Ebay Sales Completely Dead **November 2024** ‌

[theglo-68]

Hi

We have been selling on ebay for over 10 years. Sales have been down since start of 2024 but its completely dead. Like we look at our stats from July to September and sales figures are less that what we are paying ebay for Promoted listings etc.

Although we have moved our inventory to Amazon and tiktok but wondered what has actually happened to our Ebay. It used to be aweseome but we now cannot even afford to list.  Listings are sat there doing nothing even with promoted listings.

November has been our difficult month so far as with Zero sales i mean come on there got to be something causing this loss. Is it new so called AI.

Please share your findings.🤔🤔

🤔🤔🤔

[Anonymous]

Are you leaving...?

[theelench]

That certainly wasn't my intention, I understand that business sellers have problems as well.

My point was that ebay was happy to change the site to encourage more business sellers to sell here, they were often accused of driving private sellers away.  That may not have been their intent, but I'm sure that little or no thought or regard to how detrimental some of those changes were to private sellers.  Any who complained or raised concerns were told frequently that ebay is a business, it's only duty was increase shareholder value, not look after sellers especially amateurs who made ebay so little money and cluttered the site with mountains of tat.

When have I ever said I expect to sell for free?  I was quite happy paying ebay Listing Fees and FVF and also more fees to paypal then MP  I still pay all of them on ebid happily.

You seek enlightenment??  Do you recall me or any other private sellers demanding Free Listings?   Or Free to Sell ?  Of course not ebay simply announced that these things will happen along with all the other changes,  yet not one of them ever increased my sales or ever enhanced my seller experience.   Rather the reverse until I cannot avoid seeing that unless I pay Promotion Fees to sell my Free to Sell items I won't sell them at all.

Which may give you the answer to your next post.

After two years of selling 13 items p.a, clearly intended to be just enough carrot to keep me listing, this year the screws were tightened and my sales reduced to 4.  

After my last ad., for a real rarity at a price nearly half that of the only other one on ebay which ended with 17 views and a handful of Watching "bargain hunters" but no sale, I've given up wasting my time on a site that hides my ads from buyers.  There is little chance that I'll bother again.

[triple512]

…….and it won’t just be you.

Even the most pro-eBay posters on here seem to be reconsidering their positions for next year (including myself).

HMRC, GPSR & the risk of the UK having its own version will gradually drive people into other ways of earning a living.

Then you have the new wave of new and/or returning private sellers, attracted by the “free to sell” carrot. What will become of those a few months down the line when:

1/ HMRC want to know why they’ve dared to sell 31 items and not filled in a tax return or, most likely; 2/ They realise that no matter what they do to their listings, nobody is seeing them so guess what, they ain’t ever selling, free to list or otherwise!

I’ve said it many times before - something has to change in order to keep a buying/selling community that can function on this platform - Profitable enough for small businesses to stay, successful enough to attract the private buyer/seller too.

Even if eBay could/does revert to how it was when search actually gave you what you wanted and listing something actually got your item visible to millions (well maybe thousands these days!), I think excessive legislation will eventually kill off the concept.

This isn’t new but it’s been one thing after another, all resulting in dwindling sales, reduced profits/income and a very difficult market place to operate within in the future.

[dch2112011]

You have highlighted quite well the difficulties of having a site that blends personal and business sellers - each with different needs and each fighting their corner.

Of course genuine private sellers should benifit from free listings and visible listings - as a private seller if you sell regularly then you will be tempted to spend on ebay and some of that will find it's way into business sellers pockets  - you are unlikely to be competing with business sellers except maybe on a one off item for a brief moment and there are potentialy more than one buyer  for a particular item.

Of course traders using private selling accounts are the scourge for all genuine ebay members - but not for ebay apparently !

[leadhills_scot]

Yes, all items will be ended and my account will go dormant. 

[1956glyn]

I also think that Ebay need to be proactive about making sure their RM tracking updates too on sales.

I have an expensive item that was received over 2 months ago.   On Track and trace it shows delivered with a photo.....on Ebay still in transit 😞

[Anonymous]

Yep, seems like a dying platform. 100% true...

[vintique*violet]

Exactly - and if the system has no delivery notification, then your funds are on hold until the item is shown as delivered. Ridiculous.

[1956glyn]

I must admit we have done really well with sales the past few weeks.   BUT saying that we may not bother to list in the new year due to Ebay constantly moving the goalposts etc .  Everything is just becoming a chore and lots of hassle.

[malmallyn]

They charge to much for very little in return, They are actually driving us away 

[gemini-project]

Sales are down 40% here, all EU will be getting shut off very soon, not that will have much effect.

[adriaaylin0]

I don't know how Ebay are going to make any money without business sellers, unless they are banking on personal sellers paying for promoted listings?. Ebay really need to do something for business sellers. The money you pay to list your item as a business should automatically become a promoted listing.

[1956glyn]

In Ebays head this is what i think they are thinking......misguidedly

Bring in the payment wallet and everyone will spend their funds on Ebay especially from Business Sellers

I indeed know how to withdraw funds back to my bank but even reading these boards.......others do not.

