February Sales Dead 2025 - Ebay Sales Completely Dead

[theglo-68]

Any thoughts as why would suddenly ebay sales would do ZERO since start of February.

We have been closely monitoring our sales and since start of January 2025 sales are down. But they have now completely died as soon as February started.

[eyewear247]

Ebay have nearly £300 of MY money from sales going back well over a week.

Well.. if you registered honestly and legally as a business seller then eBay would not put a reserve on YOUR money and pay you weekly....  however I guess you are enjoying selling with NO FEES and dishonestly depriving customers of their rights do not bother you !

[future-worlds-uk]

It's really interesting hearing other people are having issues. 

I have a registered business account which I've been using for 8 years. And year on year sales grew and I was happy with what I made.

Then all of a sudden last year sales dropped 70%. And they've never recovered. 

So as an experiment I opened a private account and sold the same items on there. Same price, same photos, same description. And sales were back to normal. 

I maybe thought my established business seller account was somehow broken or tainted. So I decided to convert my private one to business.  And bought a basic shop subscription.

So keep in mind that my private account that was doing about thirty sales a week.

That was a week ago when I upgraded.

And I've had no sales. 

So firstly. Why? When I'm paying for the privilege of doing so. 

And secondly why was it an established business seller could suddenly do better by selling stuff on a private account when each item was identical in every way to the one on his business account?

[poldice]

I don't think we should assume that all business sellers are honest and law-abiding and all private sellers are not simply based on the scale of their ebay sales. Or that the former is a certain asset to ebay and the latter is not. I'm not roymatthewblack's advocate but if you check his feedback it compares as equally good to your own and in fact roymatthewblack has a much higher level of feedback left for purchases they have made on ebay including to many who are business sellers. roymatthewblack's trading has ultimately benefitted many business sellers on ebay and he has not failed to be a credible seller in the process. 

For my part I am fortunate that my collecting interests are 2nd hand and I'm grateful that there are many very decent private sellers unbundling large collections of which they have great knowledge and are perfectly capable of providing a great buyer experience. It isn't hard to do is it? 

As a buyer I never buy brand new on ebay as I have some doubts whether branded goods are actually genuine, rather than "seconds", catalogue returns, counterfeits - be that clothing, fragrances,  trainers etc. 

I bet there are, and have always been, and always will be - some "properly" registered business sellers operating from industrial estates with staff and inventories filled with stock of questionable provenance. So it doesn't always follow that just because a seller is "properly registered" that everything is above board. 

[poldice]

It's almost as if ebay give preference to private sellers to drive up sales to the point where ebay say "Ah! You need to upgrade to business". So the private seller says "Yes - I will - I'm doing pretty good here" so they do, get subject to increased fees, shop subscriptions etc, and then sales plummet and they're stuck.

I'm not usually a fan of conspiracy theories but your experiment is very interesting.

[andha-21]

Any answer is going to be speculative but there's certainly the "little guy" factor that could be a difference in your experience.

Everything else being equal where is the difference? = Big and small

As for the business side I've not gone down that road myself yet, so no personal experience. But I read what I find here with fascination. Either the markets you are in are over saturated, more so than Warhammer models that I collect/sell or something seems amiss, not with you/other sellers, but eBay.

When I was selling I could regularly get first page results and we have 3 mega companies in our field. The rest of us basically get seen because everyone comes to look at the whales. But as big as they are there are loads of little specialists that can pretty much sell everything they list and for decent money. 

What I read about other sectors doesn't paint the same picture. Not remotely.

[eyewear247]

@poldicewhilst I agree with many of your points about honesty the main point I made I stand by as it is a fact that roymatthewblack is trading dishonestly on eBay. Based on his current listings that have sold multiple times with many more identical items remaining available he is very clearly a business seller trading on a private account. 

Regarding your comment about the level of purchases I have made myself on eBay compared to roymatthewblack I also have a private account and that is the one I typically use for any private non-business related purchases I make. 

I did not intend to insult the seller in question but he was complaining on a business seller board that eBay are making him wait for his money, so I responded to his public post that if he operated his account honestly and legally then eBay would not put a hold on his earnings.

With 7600 sold items on a private account maybe he should of kept his head below the parpet because a lot of business sellers have reported on this business seller board how private business sellers have negatively effected their businesses. 

[poldice]

I appreciate your reply. It does seem evident that he is trading on a private account, I don't dispute that, though I suspect he's an enthusiast turned collector/seller rather than someone looking at this as an employment option. I also anticipated that you may have a private account too, I wasn't seeking to cause any offence, moreover my point about his purchases aligns with my sense that there are so many enthusiasts turned collector/seller that are avid buyers and much benefit is to be gained for all of ebay from these high volume [private] sellers recycling their ebay income within ebay. 

I make a distinction between someone buying and selling, for example, stamps, cigarette cards, vinyl records, video games, etc where the quantities are high and the items aren't new or typically found on a high street [don't mention charity shops!] and someone selling multiple new dishwashers as a private seller.  But I'm not ebay's CEO so my opinion doesn't matter!

And yes, he ought to trade a bit more "clever" to be less obvious! 

And as far as I'm concerned if a private seller has a disadvantage compared to a business seller, such as waiting for their funds, then that's OK. I think business sellers should have advantages over private otherwise what's the point of upgrading and upscaling the selling? [Though I think these comparative advantages should be in the fees ebay charge and nothing else]. 

[mawels_87]

I think sells are about to become even more dead. I've just been to my my favourite search "Seiko". nearly every listing must be private sellers because most of the pricing looks very weird. It was giving me a headache just looking through. I just can't make any sense of it now. I'm off back too Vinted as listed prices are far more sensible and clear. Can't buy anything from eBay all the time prices on eBay look far from normal on every search now.

