Is it time for me to pull from Ebay

[vostok63]

When I first started with Ebay about 15 years ago it was a life saver for my business during the recession of 2008 and then we were able to press on and do extremely well. We would regularly do £3000-£4000 a month turnover. Everything was ok until about a year ago and we have seen our fees go up the cost of advertising through promosted listings (Im paying up to 15% on all my promoted listings) on Ebay go up which means our prices go up and eventually it appears totally unsustainable especially when other platforms we use are fantastic for us at the moment. Last month £3500 on a similar platform. Ive just got my Ebay September statement ....less than £450 and nearly 25% going on Ebay fees...Anyone else having the same experience  and finding Ebay not the best for small business anymore. To be clear we have an excellent record with customers 5 star feedback across the board.  If you have had similar experience and turned a corner with Ebay what did you do with your listings /Ebay shop? very reluctantly Im really thinking its time for me to pull away from ebay as its not worth the effort anymore and reaching out to Ebay doesnt seem to work either

[thebeautician]

I didn't say that eBay has more buyers than sellers, what I meant is that a % of sales made on eBay were from those sellers who left, and that is significant in the present moment. I speak for myself: I hardly buy anything on eBay these days, for several reasons, being the main one that the search has become increasingly difficult and I don't have the time to waste. 

I don't agree that people buy always where or what is cheaper. If that was true eBay's sales wouldn't be declining, considering eBay has plenty of cheap stuff. That may be true to some extent, but I firmly believe that people buy what's cheaper among what they can easily find. Too many options to choose from these days, they buy what is put in front of their eyes. 

If you need data search it on Google and you will find that more than 60% of the buyers are over 35 and roughly 15% are under 24. I have a 20-year-old kid, he never bought on eBay and neither do his friends. And I suspect he would never consider buying sneakers on eBay. Also, I am often among young people and my perception is that they don't use it. 

Losing sellers and their purchases only adds up to other problems going on with eBay. I believe many people just hold on here because they already invested time listing and/or have stock to clear. But the inability to attract younger buyers (or new buyers in general) and push away sellers who are also buyers suggests that their long-term strategy is perhaps to rely on foreign sellers and big corporations and on other forms of revenue such as selling postage and promotion fees to existing sellers, not all of them willing to pay them. This doesn't seem sustainable.

Understandably, both buyers and sellers are leaving - again data on Google is available - but if you are doing well enjoy while it lasts, that's how business works, but for those who have all eggs in one basket, having a plan B doesn't hurt.

Best luck.

[pg_kicks]

My last sentence was referring to eBay, but it could be for any site tbh, none will just gamble a large amount of money, a few will gamble it if they have a good chance of getting it back though, like what eBay done with the sneakers category, they knew the market was there and growing so investing the money correctly will have has paid off for them. Other categories the risk is much higher as there are not (to my knowledge) many other markets that have exploded like sneakers in the last 5 years with sites going from nothing to being worth hundreds of billions with a business plan you can just copy (if you have the market). 

[superchallenge]

With respect, that sounds like you have something set up incorrectly or are going WAY overboard with promoted listings.

I just made a sale for £79.99 with free shipping and eBay paid £70.07.  I made a promoted listings sale (3%) of £39.99 with free shipping and they paid £33.91.

What on earth does your sales report say they took £38+ for?

[simplyessential_uk]

As I mentioned earlier 

Change your promos and experiment - I only pay 2% and refuse to pay more and still get decent sales, Ive also realised spending more on promos does not equal more sales

What an earth are your promos set at if ebay has taken 45% in fees? 

[goingfishinguk]

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@simplyessential_uk wrote:

What an earth are your promos set at if ebay has taken 45% in fees? 

---

And this is why eBay will continue to prosper in the short term at least because people think they are forced to give them huge % in promotion fees.  They will no doubt sell this fact to the shareholders in the upcoming board meetings... look ad revenue is up 78% etc and cloud over the number of sales etc is down 68% etc..

[florriestoys18]

I've been doing eBay since 2018. I packed it up last week. I used to easily make £1000 a week! It's gradually been getting worse and earlier this year I started a new account. Thinking, maybe listing 50+ items a day on a brand new account would work. It did. For about a month. I was selling over £100 worth a day for the first time in almost a year. Then it went down again. Some days i walk away with £3. I'm bleeding money on almost every sale. God forbid I need to make a profit to survive, almost every order is at a loss. All my costs have gone up, yet I'm having to reduce items to sell them. When I realised that £900 worth of sales in a month ends up being £250 after all fees, packaging, postage.. what's the point!! Royal Mail upped their large letters by another 40p. That's the majority of my profit margin gone overnight. I have about 30 boxes of stock, some costing me up to £5 each. I know I will make a loss on everything. I will literally get more money sitting on my *bleep* on universal credit. Ebay is not what it used to be. For my own sanity, I've packed it in. It's left me in debt and depressed. 

