No Sales MKII

[dwtrading2015]

Since the No sales board was abruptly terminated, after 88 pages of contributions, I've tried setting it up again here

[tr3asurep0rium]

School holidays started this week. It's dead quiet for me as well. BUT! I have just recently, after a lot of forum searching, found the way to get my postage policies to line up with Top Rated Seller Plus so views, visits and clicks are up, up and up. Just trying to maintain this now and hope I can ride it out the holiday slump until September.

[oceanartsnorthdevon]

Has the "outage" yesterday affected ebay do we know?  Or is this lack of activity still  just the norm?

[dwtrading2015]

Not effected eBay directly, but there is a big juicy excuse there, so I expect it to be used as an excuse for something.

[dwtrading2015]

What postage policies?  Are these the one day dispatch and 'free' postage?

[gift_of_sound]

Just had some success with one of my products unexpectedly selling a nice few units...

...when I looked into it, I noticed that this was one listing I had updated as an experiment to be promoted using the insanely stupid concept of Dynamic Promoted Ads.

It turns out eBay has been bidding 12.6% of my invoice price on my behalf and of course this covers more than the profit I would have made on selling the item.

So I have finally discovered the perfect selling point on the new eBay.

[dwtrading2015]

Surley this is illegal.  Just been trawling through fees charged after being whacked for a total 40% on an item because the auto adjust promo fee % had a massive adjustment up - it was an experiment.  I then noticed lots of doubling up of insertion and international fees.  Turns out these listings had 2 catagories, so there is a fee for the 2nd catagory and this generates a 2nd international fee.  Point is, I never listed these items in two catagories.  I only have one set of items in two catagories because the sales stats shows both catagories seem to return equal sales (for the same item which tells me all I need to know about how well the catagory system is working!).  Otherwise I don't bother with any other catagory because it makes little to no difference.  So how come these other lisitings suddenly entered themselves in to 2nd catagories?  What a damn cheek!

[gift_of_sound]

I'm not sure it is illegal but it would certainly be incompetence and eBay should remove the duplicate fees and refund the difference. You would need to go back over your fees and see when it changed though... 🙄

[swiss_expert_uk]

Is anyone else having any sales? Sales have dropped massively in the last couple of weeks. 

[typo_lee]

Dead as a dead thing. Its school holidays. People are already skint and they are spending on their families holidays not ebay tat. If your only selling on ebay right now then your business will collapse IMO. People need to be selling on multiple platforms to survive I believe. Ebay is definitely not what it used to be.

[the_book_seekers]

I've had a better month than last, but as June was my worst in 20 years that doesn't say much. The number of sales is still down but saved by the value of purchases (thank goodness). 

[dwtrading2015]

Other sites?  Can be even more ify.  For no apparent reason I've just been permanently banned from selling or buying on Etsy.  Claiming policy violations.  I've been selling the exact same items for getting on five years now. A quick trawl thru Etsy chat and this seems to be a common thing.  And appeals not even being considered.  Seems the bot over at Etsy has gone AWOL.  I noted their share price has crashed 40% over the last 12 months.  Market traders are usually pretty good a spotting large businesses about to crash. If Etsy is indeed going under then that means all their sellers pitching up on eBay's lawn - but also means a large increase in foot fall.  The Etsy ban methodolog is remarkable cruel and has devestated some quite large craft outlets.  At least at eBay you can get through to someone on a phone and you can get to the specifics of what is supposedly wrong to fix it.  Fortunately Etsy had diminished to about a tenner a week profit, if that.  It really is crashing.  Any pointers to alternative sites to sell on?

[charmkeyrings]

Yes, but not what I could honestly say was a living.  I think the old saying is true.  Don't have your eggs in one basket.  FWIW Etsy have become known for shutting down people's accounts for no reason recently.  That hasn't happened to me (YET).  Spread your net wide.

[vintagewatchpart]

I am seeing a lot of "its quiet because kids have broken up" thrown around on the community, youtube videos and comments on videos. I am almost certain the same was said last year in similar threads.

If your sales are down on this time last year, the holidays are not to blame as there were holidays last year as well... 

The search functionality doesn't get discussed often enough and I brought it up on the weekly chat so often and was told everythings fine and its working as it should be - well if this is how they want it to be working then we have problems.

Perhaps a new thread should be started showing our strange encounters with Ebay search results when looking for things? It would highlight the utter absurdity of how it is working and if it looks like that to us, imagine how it looks to customers searching for items...

[swiss_expert_uk]

Yes i dont buy any of the excuses, sales have been turned off like a tap recently, best selling items have stopped selling, huge gaps between sales, 12- 24 hours and a general feeling that my account isnt active outside of small one hour windows.

This week is my lowest payout this year. 

I cant be sure but major recent ebay updates make me think ebay are responsible. (New promoted listing dashboard and the implementation of GSPR into the listing flow seem like they have broken things) 

[vintagechinashop]

July has for me been better than the last few months so I felt quite cheerful until I looked at last Julyss figures which were 50% higher than this month. Oh well onwards and downwards as they say 

[decalicious]

Deleted - using wrong login!

[technthread]

I have listed a few bits of personal clothing on my private account. Crickets..

I have also helped a family member list on theirs this week - £50 vintage dresses with a 99p start bid with just a couple of watchers after 2 days. They aren't happy and want to pull the listings to put it on Vinted instead. 

I have listed 17 items on Depop today. If you think it's bad here, it feels like there is nobody online over there today. 

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Depop has been dying for a while now.  But right at the moment with the weather the way it is, it's really not that suprising to be quiter on the clothing.

They will probably sell them on Vinted, but I would be willing to bet at a considerably lower price than if they are prepared to wait on Ebay.  Personally, I wouldn't sell them as auctions though.  Better to wait and get a more reasonable price, unless they are particularly unusual.  

Saying that though, I'm still seeing sales go through with the clothes and the last week has actually been quite busy.  And for some reason, people are buying winter stuff, which I can't for the life of me fathom at all.

[tr3asurep0rium]

Considerable bargains (this is ofc subjective what a bargain might mean for an individual) can be had in summer on winter items. I like buying jackets and coats in summer. It makes economical sense.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Yes, I don't disagree with that.  But I certainly don't sell the same things any cheaper in the summertime, than I do for winter.  🙂

It's only been this last week or so, that I'm seeing a lot of people looking at the winter stuff, it just seems strange.