Yep, no sales again for the last 10 days :( ...Is GhostBay the new name for eBay now ???

[bittyboy101]

The weekend's almost over... normally at this time I would at least have 1 or 2 items sold and would be packing them ready to trot over to the Post Office in the morning... now nothing sold agian... It seems like the normal keywords I normally use to attract buyers are now no longer working anymore, so I tried an experiment of swapping keywords to DIFFERENT keywords in the attempt to attract some NEW buyers that haven't seen my stuff before... that was this morning and guess what ?... my items are still on 1 - 2 views and some are still on 0 views ! with nothing sold yet again ! 😞

Googling this and reading many post on these boards, it seems this is now very common on eBay and there are a lot of frustrated people who have also complained about LACK of sales on items they used to sell loads of on eBay once upon a time BEFORE 2020. 

As the heading implies, It now seems that the folks who are in charge of running eBay have now destroyed whatever little income PRIVATE sellers once had and they have now turned eBay which was a very effective selling platform into a GHOSTBAY !... where it is now a complete chore to list a simple item with these now complicated "item specifics" and after you have spent much time filling out  item specifics then your listed items are not shown in the search results to all buyers when they go  to search for an item like what you are selling !... It seems that some buyers can only see a limited amount of eBay listings and if yours is not shown to them (when it should have been by the keywords they used) then that's it !... your items just sit there for days/weeks/months with only 1 or 2 views and the odd couple of watchers who had spotted your listing during the first few minutes it was listed and decided to watch it just for fun ! 

I think that eBay really need to stop this poor practice of ghosting listings of small private sellers and stop manipulating the search results ! - If someone types in the keyword or item brand name, then eBay should honour the search and show ALL ITEMS related to that specific keyword instead of just showing a  watered down search result which is leaving out vital items from ALL EBAY SELLERS which could be EXACTLY what a buyer is looking for ! 

[bittyboy101]

I've now given up and taken almost all of my items off eBay... as selling anything here now seems pointless when It is being deliberately hidden on purpose.

[superchallenge]

As it happens, on Friday, I was reading a post that you wrote where you complained about similar issues, and I clicked on your listings. There were none.

Today, you have four listings, all of which are new. One was listed on Friday afternoon, the other three were all listed after 11pm on Sunday night...so AFTER you posted this topic. So you had one item listed and are complaining that nothing sells. Then posted that you've "taken almost all my items off eBay" about 20 minutes before listing three more items.

What exactly were you expecting to sell this weekend?

I'm pretty sure eBay would have a hard time hiding listings that don't even exist.

[bittyboy101 · Accepted solution]

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@superchallenge wrote:

As it happens, on Friday, I was reading a post that you wrote where you complained about similar issues, and I clicked on your listings. There were none.

Today, you have four listings, all of which are new. One was listed on Friday afternoon, the other three were all listed after 11pm on Sunday night...so AFTER you posted this topic. So you had one item listed and are complaining that nothing sells. Then posted that you've "taken almost all my items off eBay" about 20 minutes before listing three more items.

What exactly were you expecting to sell this weekend?

I'm pretty sure eBay would have a hard time hiding listings that don't even exist.

---

NO, You got it all wrong.

I had 15 items listed since Tuesday - Nothing was getting seen and nothing had certainly sold.

Most were on 0 views all week - Totally strange for items that had been listed correctly with the correct keywords that had gotten me sales for 8 years... Now nothing, not one item sold... when normally on Sunday night I have 1 or 2 sales and items to post in the morning... So I took down all the items I was selling where people were just watching and doing nothing and I relisted  the items that were more likely to sell as people seem to like lathe parts.

It's cold, damp and people just ain't buying locks or doing DIY at the moment so it's pointless listing those now, especially when eBay is now hiding everything because I have not paid them  EXTRA MONEY  to show my stuff in the searches !   

[superchallenge]

So you had 15 items listed all week - fair enough.

On Friday when I looked at your listings, you had none, as I said. Then you listed one on Friday. Then on Sunday night you came on here to complain you had no weekend sales, before listing three more items.

My question is relatively simple. How can people buy things that you don't have listed?

If I can make one suggestion - please stop getting angry about watchers. Whether you like the system or not, it is there. It won't go away. It won't change. Some people - myself included - will add things to their watchlist because they're keeping an eye on some things and will decide what to buy later. I know that you think that every person watching is waiting for the "dumb and desparate seller" (your words) to make an offer, and a lot are, but not all of them. The people watching your listings now can't buy your items because they no longer exist.

Also, listing an item and then delisting it for ten reasons or another, then listing it again, then delisting it, doesn't help the eBay search algorithms at all. If you have an item for sale and it isn't selling, let it sit for a while and list your other stuff. It isn't just search that drives traffic. "Other Items From This Seller" also does pretty well but if your items aren't listed, then...