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

Sorry to hear that. I think what you have said is a fairly widespread point of view.

The balance on here is now all wrong, it's a one way street, there is very little to motivate and drive a seller on here now, once that has gone it has gone. Ebay should be a place that helps small businesses grow and develop, it should be a place that leaves sellers more than enough skin in the game to keep them motivated and interested, it doesn't.

It's all gone very very wrong.

[dwtrading2015]

erased, too many typos

[dwtrading2015]

This time typo edited

"So for example one of your listings to add on from what OJ suggested

100 x Personalised Cocktail Napkins - you could elaborate using keywords

Personalised cocktail paper napkinsDisposable Serviettes Tissue

(Use all 80 characters)"

Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away.... that is what used to happen.  However, the search has had a major change in the last year or so and filling up the 80 chars with keywords to be matched no longer applies.    You are more likely to get an zero results return.

I cancelled my shop in May for the same reason of decling sales and reduce inventory from 65 to 16 as a private seller to bleedd stock away and not replace.

However, I will be trying an experiement soon in my quest to reverse engineer the search algo.  Less is more!  I'm going to duplicate listings but with as minimal title words as possible and compare!

[pg_kicks]

I can only go off the figures for my own listings and thats first time buyers (from me) are up on last year and my sales are up on last year (I sell 90% trainers), also finding a lot of buyers have under 10 feedback, I know this doesnt mean they are new but its at least newer or returning long time away customers, I myself are still in that younger age bracket and so are my friends, eBay is the first place we go for sneakers now, it may depend on the type of sneaker you want but for any rare/limited release its eBay as the authentication is rated number 1 within the community. Obviously we all will have different experiences but we can only go with what we find.

I agree people buy what is cheapest and easiest to find, the search is broken on here for sure or not working to its full potential as eBay will deny till they are blue in the face that its not broke. 

[typo_lee]

Only you know if you should pack in eBay but I guess it's what the income from the site is worth to you and can you survive without it. For some on eBay it's their main source of income and for others not. However if the sales continue to fall off a cliff obviously businesses will close or go bust which is sad.

[ojewellery]

Key words are something I'd really love to understand (I'm not fully convinced anyone does).  I love a bit of alpha beta testing but I'm not sure I agree with your very short titles theory, heres my thought process behind this....

There are a couple pf phrases that get bandied around worth considering.  On eBay in promoted listings advanced there is talk of 'exact match' and 'broad match' search.  There is more information on this in that area thats worth a skim read for thinking about general optimisation not just when using pay per click advertising.

For an exact match search its all the words in the same order to get you seen.  I think this interprets as if someone searches for 'Personalised Napkins'  and your title has 'Personalised Napkins' in it, it will rank.  The closer to the start of the title, helps to elevate your listing higher in the returned results (amoungst other factors). 

If your listing title was 100 Personalised Napkins it would do better than '100 serviettes paper 3 ply personalised napkins'.  Whilst the later is more descriptive the Key (most frequent) search term is more prominently placed in the first.  It'd be even better if the title started just Personalised Napkins. 

Adding extra words doesn't demote your listing it means that for broader search terms you could also get hits.  So say 90% of people search 'Personalised Napkins' and 10% use 'Serviettes' adding the word serviettes into the title means it could show for those 10% who don't use napkins.  Adding most filtered item specifics into your title blank space can also help as you've got the information when listing that this is what customers are searching for.

Then there are broad match searches so someone may search 'Personalised Paper Napkins'  Not all those words are in the titles I've used as examples but if say 20% of people add paper to their search string adding it into the title would help it show higher when searched.  If more people are using the shorter search string ' Personalised Napkins' it can be after the exact match term.

Obviously we all want lots of hits on our listings but we also want relevant hits.  We want our titles to convert - we want the algorith to see that people who search and bring up our listing also click on it to show the algorithm its relevant and keep it being shown.  For example Paper Napkins or just Napkins would be a much higher search frequency than Personalised Napkins, but people who are just looking for Napkins are far less likely to buy personalised ones than those who actively search for Personalised.  So keeping the front of title to the term most likely to bring in the buyer looking for your product type is important.

[theelench]

I have to agree with your first paragraph as I've been saying something similar for quite a long time now.  The "Sales off a cliff" type threads seem to have multiplied as the number of private sellers has been whittled away by the way the site works now.  

I started selling on ebay because at the time, in '12, ebay was a Sunday lunch-time talking point in my local with at least three flourishing businesses and it seemed most other regulars either buying, selling or doing a bit of both.  These days the businesses have gone and I know of only one other collector and myself who buy anything on ebay.

