Just had Ebay phone me due to problems with sales

[collectingatcollectables]

I Just contacted Ebay and the called me back,  about my drastic drop in sales over the past year or so,  The lady was polite and tried to be helpful,  she tried to pass me of to the relevant departmen put me on hold,  but I did not get to speak to them,  she told me that stated there was no issues with my account.  I stated there must be as 22 years on Ebay it has never been so bad and that I only have till the 16th February after that I will run out of finances and will need to close my shop as I have no more money to keep going with the costs.

I was told that she would priority esculate it up the line.  but I don't see anything happening. 

All I was told was to promote more at weekends,  I promote every day. ( more Costs )

I do not know how Ebay do not see a problem looking at other forums here on ebay there is a lot of users the same boat.   so it looks like I may have to leave Ebay after 22 years  it is so sad as I used to love selling here,  I could pay all my bills selling here,  but I cant even pay my phone bill or rent with the sales

[myriad*seller]

It may be nothing to do with eBay and more to do with cost of living

My off-eBay business is the quietest it has ever been, and other colleagues in the same industry say the same

People don't have income to live, let alone disposable income! The things you sell are lovely, but are no necessitites, they are things you buy to treat yourself or another. People haven't got money for non-necessitites. 

[ojewellery]

Times are more challenging at present and we need to take every opportunity to optimise our listings, make use of current best practices, take a cold hard look at our offering and way of doing things.

Deffinition of insanity keeping doing the same thing in the same way and expecting different results.

Ebay has evolved quite a bit over the last few years and listings that worked a few years ago, just don't work now.

One big thing to check is that you don't have any items with no sales in the last 90 days?  Any listings with no sales over 90 days old need to be ended, then go to your ended listings and bulk sell similar.  Ideally tweak the title order, change photo order and then relist those sell similar items.  I do mine in batches - its a pain but it has to be done regularly or it pulls your account down as not relevant to buyers.

I've had a nose at your listings and see a few things that may help move your listings forwards.  I'll start by mentioning your paperweight listings as these are attractive items to my eye.

This listing: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/166577387253?hash=item26c8c936f5:g:li4AAOSw2zxlZLu5

Title:  Rare Signed Peter Holmes Traditional Paperweight 1/1 Flower With Heart

In search a buyers search term is weighted roughly against the order of words in the title.  So if a buyer is searching for ' Rare' and 'Signed' they may well bring up your items.  But I'm guessing they're unlikely to be  looking for rare and signed, they may be searching for a traditional paperweight, a Peter Holmes paperweight, Paperweight Peter Holmes Art Glass

If you look at terrapeek sold Peter Holmes paperweights you can see the titles used on those items and prices achieved.  The good news is they're selling.  A lot of people use selkirk glass or Scotish in the titles - would that be correct for your items?

Moving onto images - have you tried eBay's background removal tool?  It may give a more professional look for the higher end prices you're trying to achieve.  Canva have a similar tool (with a free subscription offer) using a large bent white sheet of card on a windowcil  gives a good clean background to start with before background removal.

Your descriptions starting with welcome to my listing - whilst friendly, its using key spaces of the early element of the description for not relevant to the listing information.  Your early description forms part of the algorithm search relevance.  You need your potential key search terms in this area.

Its not easy, it is a challenging market, we all need to be on our A game.

There is quite a long thread full of tips from posters trying to find positives and ways forwards to keep the sales coming in:

https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Business-Seller-Board/Share-your-tips-for-increasing-sales/m-p/75473...

Good luck

[btr.style]

Sales are never guaranteed anywhere and it doesn't instantly mean a problem with the platform because sales aren't what they used to be. 

Tastes and purchase habits change. It seems you are selling a lot of bric-a-brac and collectible items and that market has taken a huge hit especially in recent years. People decorate their homes differently (sad to say but a lot of whites and greys) and don't have areas to plonk various ornaments. 

Once a popular market, it's become very niche and very few people want it. eBay does have its flaws but I can't see how it's to blame because some old mass produced books, royal Worcester and other porcelain/china items aren't selling like they used to when across the board, tastes have changed and it's not what most people want anymore. 