[future-worlds-uk]

If it's BIN items with odd prices then it's most likely private sellers
which eBay have added the new buyers protection premium (or whatever it's
called) to.

[sdjwales]

I always find January & Feb have slow patches.

Happens on my business account and my personal one, too, if I happen to have multiple things listed on it at the time.

On my business account, Feb is 20% down vs "average" so far, this has mostly been thanks to the past week or so.

Not that there's such a thing as "average" in my experience, I can easily be 50% down on the previous month as late as the 20th and still end up ahead.

In fact, if there's one thing I've learned after all this time, it's that it's better to assess things over a longer period than a few weeks or even a single month, because you can quite easily have your best and worst months ever right next to each other!

Every time I've despaired, so far, things have picked up again.

Ebay has been inherently inconsistent for me in the short term. Sometimes I still go several days with no sales but then I might have 5 inside an hour. I'm almost used to it by now.

It happens with particular item types, too. Item A and R will warm up, get views and sell loads for a few weeks then die off again and Item F and G will pipe up.  Then item A and R might go dormant for weeks or even months then suddenly have a surge again. I used to do a lot of "end and sell similar" but recently I've noticed stuff just seems to rotate given enough time and the spotlight will eventually come back to something that has sat dormant.

Anywhoo, back to slow patches, going back to 2024 and January was the month that had a slump, I genuinely despaired when it got to almost a week of no sales. I legitimately lost sleep and reading all the doom and gloom on here didn't help matters.

But eventually the month picked up. The month overall was down, but the last 2 weeks were in the right ballpark. February was slow too but a little more consistent.

Then March and April 2024 went on to be the best months I'd ever had in succession!

May and August 2024 were slow and then September and November were fantastic again.

January was fantastic this time round, but Feb is the slowest it's been since last August, so far. That could still change, though.

Anyway, sorry for rambling, just wanted to encourage people to stick with it because I've literally had great months right next to bad ones and it's all too easy to read around these boards and convince yourself some secret button has been flipped and killed your sales.

After years at it, I'm still seeing new extremes of bad AND good months, but things seem to work out ok when you look at the bigger picture.

Obviously I can only speak for myself and some people do genuinely seem to have bad luck or other issues, but I just wanted to try and share a bit of positivity.

I'm a stress head by nature, and I've had some real tense and gut wrenching moments selling on here, but as time goes on, the more I learn to not worry about it too much, because so far, experience has shown me that it's swings and roundabouts.

[kl_books]

Exactly this,

There are so many variables that can affect sales and most of them we will never know about.

Humans are hard wired to look for patterns and reason but, when it comes to sales, you'll never have all the pieces so no point wasting time worrying

[doumind_7]

The pricing looks weird because if you say, put,an item on for £5.50 it will appear to the buyer as something like £6.46 because of the 75p+4% nonsense. Not then an attractive price is it.

I'm moving over to Vinted. EBay have virtually copied their idea but simply cocked it up. On Vinted both buyer and seller can see the same price. Difference is the buyer does not have to have a maths degree to work it out.  Ebays app and software is rubbish and just can't work it out. Its a colossal mess.

[sdjwales]

For what it's worth, I still do my ebay stuff at my former employers premises which is a retail shop (when I had to take redundancy, he offered me free use of back room of the shop)

I saw and continue to see similar patterns, there.
 
Some days/weeks are busy, door flying off the hinges, B2B customers blowing up the emails, phone ringing all day then some times are quiet, few sales, few calls, few emails....you could hear a pin drop....

As it happens, it is going slow at the shop at the exact same time people are finding ebay slow. The shops either side of us are finding it slow, too.

Obviously correlation doesn't always mean anything, but it does make you wonder if there's any commonality.

[poldice]

I've just had a look on Vinted, out if interest, and whilst it doesn't compare too favourably with ebay right now for my interests it looks as if it is beginning to expand it's range of selling areas and it reminds me of the early days of ebay 25 years ago when you could look through a whole category in 6 pages. So I'm sure this has potential for those seeking an ebay alternative, if not now, then at some future date, so ebay need to be careful before it realises too late that it doesn't actually have a monopoly. 

[threadgame]

Ebay definitely realise the threat that Vinted poses, that's partly why they introduced no fees for private sellers and gave business sellers in the clothing sector no sales fee for December. It's quoted that eBay Europe tried to buy Vinted around 5 years ago, but eBay US blocked it as they didn't see them as a threat over in the US.

On a side note my Vinted sales are also down significantly, but eBay is outselling my Vinted store daily for the last few months, totally down to the time of year. In comparison during the Autumn and Summer months it's totally the opposite. 

[the-best-uk-deals]

you clearly are a business trading on a private account. Ebay will move you to a business account soon and then you will get your money every 24 hours 

[future-worlds-uk]

Interestingly, I've had a flurry of Vinted sales overnight and although its
steady normally, this week has seen a sharp increase.

I think the whole eBay pricing thing is a mess now and I genuinely think
they've mucked up.

[future-worlds-uk]

Couldnt agree more.  Its not ideal for businesses as you cant list more than one item, have to redo photos when you relist otherwise your listing goes back down where the original sold item appeared, etc. So it requires more effort.

I hope Vinted doesn't try to become eBay as it has a nice community feel and I really love the postage method.  As a business I get the price I want and then dont have to worry about fees and postage costs.

[the_book_seekers]

February started okayish but since BPF started it has been a struggle.

[poshboutique2]

Hello, which platforms would you recommend for selling unworn clothing other than eBay and VInted?