Again are Ebay not making it user friendly/that obvious  in the hope members will not withdraw and spend the funds on the site?    Everytime i look at an item Ebay are pushing me to buy it with the funds in my wallet. 

Ebay again are thinking that if they can get loads of new members listing on the site through tv advertising (which isnt cheap) etc then these new members will again buy on the site....hopefully from Businesses.    Great  until a new member realises the site is not a quick way for them to make a few pounds due to payment holds etc.    Some may well even give up trying to register on the site due to the complexity.  

Business sellers should be given some kind of reduction in fees in addition to occasional promotions.

I know Ebay have to compete with other free selling sites BUT saying that i think they have gone too far in favour of private members and this is at the detriment of business sellers.    I think private sellers should still pay a small amount in fees when they list/sell.   As i have said so many times......IF you are paying fees then you are actually selling on the site.

I never asked for something for nothing and that also applies to my real life 🙂

[1956glyn]

Just to add as a private seller who has tried Promoted listing just twice..............they make zero difference to sales so i will never promote my listings.

[blues-bandit]

So this is what happened to me recently: I am a business seller, not happy, I feel robbed, and I am no longer making any effort with my shop; eBay can go blow...

On the private seller side, I have a private account for none business-related items. I sold my guitar amp back on Nov 25th, and they are still holding my funds until Dec 10th, despite the tracking confirming delivery. A real cheek! So this thought came to mind.

By letting private sellers sell for free, they attract new sellers off loading stuff, like eBay used to do, but they are holding funds for 2-3 weeks. Can you imagine the millions that they accumulate in undisbursed funds over that period? Thus the eBay balance sheet looks great and they have a cash boost.

Then what arrives in my letter box ! "Ebay has preapproved you for a loan at xx%.'  See where this is going; they are becoming like bankers—not quite a Ponzi scheme, but they are looking to make money like banks through lending. I bet if you took up one of their loans, your stuff would rank higher in the listings; they wouldnt want you to default, would they? 🙂

[iceblue_uk]

On the subject of promoted listings, something very suspicious is happening here.

For the first time in 3 months we decided to cut all of our standard promoted listing percentages by 70% for one day; for example listings we had at 12% were reduced to 3% etc.

Sales dropped, as you would expect, but the traffic and organic vs promoted sales data certainly did not behave as expected. Here's what we found....

Listing impressions:

Overall these actually increased from 170k to 182k.

Maybe there was just more traffic on that day, but it was only the the PROMOTED impressions that increased while organic impressions remained roughly the same, a little odd considering the reduced %'s.

Listing Views:

Organic page views dropped by 20%, while promoted views INCREASED BY 12%. Also quite odd.

Sales:

Here's the really interesting part... organic sales dropped by 70%, while promoted sales increased by 12%

So, the overall effect of reducing promo percentages was a large reduction in organic sales and an increase to promoted sales. This is the polar opposite of what we would expect to happen.

I wouldn't like to speculate on why this would be so but, intentional or not, when we reduced our promo %'s it certainly appears that the algorithms involved worked to reduce our 'organic to promoted' sales ratio, which had the result of balancing off the reduced promo %'s, hence keeping the promo fees at a similar level to before the reduction.

[malmallyn]

That's interesting information

[ett1954]

A one-day test of this nature doesn't really prove your theory as it could be due to an anomaly specific to that particular day.  To verify that your results are statistically significant you could repeat this test on 2 or 3 more days randomly chosen.  Obviously the more tests eliminates or reduces the significance of anomalies.  If further test results follow the pattern you have mentioned this would give further credibility to your theory and less opportunity for critics to dismiss it.

It is good to see on here a theory supported by data.

[iceblue_uk]

I guess it could be an anomaly but really, that would be a huge coincidence. Little or no change to promoted percentages for 3 months and little or no change to organic sales vs promo sales ratio either until that day. I think it's highly likely that the sudden change in metrics is beyond any reasonable doubt due to the change in promo %'s.

[bravergrace]

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@iceblue_uk wrote:
I think it's highly likely that the sudden change in metrics is beyond any reasonable doubt due to the change in promo %'s.

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Generally speaking on eBay, a change in anything tends to give your listings a boost in the search algorithm.  It used to be (and for all I know, it's still true), that if you did a "blank bulk edit", your items would shoot up briefly in the search results.  Even if you had actually changed nothing at all, the system picked up all your items as "newly edited", and gave them a boost as a reward.  

Then, once you've got renewed interest or sales on one item, the algorithm extends this to your other "similar" items.  So if you made a sale on a Thomas the Tank Engine toy, your book about Thomas More, or your 1970s striped tank top or your antique wedding dress with train would go to the top of search, and so forth.  One sale leads to another  - even if the items and buyers are totally unrelated.

So if you've got promoted listings, then perhaps any change to those listings will give your items a boost because eBay will see them as "new and improved" listings.  So altering the percentage regularly might pay off, whether it's going up, down or see-sawing.