[bittyboy101]

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@superchallenge wrote:

So you had 15 items listed all week - fair enough.

On Friday when I looked at your listings, you had none, as I said. Then you listed one on Friday. Then on Sunday night you came on here to complain you had no weekend sales, before listing three more items.

My question is relatively simple. How can people buy things that you don't have listed?

If I can make one suggestion - please stop getting angry about watchers. Whether you like the system or not, it is there. It won't go away. It won't change. Some people - myself included - will add things to their watchlist because they're keeping an eye on some things and will decide what to buy later. I know that you think that every person watching is waiting for the "dumb and desparate seller" (your words) to make an offer, and a lot are, but not all of them. The people watching your listings now can't buy your items because they no longer exist.

Also, listing an item and then delisting it for ten reasons or another, then listing it again, then delisting it, doesn't help the eBay search algorithms at all. If you have an item for sale and it isn't selling, let it sit for a while and list your other stuff. It isn't just search that drives traffic. "Other Items From This Seller" also does pretty well but if your items aren't listed, then...

---

I had 15 items listed last week, I took them down on Monday due to the bad weather after it snowed heavily in my area (North West England), I then relisted them all again on Tuesday evening, between Tuesday and Friday there  were still all on 0-1 views with only a couple of items with 1 watcher (probably you !)... This is no good to me when this person watching is not buying... so I cancelled all my listings Sunday night and just relisted the 4 items you're now seeing.

Now, I'm sorry that they are not the items that you want, You did have your chance.

If you just watch and not buy... this is not really my fault and If I'm not happy (because you're just watching and doing nothing and eBay are HIDING MY LISTINGS in the searches), Then I reserve the right to take the item down and either relist it again to try and generate a result of a sale or totally cancel it until there is more demand for that particular item.

Watchers do now make me angry, this is because I get my hopes up that someone is going to buy something and I'm going to make some money... (which used to happen before 2020), Now only for them just watch to the bitter end and DO NOTHING ! 😞

I know something in eBay has now changed since 2020 when eBay changed the seller hub and changed everything over to "managed payments" where sales declined for LOTS OF PEOPLE not just myself as these boards are full of people complaining and eBay does nothing to help the situation other then introduce PAY FOR MORE VISIBILITY !"... which adds insult to the injury... eBay just  seen this as a new way to exploit desperate gullible sellers for even MORE MONEY... I even tried this out on a couple of my listings and they still remained on ZERO VIEWS all week ! so paying for "More better visibility" is rather pointless !       

[superchallenge]

Just to clarify, I wasn't a watcher on your item and I have no interest in any item you've ever had listed, so sorry if it (somehow) came across as if I did. Not saying anything negative about your items. Just I have no interest.

I could offer a number of tips that could help to improve your views, but I'm relatively sure that every single one of them would get the same old "everybody else is dumb, my way is perfect, the buyers should do what I want, and I would sell everything I had if eBay would just go back to 2020 - I'm taking my listings down" response that I've got in the past. I remember when I suggested that your 1,600 word multi-coloured, multi-sized, repetitive item descriptions could be formatted better, be more concise, and be less hostile sounding, and you told me that you weren't going to change them because you didn't want dumb, impatient buyers who can't read or won't take the time to read anyway. That was a good one. 😀

But I will say one thing. You're banging on about Promoted Listings (which are commonly known as "advertising" as opposed to "bribes.") Promoted Listings won't do anything for you because your items - as good as they may be - are far too niche for advertising to have an effect. If I search for "Minilor" then your item shows up as one of only two. If I search for "Unimat 4" then your item shows up in the top three. (Oh look, your listings aren't being "hidden". Shocker!)

Promoting your item to be top of that top two or three isn't going to increase your views. Interested people can see your product anyway. The Promoted Listings system is designed to not only make eBay money, but to help people compete in super-competitive niches. It isn't going to drive people who have no interest in a specific product to suddenly become viewers or buyers.

And you can call Promoted Listings users "gullible" as much as you want. I use it. I just promote at 3% and put my prices up by 3% to cover it. It's an advertising cost that should be factored into pricing, the same way that free shipping is. Somehow on this apparently dead ghost town of a site, with my extremely niche products, with the big bad bosses in charge apparently hiding my listings, with managed payments apparently somehow causing buyers to desert the platform right and left, I've managed to have only two days (25/12 and 27/12 - both days when my store was on "Time Away") since September 1st that had no sales. It's not even 2020 anymore, either! I can't believe I've been so gullible, and dumb, and desparate.

Anyway, good luck to you.

[bittyboy101]

Thank you Superchallenge for that.

I do remember you saying about my text and that you did not like seeing coloured text.

