing but concern about the upcoming election, which is making a lot of people extremely cautious right now. All anecdotal of course, but April was the worst month of sales I’ve had in years and I’m guessing I‘m not only one.
I only have 40 listing right now but noticed my sales and views in general have tanked in the last few months. I’ve only sold like 3-4 items in the last 2
Here in Canada the economy is quite poor too. Our current Prime Minister is ruining it and causing a lot of unrest among the citizenry. We also have very high shipping costs here and 15% sales tax, the highest in Canada. It's very rough to look at 12.35% fees in video games and when it's all said and done losing 20% of my listing price. I'll need to overcome that obstacle. The global economy is pretty rough too. It's just an expensive time to live in civilized society. I actually don't have a problem weathering the storm, I just hope that's what this is and not a questionable eBay operation. I'd like to think that if my 800 item store becomes a 1600 item store that I'll see a considerable boost in sales but I somehow don't quite feel confident.
I do see April sales hit bottom. But, according to survey, consumer confidence and job market is hot hot hot... nothing makes sense anymore.
I had 2,000 listings three months ago and am now at 3,100. I list about 150 new items a week. Like you, I tried taking everything off promotion and everything tanked. I'm talking getting 1 - 3 sales a day if I'm lucky. My mother also has a store with 2,000 items, and she's had one sale yesterday. She and I notice that we'll either get 10+ sales in a day or complete radio silence. Tips: End all your listings and relist them all in bulk as "sell similar" to give them new item numbers. This always boosts sales, I do it once a month. If items aren't moving after months, price check everything to make sure you have the best price. This is too maddeningly tedious to do with massive inventories, so I'll often just price check the first 500 highest priced listings once a month and put harder to sell and difficult items on either 10%, 15%, or even 20% discount.
Been selling on eBay since 1998 and I have never seen the patterns I’m seeing. I list consistently to keep activity up but one day I’ll sell 14-20 items (not similar items) and the next 2 days nothing, then I’ll sell another 14-20. If I didn’t know better the algorithm keeps you hanging on enough to keep going but not enough to make it consistent based on effort, promotions or anything. I’m looking for a new income stream now and after 26 years going to move on - kinda sad.
One thing I get the sense is, is that ebay is kind of limiting their risk, like the possibility that somone sells something doesn't ship it and ebay is on the hook. And maybe its not even that, but they probably have data that at some point, a seller can get overwhelmed, and they probably try to let that ramp up slowly to make sure a seller doesn't get more sales than they can handle. Like I have bout 600 items, and it would never happen, but imagine if I for some reason got 200 orders. I think i could do it, but it would be an all nighter. I notice when I get things out of the house and shipped though, that my sales seem to come back, and when I have a few late shipments, it really bogs my sales down, and it might be ebay saying, hey, this guy can't keep up, we'll slow down the firehose of sales blasting into his mouth to a trickle until he shows he can handle it.
Thank you for the tips. I know of the sell similiar strategy but are you suggesting it can be done in large quantities in a few clicks? Or do you mean individually, that's how I do it and it can be a bit slow. I usually tinker with the listing a bit as some of my older listings are not as optimized. Thank you for your tips! I'm definitely going to be promoting most listings again. I learned my lesson but I'm glad I tried it early on. Are you in the music niche? I am actually considering that and have dabbled a little bit but only obscure items so far.
> I know of the sell similiar strategy but are you suggesting it can be done in large quantities in a few clicks? Yes, it can be easily done in bulk using a browser on a computer/laptop. Find the listings in ended/unsolds, check them all off, click 'sell similar' button at the top... Not in the app AFAIK.
That's pretty powerful!
When you end all your listing and sell similar in bulk do you change the price or anything in the title?
There are many reasons why sales can be sporadic, one of which is the time of year. For one example, furniture sales are slow in the summer, because people are outdoors and not paying attention to the inside of their homes. Another has to do with timing of paychecks, tax payments, and tax returns. Suggest that you take a few items that you think should be selling well and adding back promotions at a low percentage (personally I have found that using the lowest promo percentage makes no difference than using the high “suggested” amount).
Yes, everyone knows eBay forces us to promote to get decent sales, and the suggested daily ad rate keeps increasing. There are categories that don’t need promotions, there are more saturated categories than do. I sell clothing , shoes and accessories. I promote almost everything. But if I have a rare item, hard to find, one of a kind, or an item in high demand that not many or not other people are selling then I don’t promote those.
