Extreme fall ibn sales since Oct 20th

[blackcatbooksuk]

Has anyone else had this? Since the traffic stats fault my sales have all but stopped. 1 since the 20th. That has never happened to me since I first started on Ebay a long time ago.

Has anyone else see a huge drop in that time?

[the_book_seekers]

I was expecting a near wipe out this month with the way things were going. The month has been saved by two decent sales. I consider myself as fortunate as  numbers are awful. I don't promote and don't expect to set the ebay world alight, but have always ticked along in a modest way. Since May it has been a real grind. While I managed a few sales, this month has felt the worst of the lot. The number of booksellers operating businesses on private accounts has reached ridiculous levels. 

[typo_lee]

Dead since the 10th October so count yourself lucky 

[cbennissupplies]

yes been a strange drop not unexpected for us this time of year but the amount of fall is strange, can not think of when this has happened in past and that's covering over 20 years on here.

for the first time in all this time are actually considering putting shop into holiday for the entirety of December, given the rate sales will be a dribble, royal mail will be worse than ever, increased charges by royal mail for that time ! increased defects due to royal mail being even further behind targets and ebay believing its your fault not royal mail.

then INR cases will rise as most do not check tracking and after failed attempts parcel is at delivery depot for collection. there will be the why should I ? cant be bothered group along with forgot ! leading to RTS 

dont wish to sound negative but at times there are that many thorn bushes on the path from A to B you loose faith in the pain is worth it

[bravergrace]

My book sales have been very odd over the past few months, to be honest.

I think it's mainly the eBay algorithm changing - the lemming-like snowball effect of AI - rather than anything I've done, or anything to do with the market changes.

I'll have no book sales at all for several days, and then one or two expensive books will sell, usually at the full asking price - giving me reasonable total income, but with a large number of books  hidden from buyers.

A typical insight which eBay shared with me today on an unsold book was along these lines:

- Offer free postage.

- Lower your price.

- Add Best Offer.

- Add 7 or more photographs.

- Fill in several more item specifics (the detail suggests that I add things like "illustrated by Phiz" and "first edition", "dust jacket" and "signed by Charles Dickens" because these will make my book more appealing to buyers).

All this for a £5 1950s Pelican history book.

Yes, they're probably right that if I take a dozen photographs, and list it for 99p with free tracked P&P and Best Offer, and claiming it's a first edition, with original illustrations by Phiz and a dust jacket and is signed by Charles Dickens, it will sell faster.  I don't doubt they're right. 

But even though it's accurate advice, it's not helpful advice in the long run.

[jbrusby]

I've had 6 blank days in the last 12, and only the odd sale on the others.  It's the worst period I've ever had, and the last month has been the worst month in nearly 6 years on here. Even heavily discounted items won't sell. Traditionally October has been the start of the strongest part of the year for me (Oct-Mar). Couple that with Royal Mail taking an inexplicably long time to deliver tracked parcels, and an increase in impatient customers and false claims and I'm dreading this winter.    

[custom-giftsuk]

Since October 1, on pretty much every item I have done the research on, there have been large falls. We're talking 20-50% sector on sector.  Talking to other sellers, they are facing the same unless items are directly Xmas related. Also talking on other sites - similar patterns emerge. 

It feels like suddenly out of the blue, no one is buying anything discretionary or even necessary.  October has been our weakest month in 5 years including the months of December, which have traditionally the worst month year on year, because of the huge hole in the month due to people not buying anything online from the 18th onward until after boxing day. 

[blackcatbooksuk]

This all started for me around the last week in August. I had an IT fault which caused over 80% of my items to have their "Required item specifics" to be wiped off. When I tried to add the details back in, it just wouldn't recognise the ISBN anymore. I contacted support and they were completely clueless. In the end the only way around it was to END the listing, then RELIST which made the ISBN be recognised so I could then add in the details again. This took weeks to do. 

Then we had the postage tracking fault, then the traffic stats fault. Plus lots of other little faults. 

Prior to all this happening I was flying and having a record year. Since the IT faults started I am down massively. I am giving it 2 more months and if it hasn't improved I will have to downgrade my shop to basic.

[the_book_seekers]

October has been punctuated by glitches. The worst was finding my listings weren't visible for a number of days. My seller hub showed everything to be normal but checking further in various search methods only 1 out of 300+ could be found. 

[bravergrace]

I found the same in October, and wondered if it could be due to a couple of address-related cancellations; I know these aren't supposed to affect visibility, but I lack confidence in eBay's ability to get such things right.  

[vintage-emporium-jedburgh]

our confidence in ebay is  zero .

in the past if you 

did the right thing , in the right  way , you could expect reasonable sales

 Not now

[bzmotman]

Exactly the same . I found that out of 22 items in a specific sector of a niche market only 2 were visible. I was prompted to look following several Australian buyers telling me I was sometimes visible on au & others time not but then I would be visible on com. Incidentally I ship to Australia but not to America! Also had a couple of Germans say they had not seen items that had sold. It was almost as though I was visible in countries I didn't ship to but not in those I do.

[carinya.designs]

Same here, sales are 50% down.. used to class this as a full time job, im currently lucky for 2 sales a day

[paul*tribesandvibes*]

I took a break from ebay for a year because things were getting bad in 2024. Chatting with the other half, we had a bright idea that we should make the most of the season and relist some of our Necklaces on here, but ebay has remained as inconsistent as it was when we left. Since 19th October we've had 7 sales. I'm putting it down to not having too much stock available yet, and I know we should list more. Fair enough. But this weekend was a payday weekend, with only 1 more to go before Christmas - and we had 1 sale! ONE! That's a bit weird.

[jlovie]

Funny you should mention that, my sales gap was also right after an address related cancellation.