Is eBay a place TO SELL OR NOT any LONGER? Is it dead / dying?

[fixfix]

Does anyone else feel the same? Is eBay no longer a platform for sellers? During my years of selling on eBay, I've noticed declining traffic. The traffic and sales were so much better previously Is it the algorithm that is messing up people's businesses? Always been an "eBay Top-rated Seller." Used promoted listings, shop, keywords, specs, and delivery options including express, "free" postage, and "not-free", promotions. Nothing seems to work. Still getting sales if you can call it this way (0-3 a day), but nothing like it used to be. 

Never actually stopped promoting (not at the full suggested rate but reasonable)

The traffic went dramatically down in the last 2-3 years. Just not picking up. Any recommendations, feelings, experiences, etc.

Thinking of leaving eBay for good... It's draining my energy trying to figure it out, but nothing works.

[theelench]

"Ebay is not broken.  It has plenty of issues, but is still turning over billions......"

But increasingly those billions don't come from FVFs charged on sales, especially true if you're a private seller.

Ebay revenue "growth" is mostly down to increasingly desperate business sellers promoting their ads. and even that was slowing before ebay's latest cash grab with changes to PL attributions.  Possibly because even the faithful are seeing the futility of paying ebay more for less.  Who knows where ebays earnings will go as the effects of the latest cash-grab ripple out.

Ebay's latest restrictions on private sellers, expressly introduced as more sales destroying revenue streams, with little or nothing to recommend them to private sellers or buyers will not generate more sales, but probably less, given that more long-term private sellers have stopped selling.  Many also taking their purchasing power with them to pastures new.

Where are the thousands of new private sellers coming here to join in the boom that "Free" to Sell" was meant to create?   Are many businesses reporting sales growth on its back?

Has there been a stampede of pseudo-private sellers re-registering as businesses or leaving ebay, allowing business sellers to trade without unfair competition undermining their sales, but instead helping them to grow?  Again where are the reports of sales growth now the playing field has been levelled?

Or have the new restrictions on genuine private sellers with longer payment holds, fewer sales due to the BPF plus chaotic (and increased) delivery charges slowed sales even more?

IMO ebay is broken, especially its search, but also it's inability to make itself useful or even a pleasant experience to private sellers.

[bojangled]

@theelench 

I know of 6 small business sellers that have wrapped it up here. All correctly registered, long term users.

Done with the unfair playing field and recent changes to promoted listings. So it’s not just private sellers jumping ship. 
Personally I keeping it alive in the hope something is in the pipeline for businesses, but that light is fading fast.

Jo

[theelench]

A genuine question.    What are you hoping might be "in the pipeline"?

Ebay has been mounting a TV and internet Ad. campaign trying to get more private sellers who, hopefully, will become buyers from businesses.

It seems that the constant board discussion wrecking and clamouring against pseudo-private sellers has worked.

Gone are the "thousands" of free listings.  The fortnightly reduced FVF Offers.  Multi-listings for private sellers.  

The disruption of businesses operating on private accounts has happened with all private accounts now restricted to 300(?) ads. for single items per month.

The introduction of an absurdly restrictive SD system.

Labelling all private sellers (genuine or otherwise) as unreliable and in need of delayed payouts and an apparent  "extra" fee on their sales for "Buyer Protection".

Has any of it done any good for business sellers?

It certainly hasn't for genuine private sellers.

It seems to me that all it has done is made ebay even less popular with genuine private sellers than it was as it dawned on them that unless they Promote their ads., they would sell virtually nothing.

So has the number of pseudo-private sellers declined significantly?

Have businesses seen a resurgence since any of this was done?

If not what more can you expect, what more do you want ?

[mawels_87]

"Ebay has been mounting a TV and internet Ad. campaign trying to get more private sellers who, hopefully, will become buyers from businesses."

I've seen those TV ads a good number of times now.  Every time I see it I don't think it comes over as very cool as they show old  bric-a-brac stuff that most people wouldn't want to buy, a bit  like  all the shelves full of  old bric-a-brac that you see in charity shops that most people look and just past It by.

Vinted these days is full of interesting stuff that i rarely see on eBay anymore. Vinted is cool.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

It's not all about business's clamouring for the extra things to be added.

What has been complained about, is the unfairness of allowing business sellers, to use private accounts and profiting by the massive reduction in fees.

