Leveling up and low sales
Good morning everyone. I’ve never posted before, but I find myself writing here because I don’t understand my eBay situation. Basically, on the 20th I became a TOP seller, but instead of increasing sales, I had a sharp drop in impressions from sponsored listings.
I’m attaching a screenshot.
Phone support says everything is fine. But it’s pretty strange!
18 comments
il_buon_libraio
·3 years agoHi, I'm taking advantage of the topic introduced because it's happening to me too, since the start of the month. More or less since then I've switched to the shop's "entry level" package, still as a private seller as I am, but with the ambition to grow. Instead, sales have suddenly been cut in half!! I really don't understand....
morgana10
·3 years agoThere's one thing to understand... a private seller, to remain one, should never open a store because that means advertising their sales, which translates into organized activity that does not suit private sales. The ambition to grow is a good thing, but to open the door to business you need to prepare yourself by getting everything in order before selling, exactly as you do when you open a real shop in a physical location. I understand the issue, however the tax authorities understand something else and eBay is obliged to send the data to the tax agency when sales are consistent, over 29 sales a year and in any case over €2,000 a year). A private seller is an occasional seller and is not required to keep accounts, but selling a book no longer used is one thing, setting up an online store with dozens of products and with ongoing activity over time is another. Perhaps eBay limits some of these situations, even though it often encourages the private seller to open a store only to then put them in the position of having to open a VAT number! I advise consulting an accountant before making a decision because there are different ways to get everything in order and the circumstances need to be assessed.
Kind regards
actar80
·3 years agoFollow morgana10's advice, with the DAC07, there are now strict limits for private individuals. Opening an online store and putting hundreds of items up for sale means that soon you'll have to register for VAT.
heavenwelkin
·3 years agoThe private seller, despite the various changes brought by algorithms and sponsorships, still enjoys the best position in terms of visibility on ebay.
Even if this privileged position during searches has been rather reduced compared to the past.
Now that there are few private sellers and, in my opinion, there will be fewer and fewer, switching to a store means entering into direct competition with stores that make visibility their real job, since in many cases visibility is everything.
try to go back if you can 😉
Best regards.
cla3699
·3 years agoI can also confirm the problem, I work for a company present on ebay with a TOP account and around mid-March we received a promotional email from ebay advertising a discount on those blessed beta sponsored listings (the ones where you pay per click), from the next day we went from about ten packages a day to 1 every 3 days...The impression is that they messed with the search engine and the databases, annihilating the indexing of the listings, in fact today it is starting to recover a bit but almost a month has passed.
And by the way, out of desperation during that period I had also tried to take 10 test products and switch from standard sponsored listings to beta ...result 0 impressions in two days... evidently there is still some problem lol..
Regards
Claudio
ripara-fast
OP3 years agoSupport says there’s no problem. But that’s absurd
fabisoli0
·3 years agoI, on the other hand, with another professional shop selling IT products, find myself having sold only 1 item since the beginning of the month, that is, since launching the business on eBay about 2 weeks ago. It’s clearly a different situation from yours, since I’m not a top seller, but reading online there’s been a clear, widespread drop in sales on eBay for a few years now, and I don’t know how much promoting items (which for now I can’t even do on the new account since I’m a new seller) will allow me a significant increase in sales. So I wanted to join in on the issue too and get more precise answers from users, since for example during the lockdown period, with my private account from which I’m writing now, I had happened to sell a product about half an hour after creating the listing, so I can also assume that this is linked to the considerable increase in online purchases that the lockdown generated, but I believe there’s more to it and I’d kindly like to understand it from anyone who wants to help me, since I don’t want to be in the situation of not generating revenue for too long. I had formed a specific idea about eBay and thought it could also be useful for me to start a low-cost business to run, since the inventory is at my house and the fees are lower than on Amazon, not to mention the fact that I don’t necessarily have to spend money on ads, since I would then potentially expand with the sale of offline services. If anyone can provide clarification on these issues and practical advice to increase sales both for me and for the guy who hasn’t sold anything since he became top seller, I would be grateful. Thanks.
heavenwelkin
·3 years agoThe market today is quite complex and varied.
