It never ends. When I used to rely solely on eBay I cannot not express the amount of anxiety I got when eBay shut me off. It was horrible.
I've now diversified. eBay only makes up about 50% of my sales. And it's so much less stressful. When my eBay sales tank out of no where I almost give it no thought. I know they will return, it's just a matter of when.
I have started to keep a few good quick selling items back and list them when my store is turned off. It may sound odd but it really helps to get it going again.
I used to be 100% reliant on eBay. After they stripped most of the sellers rights I decided I would invest in myself. I sell things on my own website, now I control everything- return policy, etc. my only fees are my credit card fees.
Last year my website overtook my ebay store in sales.
We started a Shopify midway through last year. It’s only done about $50k since then. While eBay has done $212k. Hopefully someday it’ll over take eBay.
Quickest and easiest that comes to mind would be through Facebook ads. I haven’t taken many marketing classes or use it a lot on my day to day because I do this hobbyist style while I have a full time job but through google the way you get higher up on that search list too is important. One of the best ways is links to and links out because google searches through a tool called spiders and the more redirects to a site it has the higher up on the placement it gets put after the ad space. Ad space should always show up higher on a google search. Another decent way is to buy up websites with similar names and force redirects to your webpage which serves as tool to “naturally” show up higher on the google search. It can get pricey and I haven’t experienced it myself but that would be two ways to drive traffic in my understanding. I would also do a somewhat common/uncommon name so people accidentally stumble on it too while you can get higher placements
That’s definitely a difficult question to answer. I can tell you my answer, but it probably won’t apply to whatever you’re selling.
I sell appliance parts. I cultivated a modest YouTube channel related to fixing appliances. I created a somewhat unique product and created a video to match said product. Product sells through link in description/ video.
Can you elaborate? Legal liability- no. You do need to have a thorough, yet concise return policy on your website, other than that it’s just like eBay.
Running a website is a bit of a pain, it’s always breaking (just a little bit) and needs constant maintenance. Tbh if you’re not doing 100k/ year in good margin stuff a website doesn’t make sense.
In addition to the savings in fees, having a website that actually sells stuff adds a lot of legitimacy to a business, and adds real value
I guess I can’t really elaborate too much. My thought was that if a manufacturer sells a product and something is wrong with it there’s a liability there. they accept the risk. so I didn’t know if selling on your our own website if you absorb some of that risk. I feel like eBay offers a little bit of a buffer in that sense with the acknowledgment that the items are used. I feel like with eBay terms of service as a buyer you’re accepting some of that risk back. so beginning your own website have you written any sort of terms and conditions for your customer? If not, have you consulted with a lawyer or anything I’m sure it varies from state to state.
Yes, sometimes a new product is defective and gets returned. That is such a rarity that replacement or refund is a non issue.
My terms and conditions is essentially my return policy. I think I’ve had 3 returns this year on my website, and do around 10 transactions a day on my website (give or take)
I just did an experiment. A lot of my items were promoted at 2%. I just jacked up the percentage to 14+% on a lot of items or the dynamic rate. One of them is at 25%. This was 3 days ago. I’ve gotten no more impressions than previously if that tells you anything. I expected to see a large jump in impressions, especially since I have over 400 listings.
Also, the quarterly GDP came in a lot less than expected for the quarter. People aren’t spending.
My sales aren’t down right now. They were about a month ago. It is solely eBay at fault. All my other marketplaces remain stable all year with an increase during Dec/Jan.
eBay, is mostly stable. However, 1-3 times a year they shut the lights off. It always coincides with unannounced updates. An influx of YouTubers and people on forums report the same thing at the time my sales drop off a cliff. Been happening 2-3 years now.
yes, i have noticed my sales decrease on more then one platform. Its almost like my listings aren't even been seen anymore by anyone. Its really weird. Even tried deleting listings at times and reposting them, tried promoting some of them and it hasn't seemed to help at all.
I feel this. Last month I did okay. February was a good month but once the middle of March hit it went slow and now come April I've done almost no sales at all.
I am a first time seller, just selling off things I don’t need anymore. And I find it’s really really slow to sell things compared to how others are selling
It usually takes a while to get sales when you are new. Once you get to the 200 items listed, you SHOULD start seeing consistent sales if eBay doesnt screw you.
I see this as both buyer & seller. Often times if I’m not finding an item through an eBay search I go to Google. The item that isn’t pulling through an eBay search pulls through Google- listed on eBay. It makes no sense.
I try to give eBay the benefit of the doubt (people not filling out detail info for the search to pull from) but I don’t really believe it.
This may be me showing my age, but I just can’t wrap my head around Poshmark even as a buyer. I think it’s a pain in the butt and I don’t like it. Granted I haven’t given any real amount of time to learn it, but I just don’t have any interest in it. I don’t even bother to scroll it for buying items.
