Sales EXTREMELY slow??

Hi, that's eBay, seasonal, faddy buyers, holidays, TV, warm evenings, football . . .

You don't say what country you are in but the second half of August gets pretty slow here in the UK as potential buyers spend hours out on the warm evenings, roll on autumn and short days. (Well that is what the eBay seller side of me says)

Best thing is to take a break until September, the kids go back to school and garbage TV drives people back to trawling for a bargain on eBay, probably the most expensive interactive plaything/computer game created

Yes it is terrible right now.Under my other Ebay account for my business I sell cars and I had a Mercedes listed that was easily worth 13,000 dollars and it got one bid of 9,500 not even close to what I have in it.On my personal account I sell mostly small items with the exception of A Willys jeep I am listing right now to see if I can drive sales to my other items. Hopefully that helps

I don't think the drastic drop in sales has anything to do with summer. My sales just stopped 7 days ago from 10-15 a day to 1-2. I have never had such a drop in sales or traffic in 3 summers on ebay. Not 1 international sale even in over 7 days. I usually have 7/8 a week. They (ebay) are up to something.

Could have something to do with the way the stock market is moving also. You would be surprised. I follow thw market fairly closely due to some investments I am in and it has been rough up until today for about the past 8 to 10 days

I too have had slow sales the past couple of weeks, but always do at this time of year. I wonder though if the new ebay user groups has anything to do with it, since the revamp the traffic has decreased a lot. And I know there are a lot of cross seller/buyers on those groups. ::shrugging:: who knows.

This week has been better for me though.

Browsing categories is becoming more and more difficult as eBay removes many sub-categories in favour of item specifics.

Many buyer and sellers are up in arms on eBays's boards over this as they do not allow the buying experience that buyers want. I find that the items specific pertinent to some items I sell do not even exist yet so no sub-category no suitable item specific so no browsers.

Buyers give up when faced with a category containing 800 + items and another some 1500+ they will only look at the most recent or earliest finishing most in between will be ignored.

We are losing the supermarket scenario, where a buyer pops in for one thing and ends up with a basket or trolley load through impulse buying.

For eBay the equation is many listings, few get viewed, a proportion get sales, eBay always gets fees regardless, so why care

With the 6 hour indexing delays, even the 'newly listed' views are taking huge hit - at least for the majority who are scheduling their auctions to end in the early evening. With all their money, I don't understand why ebay can't bring more servers online to alliviate this problem. What gives?

Originally posted by ninth_wave:
". . . With all their money, I don't understand why ebay can't bring more servers online to alliviate this problem. What gives?"

That would reduce the shareholders cut

This is now my 7th day of abnormally slow sales. I am selling 90% less than I usually do. I just all stopped on August 1st & it is like my store & items do not exist. I have been selling for 2 1/2 years & I never had anything like this happen. I find it VERY STRANGE that I went from 10-15 sales a day to 1-2 all of a sudden. It's like my store just disappeared altogether. I don't get it!

Choo - Oops! Thanks for bringing me back to reality, I almost forgot - must be getting old. You're right, they all want to stuff their pockets today, after all, tommorow might never come. Real visionaries.

dvchic - You are right, that is a stress producer. It may not be you, or ebay, but could just be a normal fluke of the marketplace. You might want to consider doing some market research to see what is happening in your particular category, which includes many other sellers(otherwise all you see are your own sales). Terapeak is great for this kind of marketing info. They can give you a wealth of current sales info, or trends going back a much as 2 years. Some of the info is free, some is paid, depending on the level of detail you want. Great site.

Thanks, I'll check it out. I just don't see what would happen to the category that would make it just flatline like that all of a sudden.

You are right, that is a pretty radical drop. All the more reason to get right on it and find out what is happening to the rest of the ebay market so you can plan your next move if necessary.