Time for a Level Playing Field...

[collectablecats]

Let's call a spade a spade. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of 'private' sellers  on ebay who are trading. And the number of their listings is ballooning as they get rolled over for free every month.

I often check other listings before deciding whether to list a card I have, and its not unusual to discover 'private' sellers with many thousands, even tens of thousands of sales, and hundreds or thousands of free listings that roll over for free every month, meaning their 'shops' get bigger and bigger, slowly making business listings harder to find. Just yesterday I discovered a 'private' seller in my category with 26,000 sales and 2000+ listings - all sitting there free of change and paying no commission when they sell.

There is no way to address this effectively without LEVELLING THE PLAYING FIELD  and giving all sellers the same deal when listing and paying commission. This is what happens in the USA an in Australia, where you also get a huge number of 'free' listings when you pay for a shop compared to here in the UK.

Sure, give private sellers 20 or 30 free listings a month - who, listing things they want to get rid of, would honestly need more -  but include the monthly roll-overs in that total so they have to decide whether to keep those items running, just like businesses do.  And charge them commission on sales. 

Ebsy likes to call itslef a 'community' - but when the community leaders make businesses pay through the nose to allow their competitors to have everything free, it doesn't feel like a community for many legitimate businesses on here. Especially when they are then invited to pay even more to 'promote' items, so they have a better chance of being seen among the vast sea of 'private' listings they have been subsidising.

One hopes eBay will one day place 'community' values at the heart of their 'community' and treat businesses fairly by reintroducing a level playing field. 

[sheba-knows-best]

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@5216elisabeth wrote:

 Likewise I have sold camping items in December, for example. In many cases these had been left running from their original season as I had spare listing capacity. 

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You mean... no spare listing capacity? ie they rebounded again even WITHOUT being relisted or sell-similared?

(Not trying to be picky, just trying to understand 🙂)

[5216elisabeth]

Yes, I mean I had left them running with no tweaking.

I have a shop and they seem to count them in the new months allowance whether I leave them alone or take them off and sell similar. I checked this listings counter as they passed their month to see. So some, particularly ones with a good sales history, I just leave running. 

Needless to say I do sell similar if the season gets underway and they don't pick up again. As I do with things that aren't moving or have stalled. 

By the way, thanks for all the helpful things you post on here. I have found quite a few very good to know 🙂

[jlovie]

They could also be using old free listings as placeholders.

Is there anything to prevent completely editing an old listing into something different?

[sheba-knows-best]

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@5216elisabeth wrote:

Yes, I mean I had left them running with no tweaking.

I have a shop and they seem to count them in the new months allowance whether I leave them alone or take them off and sell similar. I checked this listings counter as they passed their month to see. So some, particularly ones with a good sales history, I just leave running. 🙂

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Yes - I understand - I forgot about sales history for people with multiple numbers of the same item. 

[vintagechinashop]

I’ve officially hit a milestone on eBay. After 12 years almost to the day of selling on eBay I have gone a whole 7 days without a single sale. That’s a record. Sales for me have been in decline in the last couple of years and I took the decision to downgrade to a basic shop but still with 250 listings I have been getting sales   My sales no longer justified a higher shop level hence the reason for a downgrade so I’m now rotating the listings each month keeping the most popular but to go seven days without a sale is even making me question if it’s worth me selling on here at all

ive started selling on other platforms and this week I have had 5 sales and I have limited listings over there and gradually listing more. I know it’s usually quiet for me during the summer months and the cost of living and I guess the heatwave doesn’t help but it proves to me that people are still buying on other platforms. So I guess I now need to shift my focus over from eBay 

very sad that eBay is definitely not the place it used to be. I still recall months when my mortgage was paid by my sales on here. Now I can barely manage to pay for a few essential items at the supermarket 

[the_brick_lodge]

Very quiet here, blistering heat after such a bad start to the year with half term on top, market in town was bustling yesterday, beach was packed last weekend, I think people are just out and about, which is a nice thing but obviously not good for sales unless what you are selling is outdoor related. It's a good time to do all the boring jobs like taking photos or dealing with paperwork.

[vintagechinashop]

I do agree that weather has a significant part to play 

However. I listed two things which have been on eBay Tweeked and sell similar numerous times,  and have been on eBay probably for about a year , and I decided to put on vinted this morning   They sold within an hour of me listing them so we can’t put all lack of sales down to weather and cost of living 

also I was talking to a lady this morning who knows what I sell and has bought direct from me a few times and she asked me how I was doing on eBay obviously the conversation followed and I told her that I was now selling on E..y and she said that when she was looking for things she never goes on eBay any more and much prefers the other sites. I do wonder how many other buyers out there have done the same 

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

I think in the type of categories you and I sell in more and more buyers are heading elsewhere, the traffic and sales speak for themselves, the buyers are out there however far fewer are venturing onto this platform. Much of this decline is down to the way Ebay have managed the platform.  Once buyers have been lost it will be extremely difficult to get them back.