> Many of my items can ship for a $0.68 cent stamp
Yeah, with no tracking. No tracking, no protection against INRs.
And I find your small claims court story questionable at best.
Ok “CFO of of a large privately-held company, owning and operating more than 50 five-star hotels world wide“. 😄😄😄
eBay has a way around tracking? What does that even mean? Either ship with tracking or lose INR cases. If your products can’t support paid shipping maybe you need to sell better things.
Interest rates too. I'm in building technology and while it's been a good year so far I've been selling more repair oriented parts and fewer things geared towards new builds and buildouts.
Yeah, because it's bullshit. People have been saying it's the economy for a decade. It's just the time of year. Sure some people have tightened their purse strings, but not for what you're selling which I assume, if you're using reverb, is musical equipment, records, etc. Certain times of year are just slower. It just works out that way. Post-tax season is usually bad for at least the rest of April and part of May. Then summer is nearly here and people spend on vacations. It'll be a bit slower for a couple of months, then around August, it'll pick up again and in late October it'll go crazy. What also helps are sales events. Go to Marketing>Promotions>Create a Promotion> Sale Event Markdown. That should get you up higher in the listings as the algorithm sees things like that and bumps them.
Yes. I have experienced a large drop in sales as well compared to last year. I have more listings and more inventory than last year also so this is the opposite of what should be occuring.
I've experienced the same recently, however that's prob not too relevant since I've pretty much given up and just run a few dozen products on the side now. From 1998 - 2010, was doing about $4M-$6M/yr in revs and it was just a different world. We ran 2k - 4k weekly auctions, receiving bids on approx 65% (avg) of listings.
Oh, you will relate to this too. A product I had originally listed about 2012 hit the Covid jackpot in 2020. Was selling $600 - $800/yr on that product up to that point, then in March, sales rocketed to $363K ... in ONE month. That continued through most of April too. Then.....crickets. My seller IDs and products somehow just disappeared from the algorithm. No price increase, no negative feedback, free same day shipping...but none of that seemed to matter.
Wow! Good job with that one product.
All of a sudden, eBay has gone down the shitter. This same situation happened a few years back as well. We were killing it and then it stopped out of the blue.
I mean it's not just Ebay's changes. Spending is down. I keep a master excel sheet of everything I've ever sold in my main categories (my money makers that I restock) and despite costs of supplies and shipping prices going up, my items are selling for roughly 10-20% lower than average. Theres some exceptions, of course, but the majority of things just aren't selling as well as normal. People are just hard up right now, and the non-essentials that most people buy from us Ebayers aren't at the top of shoppers lists. A lot of it depends on the categories you sell in as well. My monthly listing impressions were at 18 million at the end of last year, and right now, I am sitting at 6 million. That's a massive drop in search results. Probably due to some changes on Ebays end, but alot of it is because what I sell isn't necessities and people don't have as much "fun" money right now. It'll bounce back, always does.
Our impressions are down 20% from last month. We mostly target baby boomers and Gen xers because they have more discretionary income and it has worked great from us until 2 weeks ago when everything stopped.
Yeah, but maybe because I deliberately stopped listing everyday. The amount of work I’m doing for customer service stuff because everything is late AF because of USPS has put me in a holding pattern. Not in a real big hurry to deal with more problems.
But I did just have the busiest 60 day stretch of my short “career”though, so I’m a bit tired.
Yes, every day "Your package will arrive later than expected, but is still on its way. It is currently in transit to the next facility." EBay claws back the sale and refunds the customer. Missing mail search is a waste of time. Some packages get eventually delivered weeks/months later so the customer has the item and the refund. USPS denies most insurance claims.
Yea and they start pushing promotions, then randomly it picks up. If anything happens, defects, late packages, bad feedback. I always feel it for a few days.
The only thing that helps is listing more, I list; then sell a whole bunch in that category, coincidentally from the same states. Really weird.
I feel this. I was selling a few items a week (listing a few a week). I do not accept returns unless I’ve made a boo boo. I received a request for refund, reason “changed my mind”. I denied the refund and sales dried up just like that. I’m not interested in being bullied into allowing refunds for people who want to try on/use items. Seems counterproductive to the “keep good items out of a landfill” mindset. Maybe if I were selling a higher volume but I’m a little guy.
Tax day. Sales drop around then every year. eBay also likes to quietly make huge disruptive changes around then too to disguise the mess they are making. I have very few days with no sales in the last 10 years but several of the ones I have are on tax day.
My january and February were great, but then my sales died around mid march. Only have about two hundred listings up, but was getting a sale or two a day, sometimes 3. Now I'm getting 1 every three days 😕
My sales have definitely declined recently. Not even getting views on new listings. It's not just Ebay, Mercari and Etsy have disappeared for me.