[toolboss15]

Two issues, there is a down tern on collectables less people purchasing them. Also, the searching on eBay now has defaults to a category. This can cut out 20% up to 90% of potential listings. I have spoken to a nice chap from eBay just the other week and he also typed on searching the same things I typed in and found the same. He did say he would report this issue but we will see. I don’t purchase much now on eBay due to the changes they have made, I just go shopping on other platforms instead as many others are doing now also.

[fatbobfan]

@ojewellery has given solid advice, the thread is long but worth the read and act on what is relevant to you. This is in the thread but check out the Ebay YouTube business channel, poor visability and how to improve listings are one of many subjects covered.

From my experience change doesnt happen over night, its gradual, but the work (for us anyway) got results

Good luck

[nigel_paul_wright7557]

Times are hard.

I keep getting silly low offers on items I sell.

[exponential_developments]

Every single item i put on a watch list, i get offers of 5 to 10 percent off within a few days, sellers are struggling on here.

[superchallenge]

Some call it struggling, others would call it adapting and reacting to how buyers use eBay these days.

Increase the starting price by 5% or 10% and then send 5% or 10% offers to people who add things to their watchlist. I know it doesn't please the "I wish eBay was like it was in 2006" crowd but it works, because buyers have slowly been trained by eBay and thrifting culture in general to not pay the asking price. In a lot of cases, they don't actually care if they pay £55 or £50 for an item, as long as they "won" and feel like they got a discount.

[btr.style]

It's not nescesarily the case. 

Businesses have a  variety of stock. Some are best sellers, some not so good. We do well with sales but even we have some not so good sellers in stock. 

When a few watchers come along on those items, I'll send an offer to hopefully get the items gone. Sometimes offers will be sent on items that are almost out of season. 

Look at GANT clothing for example. A great brand in my option which was once very popular and an extremely good seller. At one point a few years ago GANT items were selling like hot cakes. We stocked up and then the market changed. Previously it was a brand most ages liked and now the main buyers are older guys that are bigger sized (Partly I lie, it's women who buy it for their bigger sized older partners). 

If 1 or 2 people start watching some of our GANT listings, an offer is sent. Not because we are struggling or because of eBay, but because that brand has just crashed and we want to get rid of it. 

It's been similar for womens coats. Although that market hasn't crashed, for some reason a lot of women just wont check and compare the measurements. We'll always make it clear that the measurements we provide should be checked with a measuring tape against a coat they already own and know fits. Instead what seems to happen is many will just buy the size number (12,14,16) assuming it will fit (even though different brands have different measurements for the sizes). Then it's return requested because it doesn't fit, leaving us £6 a time out of pocket in initial delivery costs.

Some 90% of our yearly returns are womens coats (High, but considering we'll only sell them August-March/April it's very high) and so I just want them gone. Thus if a coat gains 1 or 2 watchers an offer is usually sent. 

[kempseykate]

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@btr.style wrote:

Once a popular market, it's become very niche and very few people want it. eBay does have its flaws but I can't see how it's to blame because some old mass produced books, royal Worcester and other porcelain/china items aren't selling like they used to when across the board, tastes have changed and it's not what most people want anymore. 

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I absolutely agree. We recently went through our unwanted Royal Worcester - about 4 boxfuls. 3 of the boxes went to a friend (for free!), ½ a box went to the charity shop, and I was going to try and sell the other ½ box on here - but it looks like that may be going to friend/charity as well!

The same with my books - there are a whole load destined for the charity shop in a weeks time after a month listed here..

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

With regards to offers etc I think Ebay has created too much of an expectation of a lower price for the buyer, logic suggests this isn't a positive for sellers.

A few years ago you only really had the best offer feature which was fine for sellers who were happy to negotiate. Now you have best offer, markdowns, coupons, multi buy etc etc.

I appreciate things evolve however not all changes are for the better. Is Ebay a better marketplace than it was 5 - 10 years ago ?

[exponential_developments]

Anyone thinking offers is a good idea are naive, it sets a precedent, i also wonder how many buyers as a percentage put items on a watch list waiting for an offer, then either change their mind, look elsewhere, forget or wander off into town on the weekend and buy from a shop.