Unfortunately, there are lots of people on eBay who don't always read or understand the listing descriptions properly, so I always make things clear and use larger coloured text to draw a buyer's attention to that particular part of the listing description so they can read it properly ! BEFORE they decide to buy, as I just want a straight forward sale with no misunderstandings.

I have just left the lathe parts on eBay because I know that the searches for lathe parts such as "Emco Unimat" and "old lathe" are still working up to a fashion, but anything to do with antiques and locks has now been seriously messed up and those items now sit with ZERO VIEWS most of the time making it appear as if eBay are not showing them to people searching for those items.

Anyway, Thanks for the well wishes and all the very best of luck to you too. 🙂  

[superchallenge]

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@bittyboy101 wrote:

I do remember you saying about my text and that you did not like seeing coloured text.

Unfortunately, there are lots of people on eBay who don't always read or understand the listing descriptions properly, so I always make things clear and use larger coloured text to draw a buyer's attention to that particular part of the listing description so they can read it properly ! BEFORE they decide to buy, as I just want a straight forward sale with no misunderstandings.

Respectfully, it isn't that I dislike seeing coloured text.

It's that I've been a professional web developer for 25 years, and one of the first things you learn in that job is not to use too many font sizes, too many font colours, or too many font styles. The reason is that it actually has the exact opposite effect from what you're intending, and makes the text too confusing to follow. If you highlight everything, you highlight nothing. Also, brevity is key. You overexplain a lot of the points you make, and repeat yourself over and over. That does NOT make anything clearer. It leads to your true messages being lost in the crowd. Boatloads of unneeded text also dilute your keywords, which are pretty important for search.

It also makes your listing look a might unprofessional, which is a massive disservice to you because - from what I can tell - you offer a pretty professional service.

I would be more than happy to rewrite and restyle one of your listings for you (no charge, of course) if you would like. You would then be able to use that as a template for all of your future listings.

[bittyboy101]

Point teken ! - It now makes sense coming from a professional web developer ! 😉

My point is I have always done the text thing since 2007 (and I was also am a huge fan of HTML coding which eBay have now stopped), but this "loudness" in my listings was never a problem as I had many sales and a lot of happy buyers who also used to return back to me for more stuff that they liked which was very pleasing 🙂

I also wanted my listings to look unprofessional so that people can see that I am only a small private seller selling a few bits and bobs and that I am not a business or a professional shop that is capable of processing thousands of orders weekly.

For me, I was just happy with a few regular sales now and again in order to make some pocket money to buy other stuff I wanted off eBay or the odd occasional takeaway dinner on a Friday night ! 😎 

Now, seriously since 2020 nothing is shifting and there are next to no views on any old antique item I've been trying to sell on eBay.

Thanks for your kind offer to help me make a listing template - This is very kind of you, but I somehow don't  think this is going to cut it when eBay have now messed up all the searches and people are not always being shown the TRUE SEARCH results when they should have been. 

[bittyboy101]

I've now ended all my listings, not because of eBay, but due to very high winds and severe flood warnings issued for my part of the UK.

Will probably resume selling on eBay Wednesday or Thursday once the bad weather clears up...

If anyone else is noticing a drop in sales, then please feel free and welcome to post here and share your story - Moaners are most welcome ! 😉

[bittyboy101]

Just seen etsy and seen the huge selection of vintage locks they now have !  😲  - see link below;-

https://www.etsy.com/uk/search?q=old%20locks&ref=search_bar 

Now I know why eBay has been so ghostly and dead lately... when all the sellers that eBay have now driven away with their changes and high fees have all flocked over to good old etsy ! 🙂 👌

I did sell one of my locks on there (etsy) before Christmas, but I had forgotten about that site when my google chrome suddenly decided enough was enough ! and crashed !... randomly closing and losing all my 200+ tabs I had open... as for some unknown reason chrome failed to restore my last session !! 😞 😡

Might migrate over to etsy and put some of my stuff on there site until eBay comes to it's senses and sorts out their broken search engine which now does not seem to be doing me and many other small sellers any favours... 🙄 🙄 🙄

[superchallenge]

I was looking at Etsy the other day for some of my more vintage items (I know there's some sort of 20-year rule over there before something can be classed as "vintage" so not all of my items would qualify) and couldn't find much up-to-date info on their fees.

Is this still accurate? Genuine question.

[bittyboy101]

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@superchallenge wrote:

I was looking at Etsy the other day for some of my more vintage items (I know there's some sort of 20-year rule over there before something can be classed as "vintage" so not all of my items would qualify) and couldn't find much up-to-date info on their fees.

Is this still accurate? Genuine question.

---

You know what... I'll happily give etsy the extra few quid for a quick RESULT !

I've had stuff listed on eBay for 2 years which still hasn't sold yet !

I'm now at the stage where I don't care about the fees, I just want regular sales and that extra bit of money I used to have from eBay... If etsy can help me generate reliable quick cash then they get my business !