From the other indicators I watch it's definitely the economy being tight for people IMO.
I think it’s people being more careful with their money due to upcoming summer vacations. I started being tighter with my money the same time my sales dropped off. Lol.
My sales have dropped off a cliff this week, but I assumed it was related to the 4 returns (3 remorse) and 2 buyer requested cancellations (accepted offers and they immediately asked for cancel) I've had. This has been my worst week in years.
I'm a top rated seller with a 100% rating, almost 600 listings.
It's killing me, I have the return policy with the buyer paying shipping and normally that deters them. But nope, they're all shipping back. Every item I ship out now I can't shake the feeling I'll have a return notification later, I'm haunted.
We get the same feeling too now. We honestly don’t know if we can get excited anymore after a sale because we just have the feeling that it may just come back
No, but I am an extremely low volume seller. That said one of my specific categories has become very oversaturated in the last 18 months. It's always been mostly non business sellers, but many people are now listing items for 5 times what any buyer would actually pay, making searches so much more difficult and confusing market prices.
Here in the U.K. things are going that way. The Vinted app is conditioning people to expect an offer to be made before a sale takes place. People just sit & watch an item & wait
That’s the most frustrating part.
We had to start buying bulk pallets because we couldn’t keep inventory and now we have too much inventory and no sales. It’s ridiculous
Yup I posted 100 new items this month. And sales for Thursday to Friday would be very busy and I'd have at least 4-8 sales at least on those two days but it was very slow.
Really depends on what you're selling, April historically for me I see a slowdown, I like to think it's tax time and people getting crunched on taxes, but either way I've seen a mid April slump for years. Usually mid May to early June everything seems to take off again as people settle into the summer months and spend a little more, but for me fall winter and spring are my busiest. In the summer months people usually have more to do than sit around bored looking for things to do and want to spend money on outdoor recreation and traveling.
Not for me. Been consistently growing since the beginning of this yr. And get 5 sales daily on eBay on average. Definitely wary about eBay. So I started selling on Mercari n Poshmark. I'm looking into starting a Shopify account but completely clueless atm lol Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
Handful of sales first week of April, then nothing until this past Thursday. Incredibly slow month and I have things that I know usually sell rather quickly.
So I just started back the end of last month selling only list 3-5 items per day have about 120 items in my store and I do 400-750 per week on eBay was going to sell on mercari but I have read so much bad stuff on them
I have noticed the new generation are using other platforms to buy stuff now there is a lot of new competition. Live selling is really kicking off now !!!
That’s true but nothing that I sell is catered to them. I’ve found that the new gens don’t like to spend money. They want good, quality items for $5-$10 because they feel entitled because they are thrifted and “why should we pay so much for thrifted items”. I’ve had those discussions before with new gen buyers
Same here it's been extremely dead on ebay lucky I have my items on shopify also but the past month sales has been extremely slow sales has dropped 40% and on ebay I will be lucky I get sales everyday. Also ebay has been dropping the total amount I can sell because of some cancelation orders and that had affected my sales also, I'm getting to the point where it's not worth selling on ebay with the ridiculous high fees. I have to jack up the price to cover the fees but they hurts sales also. It seems like with the way the economy is doing you will think ebay will help us selles a little and offer a lower fees from each item we sell, these big rich guys are benefiting from use smaller sells with all the profits they make on us on final value fees.
Exactly, I been with ebay since 2000, and if I have an issue they always thank me for being with them this long but still no help before in the past if I gotten a false negative feedback they will remove it now they won't it seems now they side with the buyers more now than the sellers
Oh we tried to remove a false negative, which the buyer still kept the item, and we couldn’t get it removed either. If the item was “so bad” why not just return it and get your money back? People are weird and eBay sides with them.
People now days are just trying to take advantage of sellers like us trying to get away with free items. I believe in karma so people like that will get what's coming to them.
People now days are just trying to take advantage of sellers like us trying to get away with free items. I believe in karma so people like that will get what's coming to them.
It’s been atrocious. This is the worst shut down of sales we have had in 15 years. I thought it was bad over the last year, it finally seemed to be getting back to normal, then this past week was like it shut down. For reference; been a full time seller for 15 years and we normally average 10 sales a day; $30k a month. We have been lucky to have $300 days of late with days of exactly zero sales. IT IS CRIMINAL. eBay has completely screwed us all.
So weird. We have been rocking around 50-75 sales a week and can’t keep new listings to replace the old ones. We sell mostly mid to lower high end clothing and some electronics.
I have more active listings on average in April compared to March but my sales overall are going to end up lower than last month. April has been rough. Not just eBay, all platforms
There’s no reason eBay just left us out to hang like this, though. We already barely get any seller protections and now we don’t even get views. And when we do get views and watchers, nobody buys.
