Sales crashed since end of March. Anyone else?

[typo_lee]

Anyone elses sales totally crashed since the end of March? Normally can go quiet waiting for payday but this seems very odd? Yesterday was our poorest day for sales in 25 years. Or is it people not spending because every bill has gone up plus the Trump effect? April is normally really good for us so this will be interesting to see how it all pans out.

[vintagechinashop]

After a good March things have been very quiet for the first few days of April. At the moment not enough to cover my shop fee but we will see what the weekend brings 

[action_man]

Personally speaking, I am boycotting eBay due to the recent changes inflicted on private sellers, plus the buyer's protection fee which I am not prepared to pay to greedeBay. I would imagine there are a lot of people like me out there. I think there are more people who were private sellers putting the money they got from their sales into the pockets of business sellers, so ironically the business sellers who cheered all of this on may end up having those smug smiles wiped off their faces.

I'm finding everything I want elsewhere so far, so thankfully I have had no need to use eBay at all since the beginning of January. Without the interesting items private sellers let go of from their collections, what is left on eBay? Only the same old, same old, you can find anywhere else. Boring!

On principle, I will not support a platform who shafted the very people who helped eBay get where they are today.

[auctiongabble]

Sales dropped off a cliff end of February for me.  March,no sales!

[vinylscot]

March was the worst month for this business account since Covid, by about 20%.

April hasn't started any better.

Looking at my own personal finances though, my council tax, electricity bill, mobile phone and internet have all increased, by a total of around £35.00, which all came out of my account on Tuesday, so I reckon that must be having some effect.

Add to that the general disquiet around eBay at the moment - I know a couple of my regular buyers have decided to stop buying until (or unless) things settle down, so I reckon we might have another couple of months of this at least.

I'm not running much over break even, even when adding in my sales from elsewhere, so it's not only eBay, although eBay is performing poorer than my other outlets.

[the_book_seekers]

March was good for me, but only because a single buyer purchased several of my more expensive items. A quick burst followed by 5 days of nothing.  Not much at the start of April so far.

[cobwebcottage]

You keep saying that you are boycotting Ebay and 'will not support a platform who shafted people' and continue to cry wolf every week and saying you are leaving the boards but here you are again.

It's getting very boring and what are you getting out of it?

You don't sell any more, you find everything you need somewhere else so why do you continue to comment? 

Just move on.

[probi9246]

I've noticed what seems to be a lot less selection on eBay over the last couple of months. I'm guessing private sellers must be leaving or must have stopped listing in their droves. I agree with @action_man it is a lot of private sellers items that brought/brings traffic to the site.

Without them business sellers are going to be hit massively as well, private sellers would also use money they've made on here to spend on items from other sellers.

If I were a major shareholder with eBay I'd be very concerned about how the company is being run.

[handscartridges]

We have noticed a massive drop since Feb, always strange you get hardly any sales then a big influx of sales then it stops again.

[hudsonsclothes]

It's a shame, I started 6 months ago and had little to no knowledge of eBay and was given so much great advice and feedback from this forum. I was given packaging suppliers cheaper than the one I previously used, tips on my previously awful listing's and a supplier for what I sell.

Now however I mostly avoid it as it's just filled with negativity when it could be a great place for people to share their knowledge and experiences. I understand people will be going through a hard time and some depend heavily on the platform but I don't feel venting constantly is helpful to anyone. I hope all of your April's pick up 

[cobwebcottage]

It's still a good place and plenty of help and support available for us when we need it.

I understand that some sellers are having a rough time but spamming the business boards with their tosh is not helping when they don't even sell ( or buy) and are not even a business!

March sales for me were better than Christmas months. April so far is dire!

[typo_lee]

Same here March was good but so far April terrible. And it is in our amazon store as well tbf

[cobwebcottage]

Too many changes on here and increased bills. It's going to be another hard year.

I must admit, I'm hardly buying either.

[davidninetynine]

One thing that nobody has suggested is the effect of ebay's search system having been badly messed up.

I have used ebay (since 2003) for buying items for my hobbies, nearly all from private sellers who are decluttering / moving house / disposing of late relatives' effects,  etc. 

I used to regularly browse for items in various categories, via my saved searches and save sellers lists and also from some searches bookmarked in my browser.

Over the last year or so, and especially in the last few months, most of the searches have become unusable. A lot of this is due to them being swamped with false positives - a mixture of Chinese tat and random items unrelated to my search categories.

Some of my searches are set up for email notifications, but I have gradually reduced these because I don't want to wade through emails full of irrelevant stuff that bears no relation to my search criteria.

Now, the only usable way to browse most categories or subcategories is to select "auction" to get rid of all the tat. Which works OK for me because  I'm interested in hobby items, most of which come from from private sellers who usually list as auctions.

Doing this reduces the numbers of listings in some categories from (yes, really) tens of thousands to the tens or the low hundreds, which is managable for browsing. I have to accept that I miss all the Buy It Now items but sadly it's a price worth paying.

All this has meant that I have been buying less on ebay than i used to. I'm probaby not the only one.

I would expect the gradual failure of the search system's usability to have had a serious effect on sellers, especially those selling niche items or hobby and vintage stuff.

In the last couple of weeks I have noticed a big reduction in what's for sale and many of my Saved Sellers have stopped listing altogether. 

I haven't sold anything via ebay for years, I just got fed up with the site becoming less and less user-friendly, maybe they have done the same.

[elarajupiter3d]

Completely, in over two years i have literally only had one day of no sales until the last 3-4 weeks, it has plummeted to the extreme, literally hardly any sales, down like 80%. used to make quite a few it’s taken 5 days to cover the subscription cost lol ridiculous. I don’t honestly see with promoting items plus transaction costs and vat and monthly fee what exactly it is they’re doing to warrant it all. Might just move to shopify ebay has become too costly for no return the site is old looking overly complicated and restrictive. Sales drop it you have a vpn protecting your system they seem to drop it you have offer suggestions not acted on, you end up discounting, paying tracked postage because otherwise your not covered, if you charge postage people are outraged. At this point ebay earn more from my work than i do. I’ve even had people buy products from my shop with me and in i’ve charged promotion fees when they didn’t even search let alone click promoted items. it’s becoming a rip off and a joke. The time and energy put in is ridiculous to what we get out. Someone needs to create a different setup ebay is letting everyone down and just taking and not giving