As a private seller my sales have slipped to their lowest point ever (a mere 11 so far this year), while (apart from a couple of coins recently) my last 'real' purchase on ebay was back in March (an almost £200 vase).  In my wider circle of family, friends and work colleagues, few even bother looking at ebay now.

@pg_kicks   Congratulations on your success, being in the right place at the right time and having the courage to follow your instinct to reap the rewards.  I hope it continues for you, but I would offer a word of caution.   

With ebay it always pays to have a "Plan B".

You've probably read replies on other threads where businesses are selling stock at cost or a loss so they can get away from ebay as their businesses have collapsed.   

Some sellers who have been here longer will remember previous abrupt changes of policy and direction by ebay that have wrecked swathes of businesses with little or no warning.

I particularly remember the about face on "Contact details policy", where ebay banned communication between buyer and seller until after an item was paid for.  Previously "Personalised Item" businesses could discuss what was required and price before payment.  That destroyed many businesses, leaving some with bought-in stock in anticipation of another year of bumper Christmas profits.  It was particularly spiteful of ebay to announce the policy change in their "Autumn Seller Update", leaving them little room for manoeuvre to avoid disaster.

It also hurt sellers of larger items, particularly antique / second hand furniture by stopping inspection before purchase.  Others probably remember different examples of the same sort of policy / rule changes, equally destructive, but as the change suited ebay at the time no thought was given to those sellers who suffered because of them.

Even today myself and many other buyers and sellers of collectables are still suffering the effects of ebays removal of most of the Collectables categories which, amongst other reasons has led to the sharp decline in private sellers and their purchasing power.

Just because sneakers, watches and hand-bags are ebays pet projects today guarantees nothing, ebay will be happy to share the profits your efforts are making.  But that can change overnight and ebay can and will change its favourites again at some point in the future, just be certain to have an exit strategy for when that happens.

[dwtrading2015]

"eBay is the first place we go for sneakers now,"

It ain't.  I searched and bought a new pair of trainners this wekend.  Specificaly they had to be Gore-tex lined.  Across eBay, Vinted and Amazon, other more direct outlets were cheaper.  I ended up with a House of Fraser sale pair, less than fiver postage (way less than most eBay listings) and deliverd in 1.25 working days.  The same pair on sale at Sports Direct online too same price twice the postage.

The bottom line is people like me no longer confine ourselves to eBay.  We use google for searches and in return for a few hours with the tablet in front of some boring movie I'm forced watch by my other half on 'telly', I get over a hundred pound reduction on a familiar brand beating nearly everything on eBay (less desirable 2 other options). 

Your sales will be doing fine because eBay has been plugging that catagory for many months and enough people are fooled in to thinking that is where the competative market is and hence don't bother to look elsewhere.  For most catagoies now, the penny has dropped and people now go elsewhere as a routine. eBay has lost it's market place and needs a radical overhaul to compete.

We can't all sell trainers.

[dwtrading2015]

You describe some aspects of the search that used to be implemented, like broad search.  It can be shown by multiple postings on these boards by myself and others that the broad search is busted as it has lost  context and association.

I've been reverse engineering the algoritim as a hobby for a while.  It is true the search is now left to right, not right left nor permutations.  The user is now to enter the search with a programers logical hierichy pattern.  Of course, in the real world very few will be so logical assuming the real world user can even correctly name the widget they are after.

Rule now is, if you want to find something on eBay, search using google.  They still seem to map the keywords in context with a much lower weighting on position.

Users can not be elied onto enter in sequence as a programmer may wish. 

"Black shoes size 8"

"Size 8 black shoes"

"Shoes, black, size 8"

"Black size 8 shoes"

There are so many ways to legitimately ask the same thing.  Sadely eBay earch in conjunction with paid listings only partially matching being boosted to hit impressions requirements means the results these days are meaningless.

I've searched for computers with a narrow range of acceptable procesors before and ended up with zero results.  When a that hapens, you know something is very, very wrong.

So my limited key word experiment will be to determine whether the search is 'muddied' and unclear as the algo can't latch on to it's own 3 or 4 word look up list.  Maybe if the listing has only three firm words and the look up list has only three firm words combies, the confidence interval is high and the result returned stronger.  I have wondered if programmers have sought to defeat the more sophisticated listers who used the 80 char search field to capture hits and this was demed unfair in some way.

[ojewellery]

I've just lost half an hour down a rabbit hole of size 8 black shoes - I'll now no doubt get a feed about size 8 black shoes.

It's fascinating, a cheap hobby.    I'm interested in your observations.  I'm going to have a play with this in the coming weeks/ months/ years.

From the shoe examples, when the search is on ending soonest, the broad search appears to work.  On best match it doesn't, especially with such a broad search string.  Exact match appears completely irrelevant too.  The best match search results for the four shoe options words in different orders returned 640k, 200k, 270k and 48k respectively.