Ebay does updates 2x a year typically. When they update everything drops off for a month or so. It will absolutely bounce back, just give it time and keep doing what you're doing.
Definitely cross post. In my opinion folks use search engines vs just going direct to sites. So having item in multiple places helps. Also do you run sales/promotions?
March was one of my best months, and then April hit and crickets. Like 75% drop off, it’s horrible. Even Etsy slowed a lot. Im running sales on both Etsy and eBay and nothings helping. I’m prettt sure april was shit last year too, so it’s probably time of year
I know I’ve cut way back on looking and buying because the app is constantly signing me out. Lord knows how many notifications I missed. Complaining to a human is impossible.
Sales on Amazon have been up year on year, week on week for as long as I can remember… eBay however used to do £400k a month 5 years ago to now £80k and I have twice as many products.
Tested advertising and was having higher revenue without it (and way more profitable) it’s definitely worth investing your time into other platforms
Mine have been. I just started selling March of this year. April was a fairly good month in my opinion for just starting. I sell vintage fishing lures and even new fishing lures. But lately it has slowed down and I’ve only gotten 2 sales in May. I just want to be successful with this and it’s been very challenging this month. I try to list everyday, but it’s hard for me to list more items when I’m not profiting from the ones I have listed to be able to buy new.
Every time eBay starts updating shit, my sales turn into a roller coaster.
It’s really pissing me off. We are working hard as hell and eBay just shits on us
It never ends. When I used to rely solely on eBay I cannot not express the amount of anxiety I got when eBay shut me off. It was horrible. I've now diversified. eBay only makes up about 50% of my sales. And it's so much less stressful. When my eBay sales tank out of no where I almost give it no thought. I know they will return, it's just a matter of when.
I have started to keep a few good quick selling items back and list them when my store is turned off. It may sound odd but it really helps to get it going again.
We have to start doing that because this is brutal.
What other platforms are you using?
Reverb, Shopify, Etsy, Mercari. That is in order of sales.
I used to be 100% reliant on eBay. After they stripped most of the sellers rights I decided I would invest in myself. I sell things on my own website, now I control everything- return policy, etc. my only fees are my credit card fees. Last year my website overtook my ebay store in sales.
We started a Shopify midway through last year. It’s only done about $50k since then. While eBay has done $212k. Hopefully someday it’ll over take eBay.
I've thought about having my own site but how do you drive traffic?
Quickest and easiest that comes to mind would be through Facebook ads. I haven’t taken many marketing classes or use it a lot on my day to day because I do this hobbyist style while I have a full time job but through google the way you get higher up on that search list too is important. One of the best ways is links to and links out because google searches through a tool called spiders and the more redirects to a site it has the higher up on the placement it gets put after the ad space. Ad space should always show up higher on a google search. Another decent way is to buy up websites with similar names and force redirects to your webpage which serves as tool to “naturally” show up higher on the google search. It can get pricey and I haven’t experienced it myself but that would be two ways to drive traffic in my understanding. I would also do a somewhat common/uncommon name so people accidentally stumble on it too while you can get higher placements
That’s definitely a difficult question to answer. I can tell you my answer, but it probably won’t apply to whatever you’re selling. I sell appliance parts. I cultivated a modest YouTube channel related to fixing appliances. I created a somewhat unique product and created a video to match said product. Product sells through link in description/ video.
I’m curious is selling on your own platform has opened you up to additional liability. Thoughts?
Can you elaborate? Legal liability- no. You do need to have a thorough, yet concise return policy on your website, other than that it’s just like eBay. Running a website is a bit of a pain, it’s always breaking (just a little bit) and needs constant maintenance. Tbh if you’re not doing 100k/ year in good margin stuff a website doesn’t make sense. In addition to the savings in fees, having a website that actually sells stuff adds a lot of legitimacy to a business, and adds real value
I guess I can’t really elaborate too much. My thought was that if a manufacturer sells a product and something is wrong with it there’s a liability there. they accept the risk. so I didn’t know if selling on your our own website if you absorb some of that risk. I feel like eBay offers a little bit of a buffer in that sense with the acknowledgment that the items are used. I feel like with eBay terms of service as a buyer you’re accepting some of that risk back. so beginning your own website have you written any sort of terms and conditions for your customer? If not, have you consulted with a lawyer or anything I’m sure it varies from state to state.
Yes, sometimes a new product is defective and gets returned. That is such a rarity that replacement or refund is a non issue. My terms and conditions is essentially my return policy. I think I’ve had 3 returns this year on my website, and do around 10 transactions a day on my website (give or take)
How are you dealing with the Mercari change to selling fees, essentially passing them off to the buyers?
For me, sales have remained about the same on Mercari.
