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?

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Surely if you design and make a product, you patent it?

And if it's patented, you can protect it.

As without it, no matter where you sell it, people will copy it.

So it wouldn't really be just an Ebay problem.

[the_book_seekers]

Amazon has a few problems with being accused of copying products sold on the site and then rigging the search result to favour their own product. 

[technthread]

And if you manage to source a high sell through rate item, you can be asked for invoices to show who your supplier is...

[therenewalworkshopltd]

To be fair to Amazon, though they do steal suppliers.

They generally don't ask for invoices, unless there is some sort of issue with the product, rather than just high selling items.

[the_book_seekers]

This is an interesting piece of new circulating on the web today. Nice to see a big online retailer being challenged over its practices.

A £1b damages claim will be filed today against Amazon on behalf of retailers selling on Amazon’s UK marketplace for, says the claimant, illegally misusing their data and manipulating the Amazon Buy Box to benefit its own commercial operation and its overall revenues and profit.

The claim, the biggest collective action ever launched by UK retailers, is being brought by the British Independent Retailers Association (BIRA) on behalf of retailers at the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) in London.

It asserts that between October 2015 and the present date, Amazon used data belonging to UK retailers on the company’s marketplace – data that is non- public and belongs solely and specifically to the retailers – in combination with manipulating the Amazon Buy Box, to engage in a product entry strategy that resulted in sales revenue and profits being diverted from these retailers to Amazon.

[imperio-numismatico]

Hello

I am having the same problems, i tried many (facebook, etsy, bonanza, craiglist, mercari, rubylane...) but due my ubication, some are not available. And some just do not work.

Any idea of markets maybe you know and I do not know?

Thanks

regards

[therenewalworkshopltd]

I don't know whether it's a mistake or purposefull, but your location on your listings is Thailand, yet your business address is Spain?

If you really are in Spain, then your postage is probably incorrect and you should get it changed.

You have the same options as posted earlier.  Though your location will make a difference as to how you sell.

You may have other options in your own country.

[imperio-numismatico]

Yes. Thanks

I setup the user in 1999 on spain
Now i am retired in thailand


Sent from my iPad

[exponential_developments]

Your design skills are wasted on here to be honest.

[imperio-numismatico]

If you have a better suggestion…..i will be happy to follow

Sent from my iPad

[exponential_developments]

My reply was to Nigel.

[yoopietravel]

I want to close my other new eBay account because they said it's because of some activity. But it's even more difficult to close an account, than to open an account. They keep sending the same stupid email for why the account was suspended, but they don't want to close the account already . Ebay is becoming more than a joke every day.

[messier44000]

Other than the phone rep who said "Yes I know" with regards my reasons to close the eBay shop,

there has been a strange lack of eBay doing everything in their power to keep me paying the monthly sub.

No tempting offer to keep the shop going and give it another chance.

No sorry to hear you are removing the shop from the weekly chat team when I mentioned it.

It is almost like they are happy to let customers like me and countless others go, so they can 

concentrate on the sellers happy to pay high PL fees (If that is where they now generate most income)

You-tube channel doing nicely, pointing more customers to the wesbite and generating sales + 

extra each month from it being a monitised channel.

Hence why you don`t see me posting here as much as I used to do.

Weekly open days doing nicely.

Website sales up , with a notiable spike in views / sales since my recent dabble in PPC.

Anyway, got another YT video review to edit.

What are the chances of that, just had the eBay email as I am posting this.

 "We found that, by making some quick changes to some of your listings, you can start making more sales immediately. Here’s what we recommend:"

No doubt it will involve paying 15-20% PLs. No thanks, when you-tube is free to promote 

and gets higher views and more sales.

[theelench]

"Here's what we recommend"

I'd bet that another recommendation will be "Reducing your prices by £x will increase your sales by x%" ?

[imperio-numismatico]

Many thanks.
I will try it

Cheers
Jrl
Sent from my iPad

[sam_eastham]

No one stays at top forever. It's a periodic or quantitative viewing. Periodic, e.g. for a certain number of hours everyday or certain days of the week. Quantitative, e.g. until you have a certain amount of page views. In my experience it depends upon how much you sold in a particular week. I have noticed that Ebay doesn't wanna loose any shop subscribers (basically sellers) so in order to keep us hooked , they keep making our items visible to earn us only survival money. Thanks to automated systems that sense you haven't made much any particular week and BOOM! your listings are at top of the search until you make a few bucks. Basically, I call it 'No one gets rich, no one sleeps hungry' 

[imperio-numismatico]

This is an excellent reflexion
I really would like be right

Sent from my iPad

[the_book_seekers]

I'm ready  for some 'survival money' now 😶

[the-nutwood-collection]

I think @sam_eastham right - it's periodic.

Every day I record the number of views for each listing.  If they go down, the cumulative total turns red, when they go up the total turns green.

The list will suddenly light up green for a couple of days, then gradually diminish into red.  I just can't believe that the buyer community suddenly decides, en masse, to look at my listings - some external force is at work.

I sell in two categories, and the green appears at different times in each so, if there is manipulation of listing position, it's not determined by User ID.

One day I'll get around to crunching the numbers to see whether there is an identifiable pattern to the 'waves'.

[imperio-numismatico]

Yes, i also believe that there is something periodic in the way they promote the ads , and cyclic.

But i do not really know the real and final objetive.

The theory of keeping a minimun level for all, is fascinant for me, because would imply humanity in a company (also a tactic to keep their resources that produce the money happy) , but the fact at the end is the result.

And if the result is that achieve an a little equity and faith for many thousand that sell for living and having a hard time, i think is good, although surely improving will be possible

Sent from my iPad