Besides Amazon, there are countless e-commerce sites (online stores) opened by various sellers who often offer better prices than Amazon and eBay and allow payment by PayPal or credit card; then there are search engines or sites like Trovaprezzi and others that make them visible to the public.
It depends on what you sell, what prices you set, how interested buyers are in what you sell, and how much competition you have.......
Despite the algorithms that help distribute sales of the same items more effectively among the various sellers, in my opinion you still need to roll up your sleeves and study, analyze, and move where the market moves.
This is a real job, so it may be worth considering getting help from an experienced professional.
Best regards.
fabisoli0
·3 years agoGood morning,
Thank you for your response. I agree with the first point related to the fact that there is a lot of general competition both on Amazon and on third-party platforms that advertise through social networks and search engines. I therefore understand how complex the market on the web is, and since I don't have niche products and didn't want to start from a physical store, eBay therefore seemed to me the most suitable platform to start selling IT products. They will definitely sell more easily on Amazon, but at the moment I don't feel like having to deal with the financial demands on Amazon, which in my opinion are too excessive to get started (I've been a customer on Amazon since 2015, so one way or another I know what I'm talking about, unfortunately). So before opening an eBay store, I had done specific market analyses where I wanted to start without spending much on commissions and without wanting to do various sponsored ads because at the moment, with the low budget available, I couldn't even afford them, also considering that I would have seen eBay as a starting point to expand the business elsewhere.
I also know that the IT sector is a low-margin sales sector, I researched this a lot by reading various forums, but for personal reasons I had to start expanding the business somewhere because fundamentally I had no other choices.
The only thing that has left me extremely surprised is how many “colleagues” on the platform are completely dishonest, trying to lower prices to the bare minimum (which I already knew about: minimal margins and the extreme race to the bottom, so I was partly prepared for that) and, on top of that, copying my basic sales strategies. In practice, people who have been selling on the platform for many more years than I have copied some of my sales strategies to manage to sell again, which goes to show that I’m not starting from absolute zero.
So I don't really agree with the idea that I need someone to help me sell, because first of all you have to pay that person, and then in most cases you risk running into dishonest people who pocket the money and don't even help you, so you'd end up getting screwed twice over, because that's how the online world works and there is no magic solution to problems, because if you're selling full time you don't have the technical time to do courses or consulting and vice versa.
The only downside at the moment that I could suggest to myself is to expand the catalog, but to do that you need money and therefore, since I don't want to make a big outlay right away, I was thinking of expanding it by a certain amount each month until reaching €5000 by the end of 2023 in purchased merchandise, so as to be able to create an adequate cash flow and manage to build up at least a small amount of stock in the warehouse that would allow me to keep money moving within the store.
What therefore surprised me most is that many dynamics that worked with my private eBay account, which I have been registered on since 2017, do not work properly with the new professional account, even though on the private account I carried out some experiments during the lockdown period that were also quite successful and today are not finding any follow-through, despite these products also having fairly good demand.
I will definitely, as soon as they enable the option for me, start sponsoring some products, but I also wanted to hear the opinions of other users about the dynamics that make it difficult to sell products that are also quite in demand, and since it seems to be a general problem for many users on the platform, I wanted to understand whether there was anyone who managed to at least contain them and how they have (at least in part) solved them in a completely selfless way. That's all.
heavenwelkin
·3 years agoGood evening fabisoli0
There are sellers who can afford to sell with very small margins, and when items start their decline before they become obsolete they unload them below cost.
By below cost I mean, for example, a smartphone cover for 1.99 euros, padded envelope and shipping with posta 1 pro included.