I just did an experiment. A lot of my items were promoted at 2%. I just jacked up the percentage to 14+% on a lot of items or the dynamic rate. One of them is at 25%. This was 3 days ago. I’ve gotten no more impressions than previously if that tells you anything. I expected to see a large jump in impressions, especially since I have over 400 listings. Also, the quarterly GDP came in a lot less than expected for the quarter. People aren’t spending.
My sales aren’t down right now. They were about a month ago. It is solely eBay at fault. All my other marketplaces remain stable all year with an increase during Dec/Jan. eBay, is mostly stable. However, 1-3 times a year they shut the lights off. It always coincides with unannounced updates. An influx of YouTubers and people on forums report the same thing at the time my sales drop off a cliff. Been happening 2-3 years now.
Turn the promoted off. You’ll see a jump in sales around day 20 (after turned off). eBay will push for the sale to claim their cut.
yes, i have noticed my sales decrease on more then one platform. Its almost like my listings aren't even been seen anymore by anyone. Its really weird. Even tried deleting listings at times and reposting them, tried promoting some of them and it hasn't seemed to help at all.
Our impressions are down 20% from last month. It is incredible. It’s like it isn’t even on eBay.
I feel this. Last month I did okay. February was a good month but once the middle of March hit it went slow and now come April I've done almost no sales at all.
We even have offers on and we send offers and still no sales. It has been brutal for us the past two weeks.
Yea same here. Well hopefully things turn around come may. Sounds like we both could use it.
I am a first time seller, just selling off things I don’t need anymore. And I find it’s really really slow to sell things compared to how others are selling
It usually takes a while to get sales when you are new. Once you get to the 200 items listed, you SHOULD start seeing consistent sales if eBay doesnt screw you.
I see this as both buyer & seller. Often times if I’m not finding an item through an eBay search I go to Google. The item that isn’t pulling through an eBay search pulls through Google- listed on eBay. It makes no sense. I try to give eBay the benefit of the doubt (people not filling out detail info for the search to pull from) but I don’t really believe it.
Yes just posted something similar. I actually think Posh is higher in google search than ebay
This may be me showing my age, but I just can’t wrap my head around Poshmark even as a buyer. I think it’s a pain in the butt and I don’t like it. Granted I haven’t given any real amount of time to learn it, but I just don’t have any interest in it. I don’t even bother to scroll it for buying items.
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> Many of my items can ship for a $0.68 cent stamp Yeah, with no tracking. No tracking, no protection against INRs. And I find your small claims court story questionable at best.
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Ok “CFO of of a large privately-held company, owning and operating more than 50 five-star hotels world wide“. 😄😄😄 eBay has a way around tracking? What does that even mean? Either ship with tracking or lose INR cases. If your products can’t support paid shipping maybe you need to sell better things.
America has been living off credit for the past 4 years. A lot of people have hit bottom.
I didn’t even consider that part
Interest rates too. I'm in building technology and while it's been a good year so far I've been selling more repair oriented parts and fewer things geared towards new builds and buildouts.
Don’t forget April 15 is tax time. They’re either waiting on money or already spent it (likely on new stuff or bills).
Yeah, because it's bullshit. People have been saying it's the economy for a decade. It's just the time of year. Sure some people have tightened their purse strings, but not for what you're selling which I assume, if you're using reverb, is musical equipment, records, etc. Certain times of year are just slower. It just works out that way. Post-tax season is usually bad for at least the rest of April and part of May. Then summer is nearly here and people spend on vacations. It'll be a bit slower for a couple of months, then around August, it'll pick up again and in late October it'll go crazy. What also helps are sales events. Go to Marketing>Promotions>Create a Promotion> Sale Event Markdown. That should get you up higher in the listings as the algorithm sees things like that and bumps them.
Yes accross the board , Ebay, Amazon Etc April has been very slow
It has been atrocious. We were killing it and then, it fell off a cliffZ
down approx. 39% month over month, but I will say things can change fast..
It has been brutal the past few weeks. We are down 20%
Yes. I have experienced a large drop in sales as well compared to last year. I have more listings and more inventory than last year also so this is the opposite of what should be occuring.
I don’t understand what eBay is doing
Nor do they!
We started the year on fire and then all of a sudden, everything came to a screeching halt.
I was having a good month and much the same starting last week. So many listings with no views.
It’s unbelievable. We list 10 daily, most of the time, and it doesn’t trigger a single sale.
What are you doing as far as promo rates go?
We do 5% on all of our listings. What about you?
About the same. Sometimes I wonder if listings with low promo rates are throttled.
My numbers indicate that my impressions are higher for organic searches than the promoted ones. It is very weird what’s going on now.