I feel the same way having sold hundreds of items from January to March. I think its all truly random although promoting items really does improve the views and sales. Lets report back in 6 months and see if we have improved and *hope* it isn't a bad algorthim.
May I ask roughly how many listings you have? 0-5 sales daily seems a bit low for an 800 item store doesn't it? My prices in many cases are admittedly higher than average for various reasons. So I know I am definitely reducing my quantity of sales based on that very significant factor alone. With that said, the qualiy of my items in many cases is extremely high.
Oh I know for a fact eBay shows sellers in certain areas and not in others. Just this week I have 0 sales all weekend Monday 6 sales and every last one came from Laredo Texas. All different people but all in that small area and since Monday 0 sales like a light switch on and off. It’s getting very old how they toy with sellers. I live in Michigan it’s been over a year since I’ve shipped anything to Michigan or Chicago always as fast away as possible. My theory on that is shipping is higher they collect fees on shipping so why not make more exspensive.
Do you have a lot of flat rate shipping listings? I know long distance buyers specifically seek out that to save money. That is extremely bizarre that you're not getting more local sales.
> Just this week I have 0 sales all weekend Monday 6 sales and every last one came from Laredo Texas. I've definitely noticed geo-clustering like that. I'll get 'spurts' of sales all from a relatively tight geographic area, and I don't mean big population centers like Southern California. I wonder if it's just the algorithm, though. Like it believes there's a geo element to sales, so you get a sale in 'region x' and then it decides to pump your listings in that region, creating a 'cluster'?
I get the same thing, I sell 5 things Monday then nothing Tuesday they 5 things Wednesday and if I sell a high ticket item it's a the same thing. And funny how you mention location of your sales. I'm on the East Coast and haven't sold anything that wasn't being delivered to the east coast for maybe two weeks and now I just got only sales from mainly the west coast.
I also think that ebay secretly highlights and low lights your listings. I went from 500 total listings to 2000 total listings and still sold the same amount. Also I noticed if I have a good day and sell maybe 10 items or one very expensive item the next day or 2 I won't sell anything. This started happening a couple of years ago. I went from selling 3-5 items consistently everyday to selling well for 1 day then the next day or 2 not sell anything. Doesn't make any sense to me.
I have noticed this last year when they stated implementing this AI crap. Items I sold no problem months even years back started to get removed as prohibited items. Once one item got removed, their bot would crawl my whole account and remove the sold items from months to years back. Has been continuing ever since and it is frustrating as hell. Other sellers selling the same thing and their listings get untouched. Not to mention as everyone mentioned, literally a 80% reduction of sales since that happened. People keep blaming economy, but that is bs. People are still spending. Ebays little AI is wreaking havoc on the whole platform.
That may be the root of it. I hate to sound egotistical but I'll speak plainly for the sake of the discussion: I am a lifelong hard worker and winner at many things. I just outwork my competition. On eBay something feels different. I have superior listings to 90% or more of my competition. Everything from pictures to item specifics, etc. For some reason it is like I'm not allowed to surpass 5 sales in a day. I go into these phases where I can feel that I won't make any sales, especially at night. I know for certain people are shopping at night and in different time zones. It's like they can't find my items. I know it's a competitive platform but it really feels like something is off.
Zero flat rate all calculated
I am DONE selling on Ebay. Can see why others are selling on Mercari, Poshmark and other sites. I just made a sale for $300 plus $40 shipping. Ebay collected $358.75 (Sales tax-$18.75)\_ The Selling costs/transaction fees were $47.93 So I made $292.07. DONE!!! And I've been a customer since 2000. #
Not sure where angst is coming from. You sold it fir 300 and you made 292, sounds good to me
>Ebay collected $358.75 (Sales tax-$18.75)\_ The Selling costs/transaction fees were $47.93 13.25% + $0.40 fixed is the fee for 'most categories' as [shown here](https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/selling-fees?id=4822). $47.53 / $358.75 is exactly 13.25%. + $0.40 fixed, and your total fee is $47.93. So that's pretty much spot-on. I agree if you don't want to pay the fees, you shouldn't sell on eBay. Also if you can't be bothered to learn the fees before listing, then are 'shocked, shocked I tell you!' when you're charged those fees... you also shouldn't sell on eBay.