How many sellers are closing their shops or running down their account in 2024?

[ovleisure]

We have been a seller on here over a couple of our accounts for many years now.   Over this time we have seen a reduction in sales from a max of £13k pcm to £60 pcm.    We have been through mass seller culls, more and more control over the seller/buyer relationship, the forcing of managed payments, increases in fees and requirements to use promoted/advanced promoted and now bid for clicks, to the point where ebay is taking an unsustainable percentage of profit.  

This in turn has lead to such search manipulation as to be virtually impossible for any of our listings to be shown unless we implemented all of the additional promotions, and even then since everyone is in the same boat, it makes little difference.   Search has been broken as a result of all this, and whereas in the past, if your product met the search terms, you could get your item to show, this is now not much short of a miracle!

Maybe you could argue some of it is the economy, but when your listings barely get any visibility unless you pay through the nose for it, it becomes a weak argument at best.

We have closed our shop and have halved our listings, and will be running down all of the stock we do have via other marketplaces.  

I'm just curious what other peoples plans are in 2024, are you bearing with ebay in the hopes of better times, or moving on?

[rainbowtrax]

You list 1,000 for free. At the end of the month, any unsold all renew for free and you can list another 1,000 for free. End of second month, all the unsold from the previous two months renew for free and you can add another 1,000 new listings.

With one account, within a year, you have 12,000 active listings less the amount you have sold in that year. If you stick with just one account, it takes five years to get to 60,000 listings less the number you have sold in that five years.

However, if you do this on, say, five different accounts, it only takes one year to get to 60,000 listings less the amount you have sold in that year.

[the_book_seekers]

So selling just under 10,000 items a year. Makes a mockery of

' we're committed to offering a trusted global marketplace in a complex regulatory environment that affects eBay and our sellers.'

[litp*records]

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@the_book_seekers wrote:

So selling just under 10,000 items a year. Makes a mockery of

' we're committed to offering a trusted global marketplace in a complex regulatory environment that affects eBay and our sellers.'

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For a "private seller", yes.  Basically it's a free for all.

[krafty-kreations]

Thank you for explaining 

eBay must be losing a lot in fees, you think they would clamp down!

[litp*records]

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@krafty-kreations wrote:

Thank you for explaining 

eBay must be losing a lot in fees, you think they would clamp down!

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It's what many of us have been saying now for years and years.

- Ebay loses out on fees (and meeting their regulatory requirements).

- Customers lose out on their consumer rights.

- Properly registered businesses lose out because the freeloaders can undercut them since they pay a lot less in fees.

And then you see numerous threads started where people whine about not getting their 80% fees offer this week, and you wonder why business sellers become aggrieved.  We have had no such offers in years.

Ebay seems to think all businesses are like Coca Cola and have a bottomless pit of money to throw around.  In reality most businesses are sole traders struggling to get by like everyone else.

Nothing will change til they fix this issue as it's pushing both buyers and legitimate sellers away from the site.

[ghostbay-killah-420]

Yes I am going to just sell what items I have left as not going to buy any new products no more just sticking to what i have left now and maybe stock up on 1 or 2 certain items like rolling papers that sells and that's it for me.

[irismax3]

so my question is why are you closing down is it because there's too many con artist there I always get someone complaining about something and then eBay don't cover us

[nigel_paul_wright7557]

I suspect I wont get the choice to run down as I am selling almost nothing anyway.

[candytan67]

I have finally had enough of eBay. I'm sick and tired of eBays size 10 boot continuously pressing down on me and my business.   

Due to retirement and increased bad health this year I will be running down my ebay shop and concentrating on my own Squarespace hosted website/shop which I opened last week. OK to start with it will be quite hard work to fill my shop with listings but my destiny will be - to a greater extent -  in my own hands once again with just monthly shop subscription fees and payment processing fees to worry about.   

Sadly nowdays eBay give sellers virtually nothing for the fees they pay - not even unsuppressed advertising!

(note to self - include a flyer with orders to divert currently "my few" customers to my own site)

[the_book_seekers]

Sorry to hear you're going. When I started on ebay destiny in my own hands is how it seemed. Now ebay dictates so many aspects of selling in a lot of ways ebay feels more like an employer. 

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

Ebay simply doesn't understand small businesses. Like many things these days it is run by people who are totally out of touch with how most things operate and the reality most face.

I would imagine a lot of small businesses on Ebay UK operate under the VAT threshold, which is currently 85k.

A 10% net margin on 85k = 8.5k

A 20% net margin on 85k = 17k

A 30% net margin on 85k = 25.5k

You get the picture, does Ebay actually comprehend any of this kind of detail ??

I genuinely think they have the view sellers are either side hustles to another job or businesses generating sales into the hundreds of thousands a year. They shouldn't think that as they have a lot of data at their fingertips however I'm not sure they look at it.

[theelench]

I think you're right about that, they have little idea of how the "real world" operates.  Some time back there was comment in the US about "Wall St. versus Main Street" and how the ethos of one was undermining the other.  Part of that discussion was the predatory and destructive nature of Walmart (and others).  Guess where the current CEO of ebay  came from.