[theelench]

"Just seen etsy and seen the huge selection of vintage locks they now have!"

When, years ago, I first looked at etsy for Art Deco Glass it only had about five pages of items but it overtook ebay a few years later.  One reason I've never tried selling there is I couldn't make head nor tail of their fee structure.  I couldn't work out how much it would cost to sell a £10 item there when, even with ebay and paypal fees, it wasn't difficult on ebay.

How accurate the table is, I couldn't say but I remember one ebay seller relatively recently being shocked to find that they'd been charged over 30% to sell an item there.  Perhaps there are 'hidden' extras above the basics ?  So I'd look carefully at etsy fees before committing.

I read the ecommerce blog that we can't name and they seem to have 'No sales' problems and complaints, especially in vintage, similar to ebay.  So perhaps read some of their etsy articles for more background?

Did they hold your payment as a new seller when you sold your lock?  And do you remember the furore when etsy decided to introduce 'Running Reserves' which meant that sellers were never paid-out in full, etsy kept an 'in hand' balance, just in case a buyer wanted their money back  and at such a swinging level that some craft sellers found they weren't being paid enough of their sales proceeds to buy the materials to make the next item to sell.

Yes, they did relent when sellers started putting their shops 'On holiday' en masse, but you know how tricky these sites are.  They will still be working towards their goal, quietly in the background, new sellers are always an easy target for new T&Cs.

I've regarded etsy as ebay Mk II for years, they've learned from ebay's mistakes and are now even more efficient at fleecing their sellers than ebay is.

Not that I'm trying to put you off.  Just like here, there are sellers on etsy who think it's a great site and well worth using.  But IMO they're founded on the same principle as ebay  --  to take as big a slice of each sale as they can get away with  --  but probably even trickier.  It might be worth trying, but beware!

[bittyboy101]

Hi Elench,

I really used to love buying and selling on eBay... but lately since 2020 onwards it has now really gone down hill and I am so fed up of one hour of 1 sale... then 4 weeks of nothing, then the cycle repeats...

To me, eBay has now become a very unreliable selling platform and a complete waste of time selling here now when items simply just remain on "0 views" all week and people just watch and don't act.

I just want a site where I can list a few things, comeback after a few hours and see that I've got an email saying I've sold something.

Now on eBay, sales are more rarer than hen's teeth ! and I can clearly see  that my listings are now being isolated in the searches when buyers search... ofcourse the eBay staff on here can see all my listings when they are listed, only the public can't !

As for Etsy, they did transfer my money for that sold £80.00 lock (£68.00 something) after their fees which were more dearer than eBay, but never the less the item sold promptly after only a few hours and I had a sale and some money coming to my bank after 4 days...

This is more than I can say for eBay now ! 😞   

[eastern-lights]

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@bittyboy101 wrote:

I've now ended all my listings, not because of eBay, but due to very high winds and severe flood warnings issued for my part of the UK.

---

Rather than ending listings due to bad weather, you might be better off using the "time away" selection as if you were going on holiday or a short break

https://www.ebay.co.uk/vac/timeaway

If you select less than fifteen days your listings can stay visible and customers can still buy but they are advised that shipping will be delayed.

[bittyboy101]

Hi Eastern Lights,

Unfortunately, people will still ignore this and still buy expecting next day delivery in very bad weather !

I noticed that whenever we have very poor weather conditions then eBay would then let me get a sale, otherwise people just don't buy anymore.

Too much hassle and much easier to just cancel all listings and then relist once the weather is better.

[theelench]

I think we all know that ebay isn't what it was a few years ago ☹️    IMO and as you've recently found with your locks, ebay gave away it's premiere position for vintage / collectables to etsy.  If not deliberately, then by neglect in its rush to get a bigger share of the 'new in a box' market.

I don't see that changing, nor do I see any chance of sales levels returning to what they were a few years ago.   To me it's not only how unreliable sales are now, but also how unpleasant the site is to use as a low volume seller and knowing that unless I promote my listings, they will be at the back of the visibility queue behind those that are.

But if using ebay on that basis is all that ebay offers, that's what I'll do as it still produces a sale about once a month, which helps me dispose of my stuff, albeit slowly.  I just list it and leave it until I get a Sold email or it needs to be re-listed as Sell Similar yet again, so it is still a useful back-up site to supplement my sales on ebid.

I'm surprised that etsy paid you promptly for your recent sale, I had thought that etsy was at least one step ahead of ebay when it comes to Holding payments for new sellers (or for any other pretext they can think of), it appears to me that all the larger sites have decided that they can make money out of doing so and step-by-step it's becoming the norm. 

Good luck with your sales this year   --  wherever they might be!! 

[bittyboy101]

Thanks Elench - Same to you too  🙂