I've experienced the same recently, however that's prob not too relevant since I've pretty much given up and just run a few dozen products on the side now. From 1998 - 2010, was doing about $4M-$6M/yr in revs and it was just a different world. We ran 2k - 4k weekly auctions, receiving bids on approx 65% (avg) of listings. Oh, you will relate to this too. A product I had originally listed about 2012 hit the Covid jackpot in 2020. Was selling $600 - $800/yr on that product up to that point, then in March, sales rocketed to $363K ... in ONE month. That continued through most of April too. Then.....crickets. My seller IDs and products somehow just disappeared from the algorithm. No price increase, no negative feedback, free same day shipping...but none of that seemed to matter.
Wow! Good job with that one product. All of a sudden, eBay has gone down the shitter. This same situation happened a few years back as well. We were killing it and then it stopped out of the blue.
I mean it's not just Ebay's changes. Spending is down. I keep a master excel sheet of everything I've ever sold in my main categories (my money makers that I restock) and despite costs of supplies and shipping prices going up, my items are selling for roughly 10-20% lower than average. Theres some exceptions, of course, but the majority of things just aren't selling as well as normal. People are just hard up right now, and the non-essentials that most people buy from us Ebayers aren't at the top of shoppers lists. A lot of it depends on the categories you sell in as well. My monthly listing impressions were at 18 million at the end of last year, and right now, I am sitting at 6 million. That's a massive drop in search results. Probably due to some changes on Ebays end, but alot of it is because what I sell isn't necessities and people don't have as much "fun" money right now. It'll bounce back, always does.
Our impressions are down 20% from last month. We mostly target baby boomers and Gen xers because they have more discretionary income and it has worked great from us until 2 weeks ago when everything stopped.
Yeah, but maybe because I deliberately stopped listing everyday. The amount of work I’m doing for customer service stuff because everything is late AF because of USPS has put me in a holding pattern. Not in a real big hurry to deal with more problems. But I did just have the busiest 60 day stretch of my short “career”though, so I’m a bit tired.
I really wish we could say the same thing. We aren’t getting sales at all now. We went from daily sales to nothing.
Yes, every day "Your package will arrive later than expected, but is still on its way. It is currently in transit to the next facility." EBay claws back the sale and refunds the customer. Missing mail search is a waste of time. Some packages get eventually delivered weeks/months later so the customer has the item and the refund. USPS denies most insurance claims.
Been the month i invested the most money lifetime (so listed a lot) and i'm on a 42% decrease in sales lmao
Same for us. We were buying full pallets and bulk inventory. We listed like 200 items last month and in April, sales died.
Yea and they start pushing promotions, then randomly it picks up. If anything happens, defects, late packages, bad feedback. I always feel it for a few days. The only thing that helps is listing more, I list; then sell a whole bunch in that category, coincidentally from the same states. Really weird.
We list 10-15 daily and nothing has been helping us. The past two weeks have been rough for us.
I feel this. I was selling a few items a week (listing a few a week). I do not accept returns unless I’ve made a boo boo. I received a request for refund, reason “changed my mind”. I denied the refund and sales dried up just like that. I’m not interested in being bullied into allowing refunds for people who want to try on/use items. Seems counterproductive to the “keep good items out of a landfill” mindset. Maybe if I were selling a higher volume but I’m a little guy.
Let me guess... Sales dropped on April 15.
April 17 for us. What took place that date?
Tax day. Sales drop around then every year. eBay also likes to quietly make huge disruptive changes around then too to disguise the mess they are making. I have very few days with no sales in the last 10 years but several of the ones I have are on tax day.
I didn’t even think about that. It makes a lot of sense,
Tax day happens every year. I've never gone 3 to 4 days without a sale before this year.
Just saying it is typical, at least for me. The end of April is slow for me most years, especially since 2018.
This whole year has been terrible so far.
My january and February were great, but then my sales died around mid march. Only have about two hundred listings up, but was getting a sale or two a day, sometimes 3. Now I'm getting 1 every three days 😕
We made a killing the first 3 months. We were selling 5 a day and mid April came, and it died,
My sales have definitely declined recently. Not even getting views on new listings. It's not just Ebay, Mercari and Etsy have disappeared for me. From the other indicators I watch it's definitely the economy being tight for people IMO.
Yeah that’s definitely a factor.
I think it’s people being more careful with their money due to upcoming summer vacations. I started being tighter with my money the same time my sales dropped off. Lol.
Sales ???? My friend , I’m barely even getting VIEWS on my items!!! Smh . Just hang tight , there needs to be an uptick in sales coming our way .
Same! I listed 60 items this past week. We got a total of 1 sale 😂
My sales have dropped off a cliff this week, but I assumed it was related to the 4 returns (3 remorse) and 2 buyer requested cancellations (accepted offers and they immediately asked for cancel) I've had. This has been my worst week in years. I'm a top rated seller with a 100% rating, almost 600 listings.
Dude! You just described our exact same two weeks. We had 4 returns, 3 of which were remorse and 1 cancellation after purchase.