A traditional seller would simply NEVER sell below cost; rather, they would leave their unsold items gathering dust, taking up space in the warehouse.
To compete with this kind of dynamic, you can't leave anything to chance, you have to be very well structured and organized and also have an adequate budget.
As for how private accounts work, they run on a different track, they have different visibility, different fees and generally there are no costs to keep listings active.
Best regards.
ripara-fast
OP3 years agoUnfortunately support says everything is okay,
also I noticed that in my listings the shipping times are very long. I don't understand why.
For example, this is a screenshot of mine from today, I deliver in 3 days but even so the minimum times shown are 7 days.
sika700
·3 years agoAs free shipping you indicate "Economica (Posta 1 extra standard)" so on top of your own shipping day, eBay adds 5/8 days as the shipping service time.
If you want shorter times, as free shipping you need to use a shorter service.
Also, I would remove all the frames, watermarks and web address in your photos, they do not comply with eBay rules... I would also take a look at the descriptions of your listings, optimization for smartphones and tablets is urgently needed, they are absolutely not responsive.
Kind regards.
ripara-fast
OP3 years agoMany sellers use Posta 1, and their shipping times are 3 days. My packages are delivered in 2/3 actual days. I see the tracking for all my packages and the times are like that. Little by little I'm improving all the descriptions and I also need to update the images.
vonbalden
·3 years agoSomeone might wonder, behind the safety of their home walls, what the heck an algorithm is and why hearing about it in many fields, even non-IT ones, can be enough to make you see red. In mathematics and computer science we know that an algorithm, in simple terms, is a finite set of operations carried out together that make it possible to know a final result precisely. A kind of recipe so that I, who have never tasted a zuppa inglese in my life (just as an example), with the right and carefully measured mix of ingredients can obtain a superb result. In theory, that is, because evidently dozens of variables come into play. And so here, on the platform and elsewhere, ever since we are assured that algorithms improve the quality of life, we’re in the clear. But is that really so? Maybe the truth is that all this imposed consumer technology, without anyone explicitly asking for it, serves above all someone. Someone who doesn’t need algorithms to know where many things are heading. And that, like it or not, users and consumers have to swallow.
heavenwelkin
·3 years agoGood afternoon vonbalden
In the past many sellers competed in the most varied ways and often also illegally with fake feedback, false reports, etc.
There were sellers so big that they cannibalized the entire market.
Algorithms have allowed a greater number of sellers to enter a market where they would hardly have found room.
This world based on algorithms seems to me a sort of c0mun1sm0 2.0 where in 2013 a well-known comedian had laid the foundations of this "revolution".
I’ll quote a piece of it: No one must be left behind. Italy must be, above all else, a community. In a community, among the most important values is a sense of solidarity. The citizen must be at the center ............ Everyone must be guaranteed a dignified life and, if possible, happiness.
"one person, one vote" 😎
Best regards.
heavenwelkin
·3 years agoGood morning riparafast
Phone support confirmed that they don't see any anomalies on their end, so in my opinion it still remains a "problem" with how the algorithms are set up.
What I’d say is that at the "TOP seller" level there’s probably more competition and/or, in any case, when you weren’t top you were traveling in a different lane as far as visibility management went.
Evidently TOP sellers are handled separately and/or differently from standard sellers.
But these are just hypotheses, of course, because you’re unlikely to get an answer to this question.
All you can do is hope that your post gets forwarded to the relevant department, which will carry out some checks.
Kind regards.
ripara-fast
OP3 years agoExactly, they don’t see any anomaly. But I own a warehouse with more than 800 items and, surprise surprise, impressions are down across the entire warehouse, I don’t understand the reason for this. I was expecting growth, but that hasn’t been the case.
morgana10
·3 years agoIt is possible that the parameters for TOP sellers are higher, or that eBay has greater expectations, something that only eBay support can clarify. Let us know if you hear anything, it could be useful to other users with the same problem.
Kind regards