It teaches potential buyers to expect, lowers expectations and looks like a car boot sale.

[btr.style]

Markdowns are everywhere these days, not just with the way eBay is. Gone are the days of queuing outside a shop on boxing day to get the best deals in the end of year sale. Sales and discounts now happen almost every other week (black Friday, Xmas, cyber Monday, singles day, valentine's, Easter, summer/winter solstice, Halloween, and so on). 

eBay is just too much of a jack of all trades platform. You have people selling junk they want to get rid of from a spare room which is like a jumble or car boot sale. Making offers on these things is the norm like people would do at an actual car boot sale. 

On the other hand there's businesses that are like a shop in many ways. People wouldn't go into a shop and take a priced item to the tills asking for money off, but many see no problem with doing it to businesses on eBay because of that jumble sale/car boot side of eBay. 

Still though, people can survive and will make sales without markdowns or accepting offers, but the product demand has to be there to begin with. If it won't sell on eBay, then it doesn't mean it would sell any better elsewhere. 

[superchallenge]

I don't necessarily like the idea of them, but seller-initiated offers account for a decent percentage of my sales. I can see why, when I've got buyers making offers of £39 on items that I have listed for £39.99. Car boot sale style or not, people simply like the feeling of getting a "discount." I had somebody counter-offer my counter-offer yesterday to try to get an extra 25p off a £25 item. It's nothing to do with affordability, the market value of the item, or what the buyer is willing to pay. It's simply about beating the dealer. But if the dealer is going about things the right way, they should be happy to let them win.

The simple fact is that offers are here, have been for a while, and they're here to stay. Some sellers will adapt and use them in order to make sales. Others will complain for months about how offers are terrible and eBay should be like it was 20 years ago and how they don't make any sales and can't wait to leave the platform on some arbitrary date in six and a half years' time...maybe...but probably not. Then they'll probably stoop to suggesting that the sellers in the first group are all struggling or desparate, in order to try to back up their points.

Hate to say it, but any precedent with regards to offers has been already set. We can all complain about it as much as we want, but there's no going back.

[tabletop-hobbies]

People are spending less on discretionary (ie non essential) items because the essential stuff is more expensive.  I read recently that 4000 households a week are remortgaging onto a higher rate, meaning hundreds of pound less per household every month.  Add to that wage stagnation in many sectors and the overall inflation of essential goods and you'll find that people are spending less on fancy things.

It doesn't seem to be affecting our cousins in the USA so much as I make good sales there despite the high costs of shipping.

It's hard at the moment but hopefully things will ease up.

[exponential_developments]

"Some call it struggling, others would call it adapting and reacting to how buyers use eBay these days."

You're funny, you seem to think everyone not happy is stuck here, since 2020 when i saw the writing on the wall like many others did, i built an investment business, that in simple terms just for you means i can now retire.................very early.

The only reason to be here is to get rid of remaining stock, if i dosen't sell on here, it will go to the tip.

Happy days.

[superchallenge]

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@exponential_developments wrote:

"Some call it struggling, others would call it adapting and reacting to how buyers use eBay these days."

You're funny, you seem to think everyone not happy is stuck here, since 2020 when i saw the writing on the wall like many others did, i built an investment business, that in simple terms just for you means i can now retire.................very early.

The only reason to be here is to get rid of remaining stock, if i dosen't sell on here, it will go to the tip.

---

You saw the writing on the wall in 2020 and are still selling off stock in 2024.

Well done on not being stuck.

[movestuffonuk]

Time to sell on Amazon ?

[vintagechinashop]

I feel the same pain. It truly has never been this bad in 15 years of selling on eBay. I rely on this to back up my income and it pays my bills   Last month was good as was December and January but it's like a switch has been turned off for me. I could more of less rely on earnings of £200-£300 a week but I've only made £250 this month  when I do get a sale it's £9 or £10 and I have postage to come out of that. My fees are showing at 40% of my sales due to my shop fee mainly and another one is just around the corner. It's very worrying