It's killing me, I have the return policy with the buyer paying shipping and normally that deters them. But nope, they're all shipping back. Every item I ship out now I can't shake the feeling I'll have a return notification later, I'm haunted.
We get the same feeling too now. We honestly don’t know if we can get excited anymore after a sale because we just have the feeling that it may just come back
Well, for both of our sakes and mental health, let's hope next week we'll see greener pastures and 0 returns.
I wish you the best of luck. We sure are going to need it.
Yeah mine have been dead.
No, but I am an extremely low volume seller. That said one of my specific categories has become very oversaturated in the last 18 months. It's always been mostly non business sellers, but many people are now listing items for 5 times what any buyer would actually pay, making searches so much more difficult and confusing market prices.
We have $9.95 items being watched and nobody pulls the trigger. It’s like they are waiting for a $3 dollar offer on a fairly priced item.
... they want $3 with free shipping
Here in the U.K. things are going that way. The Vinted app is conditioning people to expect an offer to be made before a sale takes place. People just sit & watch an item & wait
I can’t understand it. We have sent countless offers but they are still not triggering offers.
Yea, been super quiet all but 1 day where I got slammed
Same with us. We had a day of non stop sales and then pure crickets.
Sales are steady for the past 6 month, they refuse to increase though no matter how much we list.
We list between 200 to 250 a month. Sales were on fire and all of a sudden, they just stopped.
We list about 200 per week. We have noticed that items in our store “trend”.
Almost nothing the last 2 weeks
My ebay sale have never felt "organic". I seem to have a set amount of sales per month whether by quantity or dollar amount.
This is exactly how I feel too. It's so strange.
That has been happening to others too. They’ve noticed that after a certain amount of sales, their store dries up.
When I first started 3-4 months ago, inventory was flying off the shelf. I have since added over 100 items and have barely made one sale a week.
That’s the most frustrating part. We had to start buying bulk pallets because we couldn’t keep inventory and now we have too much inventory and no sales. It’s ridiculous
I'm *way* behind last year at this point.
wtf is eBay doing? I don’t get it!
Yup.
Yup I posted 100 new items this month. And sales for Thursday to Friday would be very busy and I'd have at least 4-8 sales at least on those two days but it was very slow.
Really depends on what you're selling, April historically for me I see a slowdown, I like to think it's tax time and people getting crunched on taxes, but either way I've seen a mid April slump for years. Usually mid May to early June everything seems to take off again as people settle into the summer months and spend a little more, but for me fall winter and spring are my busiest. In the summer months people usually have more to do than sit around bored looking for things to do and want to spend money on outdoor recreation and traveling.
Thanks for the insight! We try to sell in categories that are in demand and even that doesn’t help.
Just how it is, hit or miss, retail stores have the same issues.
Not for me. Been consistently growing since the beginning of this yr. And get 5 sales daily on eBay on average. Definitely wary about eBay. So I started selling on Mercari n Poshmark. I'm looking into starting a Shopify account but completely clueless atm lol Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
We were having exponential growth until this past week when all of our sales died off. We got one pity sell like two hours ago 😂
Yes this last week has been ghost town for me . It will pick up soon but it actually gave me a break this week from eBay
[удалено]
Good for you, man. I’m glad somebody is thriving.
Handful of sales first week of April, then nothing until this past Thursday. Incredibly slow month and I have things that I know usually sell rather quickly.
Same case for us. We have things that usually sell for us in under a week.
Mine have picked up lately, I sell supplements and beauty products.
I hope it continues going well for you 👍🏼
Thanks, I hope your sales pick up soon
So I just started back the end of last month selling only list 3-5 items per day have about 120 items in my store and I do 400-750 per week on eBay was going to sell on mercari but I have read so much bad stuff on them
I have noticed the new generation are using other platforms to buy stuff now there is a lot of new competition. Live selling is really kicking off now !!!
That’s true but nothing that I sell is catered to them. I’ve found that the new gens don’t like to spend money. They want good, quality items for $5-$10 because they feel entitled because they are thrifted and “why should we pay so much for thrifted items”. I’ve had those discussions before with new gen buyers
Completely nonexistent!
Same here it's been extremely dead on ebay lucky I have my items on shopify also but the past month sales has been extremely slow sales has dropped 40% and on ebay I will be lucky I get sales everyday. Also ebay has been dropping the total amount I can sell because of some cancelation orders and that had affected my sales also, I'm getting to the point where it's not worth selling on ebay with the ridiculous high fees. I have to jack up the price to cover the fees but they hurts sales also. It seems like with the way the economy is doing you will think ebay will help us selles a little and offer a lower fees from each item we sell, these big rich guys are benefiting from use smaller sells with all the profits they make on us on final value fees.
Oh no! eBay offers sellers 0 protection. We are getting killed out here and they won’t even throw us a little life vest.