Along with the fact that business sellers are losing out with this, is the fact that Ebay themselves have been losing out with it as well.

So all that has been wanted, is a fair playing field.

I'm not so sure that they way have gone about it has been the right way, but they have at least done something about it.  Only time will tell.

As to Ebay being less popular, that's a very broad statement.  What exactly are you basing that on?

Comments on a forum?  Or do you have actual facts to back that up?

This I really do have an issue with, (not you personally), as so many seem to think that because people are posting this stuff, means that everyone is leaving Ebay.  Yet ebay is still trading in similar figures.  Only the release of the latest trading, will tell us any different.

As to selling, I've started selling more over the last few months.  But I'm also sure that many others are selling too.  

SD isn't that bad.  It simplifies things vastly for the private sellers.  Yes it will have issues, but they will disappear over time.

Personally, I think that they need to make things more balanced overall.  They need to lose listing fees entirely.  It is literally the only place now where you have pay to list an item.

So I can see why they have done the BPF, but it's not a great way of doing it.  They have literally looked at Vinted and copied them.  And this is Ebay, NOT Vinted.  They need to remember that and maybe things will improve for all over time.

[bojangled]

@theelench 

Way back in October when the free to sell was launched for private sellers, there was thread about incorrectly registered sellers being given a 6 month free shop subscription to encourage them to upgrade, heading into 4th quarter.
That would be nice, it may entice me back on a larger scale. Or a rehashing of the shop subscriptions, so business sellers get more out of it, (at the moment a private seller gets more listings out of a basic shop than a business). 
I know there will be no going back on the fee increases and promotion hike. But I’m not wasting much time listing on here until there is some give instead of take.

Jo

[theelench]

Yeah, we've been hearing about the "fair playing field" for ages and quite a bit of what business sellers have been clamouring for i.e restrictions on pseudo-private sellers which were thought to be the way to get them re-register as businesses have now come about.  So has the collateral damage that has angered so many genuine private sellers.

My question remains un-answered "What are you hoping is 'in the pipeline'".  How much more levelling does the playing field need?

"...SD isn't that bad.  It simplifies things vastly for private sellers."

It only simplifies things by straight-jacketing everyone into a very limited number of "Fits all" options.  OK if you sell something that's a standard size and weight that fits with Ebay's SD and by ignoring all the problems that can / will arise by selling something / anything slightly different or that doesn't fit ebay's pigeon holes. 

[moonlight-rhapsody]

"It simplifies things vastly for the private sellers."

Can you explain how please?  I'd really love to know how SD "vastly simplifies" my writing the name & address on the packet and popping it into the Post Office for them to deal with.  I must have missed grasping the simplicity in the 000s of words that ebay has devoted to explaining the system on its web site.  To be precise, at least 8,880 words - see this post https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Seller-Central/How-does-selling-work/m-p/7862691#M737216

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Simple delivery is for the casual private seller.

As such, it does simplify things.

You sell it, you get a label you post it.

As I have stated previously, the ones that are complaining about it, are either those who are pretending to be private sellers, or those who simply don't like change.

Why on earth is it so bad?

[a45heaven]

@theelench 

Sorry for asking a maybe stupid question -

Why does ebay have Private and Business sellers structurally separated?

For whom is it a benefit?, and what is that benefit?

Is it the same in the USA and elsewhere?

[therenewalworkshopltd]

My question remains unanswered as well.

As to Ebay being less popular, that's a very broad statement.  What exactly are you basing that on?

Comments on a forum?  Or do you have actual facts to back that up?

As far as I can see, there has been no major difference in trade.

I'm not hoping for anything, I'm simply carrying on with doing what I do.

As for the playing field, it is still not level.  The change that needs to be made, is to force those sellers who are abusing the system, to use it legally.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Private and business sellers have entirely different legal obligations.

That is why they have separate accounts.

And no, not all countries are the same, as it's dependant on the law.

The USA has a single account, but business and private pay the same fees.

[bravergrace]

---

@theelench wrote:

So has the number of pseudo-private sellers declined significantly?

Have businesses seen a resurgence since any of this was done?