Looking at just the first 8 results, the first 4 being sponsored, having an item specific ticked appears to hold as much weight as having the word in the title.  On a very limited search having in both places appears to offer no advantage.

The word shoe also appears to not be relevant.  Trainer was fully interchangeable.

I stand by a longer title being better, as all used full title length but I agree that the system did change from using up characters, to using characters in a relevant way to actual user searches.  Putting something that creates search impressions, but from those impressions gets no clicks, would have a negative impact.

[theelench]

& @dwtrading2015 

I say this with all due respect and even admiration of your perseverance and skill at reverse engineering and studying the ebay search.

BUT

What does it mean to me and tens/hundreds of thousands of other non-programming trained shoppers?

A fascinating hobby  --  No.

Something that might make sense after months or even years of study  --  No.

The little I immediately understood from your posts was this.

The huge difference between the number of results returned for four (to me) equally correct ways of searching for "Size 8 Black Shoes".

That in one search, the first four of eight results were 'Paid For' listings, whatever original search parameter filters were applied.

Probably the most important piece of info. that I sifted from your posts was

"If you want to find something on ebay, search using google"

Hopefully some shoppers will do that.

As a private seller, I don't intend to even try to take it all on board.

It may be wonderful programing, or perhaps it's the exact opposite.  Whatever, it's far too much for me to contemplate mastering to use ebay 'successfully'.

If the geniuses at ebay towers can't get the same results to be shown whichever of the four options are typed into the search box it's rubbish, as at least three of the results are wrong. (and possible all four?) 

[dwtrading2015]

"What does it mean to me and tens/hundreds of thousands of other non-programming trained shoppers?"

An understanding of what the problem with your sales is.  Is it your products, your listing style, your promotion stratergy?  Or is it the wider online market, cost of living, trends?  Or is it eBay?

Hopefully there is enough with the open discussion to help inform that 'you' are not faling with eBay, eBay is failing you.

The fix?  We don't know.  But by a process of elimination, we may be able to help some people realise some improvement in sales.

One golden rule has been established before.  Minimum 9 photos.  Even if it is a few images at various zoom levels.    Tweak the contrast and brightness so that areas that should be white, are as close as possible to being white.  The 9 image rule has been proven.

The churn rule.  eBay follows the marketing philosophy of constant changing stock to keep the buyer intrested in new lines.  It is a nonsense for most catagories. This is where the re-postng and re-listing of existing stock has come about.  New imags (the same old ones shifted a bit left, new zoom), different words but same description.  Many don't do the re-list because of the value of the caption on a listing such as '2300+ sold' compared to other listings with no caption. 

But now, like many captions like the premium service, number of watchers, 'geat price' blue badges (haven't seen that for a while come to think of it) are displayed at random (most likely not random but by design to stand out and boost a particular seller for a short time).

Actually, there is another idea.  Those blue captions are clearly designed to stand out.  Now what is a big blue caption of similar design was placed on your main image... I wonder....  Can a blue 'badge' be entered in the title somehow?

I am now in a full time career job so no time to try that out.  If somebody does put a promiante blue 'flower' in the corner of their images, let us know is there is any effect.

[theelench]

My apologies if the part of my post you quote came across as a bit truculent.  It wasn't intended that way, merely pointing out that there is quite a gulf between the computer savvy, who can think of this as a fascinating hobby and the rest of us who don't understand most of what you say.

Good luck going forward with developing greater understanding of the ebay search.  Personally, as a private seller, I've virtually given-up trying to understand ebay.  It's like trying to build on Quicksand with it's continuous announced and un-announced changes, tests and glitches.

As you said above "If you want to find something on ebay, search using google"

I do agree with you on that as I ascribe most of my sales on another site as coming via GS and have tried to better understand how that works.

My feeble efforts do seem to be paying off to some degree and I've managed to keep my name on the "Seller" side-bar for about a year now, with varying numbers of ads. shown on the first 2/3 pages.

Perhaps if I get bored with that, I might try to work out why I've never found any of my ebay ads. on GS.

[pg_kicks]

As you have copied word for word what I said the 5th word is the important part, we, I was talking about myself and my friends, the trainers we buy arent just sitting online at Nike or Offspring, you either get them on day of release or secondadry markets, so it is 100% the first place we and many others in the community go to purchase.

I know I have benefited from ebays move into the sneaker market, I've never once denied that. Once HoF and Sports Direct (both the same company so I'd expect the same price) finish their sale eBay will be the cheapest place if you want to buy with the option to return and guarantee of them being genuine.

I also have never said everyone should sell trainers, I'm glad they dont. All I was saying is from my point of view sales are improving, it seems like 95% of posts on here are negative and anything positive is always met with whatabout this or this cant be true. I hope everyones sales improve, but if they dont you should also be looking at other avenues as yes it may be eBays fault but a shift in market sometimes cant be helped and you need to move fast.