With that sort of CV and an annual salary in excess of what many ordinary wage earners will take home in a life-time, they are on a different planet to the rest of us.

And if they're on a different wave-length to small businesses who, apart from scale, are at least in the same game, what idea can they have about private sellers, not much IMO.

[*devils.advocate*]

Remember 10 years ago when sellers objecting to changes were referred to as just "noise" - despite the fact that those changes failed to turn eBay around?

Well, I suppose it was anyone really who didn’t agree were just “noise”.

On the face of it, there doesn’t seem to have been any change in that attitude despite all the personnel changes - we're still "noise".

I think you have to have the Midas touch in reverse to succeed in eBay management.

[theelench]

I do indeed remember, CEO Wenig if I remember correctly?

Yes, we're still just noise, but more muted now as so many have left because sales continue to slide although fees have only risen.

Who'd have thought, ten years ago, when listing an item cost a few pennies, the FVF wasn't much more and stuff sold and sold and sold.  No need for Max. FVF promotions back then to try to keep private sellers listing and buying.  An occasional 99p weekend offer on a Bank Holiday was about all there was and on Sunday night I could make a coffee while waiting for the photos to up-load, the site had slowed down so much because of the rush to list before midnight.

Now the site is always slow because it's so full of ads. (not listings).  I take my one sale a month to the post office, not a bag full every Monday and think myself lucky.  As someone pointed out ebay still makes a profit from the ads. and PL, with or without sales.  But I wonder if, now the noise telling ebay towers "We told you it was a bad idea (a dozen times or more)" has died away, I wonder if anyone is thinking about what to do if / when those that are left see through the PL smoke and mirror trick and stop donating money for nothing?

[simplyc-accessories]

Just shut my shop up and it felt so good, reduced all my listings as well.  wish I had done it months ago.

[llewellyn-technical-services]

I think it all started going wrong with "promoted listings"  -i find that when i want to buy something on ebay that the search engine would rather show me incorrect but promoted items items rather than what i am actually looking for - also when i see our own listings "pages" plastered with promotions for irrelavant items i am not suprised buyers get confused as to which item is actually being sold and just go back to Amazon or Vinted sites -P.s. if anyone reads this we have been dabbling with listing stuff on Vinted with quite good results so far 🙂 - Take Care All

[theelench]

I agree with what you say about Promoted Listings but I think it goes back a bit further than their introduction.

At some point a few years ago I noticed some of my listings got very little interest / views.  Ebay had decided that rather than show all the items in the results, they would only show those items in "the most fruitful categories".  It would show buyers my item if I listed it in "Date Lined Glass" but if it was listed in "Trays and Sets" no-one saw it unless they knew to alter the search results to "ALL".  But ebay didn't think to tell buyers that.

Then came "Streamlined" results.  I don't know how that was an 'improvement', I never bothered to find out, but again buyers weren't informed.

More recently the basic Key-Word search was replaced by the fiendishly complicated non-user friendly IS method of searching.  Again without any introduction or explanation to buyers.

And periodically, all through those years, ebay has simplified the category structure.  Ones I remember are "Books" and "Vinyl / CDs".  All the specialised and niche sub-cats. swept away and the specialist items dumped into bigger (one size fits all) categories, lost amongst thousands of other items.

Most recently Collectables categories have suffered the same fate.  I now have to list my vintage glass in something like "Home Decor & DIY > Tableware > Vases", mixed in with thousands of modern items.  Again no advice or help from ebay for buyers on how to winnow the 1000 vintage items from the heap.

My sales have declined steadily over the years, probably taking a step down after each of these "improvements" and I can see why.  As the search has been "improved" it has become more difficult to browse and more difficult to find the specialist items I look for.  I've more or less stopped even trying.

The result, I bought 2 items on ebay last year, a few years ago it was dozens.  It's the same for my buyers, a few years ago my sales were many more than they are today.  In the whole of last year I sold 13 items, an average of 1 per month, a dismal end to my selling on ebay.

[mewde60]

Ebay's 'Collectables' catagory does seem odd when the 'collectable item' turns up in searches next to cheap mass produced rubbish selling for peanuts.

My sales are dead now that the world is heading into a recession that is going to get much worse before it gets better. Sanctions against Russian fertilizers could well cause a global catasrophe on its own.

Ebay passing personal details to HMRC will force many private sellers away. The problem is that the private sellers sell the hard to get items that makes Ebay popular because old collectable items are really hard to find.  Ebay has to think hard about what is happening to its sellers.

Good luck, we'll all need it!

[newlittleshopontheprairie]

I've spent £5000 on stock this year alone tried everything from mid February my sales have halfed or less I've no income to purchase stock if it continues I'll be leaving closing shop selling bootsales wherever just to recoup some money back 

[the_book_seekers]

ebay has given me a laugh. I received this message today

We’re excited to let you know that we’ve removed the selling limit from your account. This means you can list all the items you need to further grow on eBay.

Not that I've asked them to do this nor did have I ever reached my old limit. An incentive to list more would be better (and not a promotion for promoted listings). If ebay is removing seller limits it smacks of listing numbers falling.