---

Yes, the number of pseudo-private sellers has declined dramatically - but the ones still here are determined and wreak havoc with the market.  For an item where a buyer will whittle their choices down to about 4 to look at in detail, it isn't helpful if 2 or 3 of those 4 don't have to pay fees or accept returns or take responsibility for items damaged in transit through bad packaging.

The new limit of 300 listings is a limit on the number of NEW listings per month, and some "private" sellers already have thousands of listings, which aren't counted towards that 300. 

One "private" seller in my category has only 35 listings, but with about 100 variations on each listing, that's about £150,000 worth of stock altogether.  The restriction on MVLs doesn't seem to be in force yet. 

As for what I'd like eBay to do next - well, making it easy for a buyer to see a listing would be good - I've been on eBay for years, and I still find it next to impossible to find an item description because of all the ads.  And I have literally no idea how to find the legally-required business seller information nowadays.  

[moonlight-rhapsody]

"You sell it, you get a label you post it."

Oh bless.  If only ebay could have condensed their 8,880+ words explaining SD into such a simple slogan.  It makes you wonder why they just don't do away with all the caveats, exemptions, regulations etc surrounding SD and just go with that simple slogan.  Heck, why do they need to make it sound so complicated with all those 000s of words if 10 are really all you need!

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Seriously, go look at Vintxxd.  It's exactly the same over there, yet for some reason, the sellers & buyers like it!  But here, it's impossible.  

You really think that anywhere where you buy postage there is no caveats, exemptions regulations etc?
It's part of the industry.  Why not go look at RM's T&C's, or do you not think that they are part and parcel of the reasons for the various exemptions etc?

[moonlight-rhapsody]

"Why not go look at RM's T&C's, or do you not think that they are part and parcel of the reasons for the various exemptions etc?"

The 8,880+ words that ebay have written to explain SD are *in addition to* the T&Cs of RM/Evri.  And sellers need to not just read those 000s of words, but *remember* the details.  And ebay are making it up as they go along - the information keeps changing so you'd have to keep checking that the info is still current.  It also seems to be the case that some of the SD information is ambiguous, and IMO it's disingenous to think that that isn't deliberate.

Before SD, sellers only had to read the T&Cs of RM/Evri (or their own choice of courier).  In my case, I only need to be aware of RM's T&Cs as I don't use Evri.

Hence one of the reasons why IMO, Simple Delivery is anything but simple.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Ok, you win.  Everybody goes through the entire T&C's to understand something and make sure that they are not falling foul of some rule.

Especially those of us who are doing this on a casual basis.

I say again, Vintxxd does exactly the same thing, yet the only place people complain is here.

[theelench]

The only answer I can think of is because it's always been this way.  So far as I'm aware no other platform has this distinction, whether they are giant corporations,  home grown smaller sites or anything in between.

Perhaps it was another ebay experiment using the UK as a test lab. and because ebay never admits to a mistake, we're stuck with it to this day. 

[moonlight-rhapsody]

"I say again, Vintxxd does exactly the same thing, yet the only place people complain is here."

This is what I've said previously when the Vinted conundrum has been mentioned.

Vinted was founded by a 20-something year old and its appeal (at least originally) was to people of a similar age.  Those people probably didn't sell on ebay which is populated more by older people, so the Vinted sellers didn't know that a better way existed and have accepted the business model they were presented with.

[theelench]

"As to ebay being less popular................  What exactly are you basing that on?"

Ebay's financial reporting since before since the Covid Lock-downs.  They were in decline except for the Covid Upward Blip and have continued to drift downwards since.  Any slight increase is well within error margins and ebay being tardy in deciding an account has gone from "Active" to "Dormant" to "Dead".

Take your pick, GMV, seller numbers, buyer numbers.  Even the figures for so called Growth are actually all but flat or even in minus territory if postal charge increases and general inflation are stripped out.  Ebay has seen no real growth in anything but PL fees for at least five years and probably a few more than that.

Again, strip out those that hang-in-there because they don't like change, those hoping that things might change back and be as good as they were,  those complaining month after month that sales are on the slide/ off a cliff and those too new to ebay and still to learn how bad things already are once ebay withdraws their initial boost and things don't look so rosie.

Even the share price is artificially inflated by ebay's own propping-up exercise each quarter with yet more buy-backs.

So now YOU tell me.  What more levelling do YOU want?  How many more sellers/ buyers would it be worth losing in further attempts to sort out pseudo-private sellers?