Sales............stop start, stop start................COMPLETETLY DEAD again October 2024

[theglo-68]

Hi

Wonder if anyone else have noticed a sudden decline in sales since Jan 2024. Unsure what could have caused this.

We have started moving our business however we still have good amount of listings on ebay platform but sales died completely since 20/10/24 and today no SALES.

Has there been any changes to promoted listings by ebay that may have killed it.

Please advise.

[exponential_developments]

Ebay took an 8% dump after the market close................hope you did well.

[d-klutter]

Ha ha - yeah.

The beauty of options is the leverage as you will know so it all turned out alright on the night. The stock alone was down 21% at one point but gradually clawed back, but suspect we will see another dip at the open as the non-market makers get involved.

The presentation to the market was interesting - banging on about how ebay is "doing magical things with AI which is enhancing th customer experience" - they are desperately trying to make themselves and AI play but the analysts appear to finally be cottoning on that its just smoke & mirrors and all is not well in the ivory towers.

Suspect they will be closer to $50 by year end. Maybe below $50.

[exponential_developments]

I can't remember the total AI chip spend, nobody is making money from it, the amount is negligible, and they won't because the answers it gives nomatter the source are answers that agian are manipulated and woke, so already the trust factor is pants.

Ebays AI is like a class of 12 year olds have written it.

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

The A I descriptions of items are absolutely laughable, item descriptions should be clear and concise with no nonsense, many of the A I examples I have seen are anything but that.

As was mentioned earlier the "doing magical things with A I" is about as disingenuous as you can get, par for the course I guess.

The Ebay financial update yesterday should be another turning point for the company, any time you lower expectations going forward isn't going to go down well.

Also the UK site must be taking a hammering at the moment in terms of revenue.

[cardhawkuk]

I actually find AI to be really useful for factual questions, but you really have to work at getting it to understand what you want - the writing of the question/query is everything. I have spent my working life using Excel, like so many of us, so can write some really complex scripts, but I now use AI for it - it writes really complex and clever formulas in ways I would often never have thought of. 

But as for letting Ebays AI write my listings, I tested it a few times and it was absolutely laughable - full of word salad - like you say, looks like it was programmed by 12 year olds (not saying 12 year olds can't be super clever, but you know what I mean - maybe programmed by 2 year olds is more apt). I just don't think AI works for the ebay thing - listings need to be succint and targeted as opposed to being padded out with reams and reams of loosely associated waffle.

[exponential_developments]

I agree with your first paragraph as in essence, you are asking for objective information, but once it becomes subjective, then i see it becomes manipulated to suite the source.

[cardhawkuk]

Exactly that.

Ebay shares now down 10% in pre-market.

It's not pretty

[the_book_seekers]

For "doing magical things with A I" I read making a mess of backroom functions.

[the_book_seekers]

 The Ebay financial update yesterday should be another turning point for the company, any time you lower expectations going forward isn't going to go down well.

Especially going in to what is supposed to be peak season.

[typo_lee]

With the IFS now saying that labour is playing 'Silly games' with the budget and the OBR saying there was NO inherited 22 billion black hole it says it all. We are in for a rough old 5 years (or maybe longer) if the UK can't recover from this shower.

[the_book_seekers]

ebay has spent another $881 million dollars on stockholders - $750 million in share buybacks and $131 million in cash dividends. 

[exponential_developments]

The old line in the sand wasn't breached yesterday, gives me more time to increase assets, but i feel, and seem to have become used to the thoughts of becoming a member of the Bu33er off form Brittain club.

[the_book_seekers]

I'm really fed up of the glitching now. Still getting dumped in to .com on occassions, site not loading properly, needing repeated refreshes for ten days now. I've tried the usual advice - cookies etc etc. Perhaps ebay could divert some of that 'magical' AI to sorting it out.

[exponential_developments]

Same here, i get directed to .com everytime i leave these boards.

[cardhawkuk]

At least all of those shop fees and promotional fees are going to a good home! 

I just downgraded my shop from Anchor to Basic. I used to have about £4-500k of stock on my shop, but did a big clearout and rationalisation, removed everything from ebay, and then started to reload - only to find out that a very low total value cap had been put in place which previously hadn't been there. When I called up to ask why, they said it was because I don't put tracking references into ebay - something I have never done unless they feed back automatically from the RM site, and also I have never had a single complaint of slow or late delivery, so a really strange reason to throttle my shop. So I have taken my shop down to basic which loses ebay about £5k per annum in shop fees, and am sending the bulk of that stuff off to auction and will keep the better stuff to sell only through my own website. I quite like the outcome so pleased they did what they did.

From ebays point of view, it's business suicide driven by people who appear to be making it up as they go along.

[oilydub]

August/September was bad for me so that makes the following (taken from my Ebay sales data) even worse.

Sales for the last 31 days are £840.58  -  56.3% Down

[Anonymous]

There are economic challenges in China, and similar issues have begun to emerge in Germany, leading to concerns about a potential recession.

[cardhawkuk]

There we go........profit taken..........

The amazing stat is more money made in 1 day from shorting the stock than in the previous 341 days of 2024 combined while working stupid hours trying to make a profit from selling stuff on the platform. 

That tells me all I need to know.

Now I just need to wait for that dead cat and repeat the exercise

[therenewalworkshopltd]

To be fair, shorting stock could lose you everything as well as make you a profit.

At least if your selling stuff, you do actually have physical stock to back it up.

And I am quite sure that the vast majority of people, don't have a clue about shorting stock etc.

[cardhawkuk]

Fair point well made.

The trade was put options with stop losses so it would never lose everything, but to your point, it could have lost money as easily as it made money if the results had been positive, but I work on a small downside large upside basis so the risk was small. 

In terms of having stock, a lot of stuff I have sat on for way too long is now worth less than I paid for it - some I am completely writing off, so have lost 100% of my investment on that. As my brother in law once told me, and he is a cracking salesperson, no stock is good stock. He works on the basis if he hasn't sold it within 30 days he overpaid for it and will take a loss to shift it. Brutal but it works, and is a very good approach.

One man's meat and all that.