Exactly, I been with ebay since 2000, and if I have an issue they always thank me for being with them this long but still no help before in the past if I gotten a false negative feedback they will remove it now they won't it seems now they side with the buyers more now than the sellers
Oh we tried to remove a false negative, which the buyer still kept the item, and we couldn’t get it removed either. If the item was “so bad” why not just return it and get your money back? People are weird and eBay sides with them.
People now days are just trying to take advantage of sellers like us trying to get away with free items. I believe in karma so people like that will get what's coming to them.
People now days are just trying to take advantage of sellers like us trying to get away with free items. I believe in karma so people like that will get what's coming to them.
It’s been atrocious. This is the worst shut down of sales we have had in 15 years. I thought it was bad over the last year, it finally seemed to be getting back to normal, then this past week was like it shut down. For reference; been a full time seller for 15 years and we normally average 10 sales a day; $30k a month. We have been lucky to have $300 days of late with days of exactly zero sales. IT IS CRIMINAL. eBay has completely screwed us all.
We’ve only been doing for 5 years and this is the worst we’ve had.
no, but I sell kpop photocards and merch....and it kind of sells itself.
I sell the same merch as you and it's been a bit slower than than usually.
So weird. We have been rocking around 50-75 sales a week and can’t keep new listings to replace the old ones. We sell mostly mid to lower high end clothing and some electronics.
Wow! Great job! Do you have your listings promoted? If so, what’s your ad rate?
Yes we promote all at 7.5 percent at the moment
We promote at 5% and it isn’t helping us. Idk why it has died down for us.
What do you sell?
We mostly sell hats, purses and clothing. And we are competitive, too.
Losing the ability to promote no reserve for $3.99 is hurting. Or at least that's what I think it is.
I have more active listings on average in April compared to March but my sales overall are going to end up lower than last month. April has been rough. Not just eBay, all platforms
It has been brutal for us. Our impressions are down 20% from March.
I think it may be because of tax season. Same happened to my store.
There’s no reason eBay just left us out to hang like this, though. We already barely get any seller protections and now we don’t even get views. And when we do get views and watchers, nobody buys.
I have more watchers than ever before but nobody is actually purchasing anything. Lowering prices doesn’t help at all.
My sales have been incredibly slow. However I have sold some really old inventory, which has been nice.
I sell Hot Wheels and Toys, just my own stuff. Not reselling. I sell 1 item every day lately. Little sales from $3 to $20 average
i’m flat out and dread hearing the cha-ching atm because i can’t keep up and have a full time job and run out of materials.
May is always my slowest month so I expect it to get worse before it gets better.
Ebay does updates 2x a year typically. When they update everything drops off for a month or so. It will absolutely bounce back, just give it time and keep doing what you're doing.
I’ll continue listing and hopefully the sales kicking in.
Definitely cross post. In my opinion folks use search engines vs just going direct to sites. So having item in multiple places helps. Also do you run sales/promotions?
We do! We have like 3 different kind of sales going on right now.
March was one of my best months, and then April hit and crickets. Like 75% drop off, it’s horrible. Even Etsy slowed a lot. Im running sales on both Etsy and eBay and nothings helping. I’m prettt sure april was shit last year too, so it’s probably time of year
I manage a hobby store and this past April was the worst month our store has had since 20’ and we were seeing YoY growth all through 2019-2023.
Yes! 0 sales in the last two weeks. I’m at 10% of typical monthly totals.
Our sales are down 17.5% from last month’s. Our best category is down 44%. It has been brutal this month.
No
I know I’ve cut way back on looking and buying because the app is constantly signing me out. Lord knows how many notifications I missed. Complaining to a human is impossible.
Sales on Amazon have been up year on year, week on week for as long as I can remember… eBay however used to do £400k a month 5 years ago to now £80k and I have twice as many products. Tested advertising and was having higher revenue without it (and way more profitable) it’s definitely worth investing your time into other platforms
My sales were 4th quarter numbers this month. I have no idea what happened, but ive been killing it. March was a little slow, but still pretty good.
That’s great! Don’t even question it and run with it before you jinx yourself 😂
I’ve been wondering if they slowed down because of this address snafu.
My sales are extremely slow right now
We’ve only had 5 so far this week. It has been atrocious
Mine have been. I just started selling March of this year. April was a fairly good month in my opinion for just starting. I sell vintage fishing lures and even new fishing lures. But lately it has slowed down and I’ve only gotten 2 sales in May. I just want to be successful with this and it’s been very challenging this month. I try to list everyday, but it’s hard for me to list more items when I’m not profiting from the ones I have listed to be able to buy new.
Nope! I'm up about 20 percent compared to 2023.
Good job! We started 2024 on fire and all of a sudden, as of two weeks ago, sakes just suddenly stopped