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re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

I am doing extremely well with medium priced $350-800 items on auctions. Fixed price not so much.
Constantly manipulating the system to get visibility faster or instant. If I dont, the whole first day is a loss.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

@yankee have you seen your rankings go down because of a few cases opened or anything? Maybe shipping time a bit slower etc

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

All above standard, not a single case, 100% positive feedback.
Profit wise is exceptional on my auctions, but ebays search is definitely messed up and it is taking them forever to get it in general search hence fixed price is lagging way behind.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

On my big accounts, they are always busy, it is hard to know if a lag is there or not. This is the tail end of our busiest season on those big accounts so we always expect sales to lull late October till after Thanksgiving.

I was referring specifically to the smaller stealth accounts I have been playing with and testing new markets, moving used goods, etc... Auctions are king and search/visibility is lower/slower than it should be on fixed price.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

Weird, I've been making a KILLING on OTHER peoples auctions lately...

I have noticed that when I'm searching for things, I can do a search a day or more later, and find something that I didn't see the first time around. Like it just didn't appear.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

Absolutely!
I can have the one and only of an item on there and have it not show.

As for profit etc...My items are very nitch and in demand now.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

I was having the Same issues with search visibility of items , in the beginning of the year when changes started to take over, items that normally would sell fast and at a great price, I couldn't sell anything 0 BIN sales on TRS accounts

I went to all auctions but items that normally would sell fast BIN AT $52-$56 I was selling auction 100% but $32-38 big difference

After two weeks I decided to try a new account and listed BIN at $52.99 and an hour later 3 sales

Ebay was basically trying to get rid of old accounts TRS status or not, so between June and August I made a lot of accounts and sales are normal I just needed to adjust and keep accounts fresh, ebays backwards mentality was giving better exposure to new accounts and just doing away with aged accounts

I operate with many accounts , but it's nice to have bin listings again selling and auctions selling at $52

It took a lot of adjusting but eBay is just totally different than it was this time last year, and if I didn't completely change everything up, I'd be out of business

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

I tried some new accounts and they don't make a difference.

So now that it's november, I'm hopeful that things will pick back up....

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

Im excited for this holiday season. Never experienced it on Ebay. I already have seen commercials on tv "sales" before black friday!! I worked at Bestbuy as my first job like 5 years ago and we didn't open till 5 A.M in the morning, now stores open on thanksgiving. Amazing

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

Holiday season starts this week, doesn't it?

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

Thanksgiving week really, so three more weeks.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

Things aren't going to pick up. eBay is dead and so is Amazon. Something major is up and I can't figure it out. I suspect it has something to do with Google as some ecommerce websites also report sales slump. Decently not economy.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

Department stores start decorating for Christmas now in the beginning of October putting that Christmas feel out right away, but the shopping madness begins the day after thanksgiving Black Friday, it's crazy how people wait in long lines just to be the first in to get the holiday discounts for that day

Last year I remember for eBay November being a little slow, but as soon as DECEMBER 1 came things exploded, I was burning through accounts with limits of 100/5000 in a Day, 2 days for an account that was 200/15,000

I ended up shipping my last item out on December 10 or 11 just because I ran out of accounts and limits, but it worked out great because those last items just made it to my buyer on the 24th and I was shipping what was supposed to be USPS 2-3 Day priority service

So I got lucky, this year I prepared with more accounts but I'm cutting things off at DECEMBER 10, and not relying that all the courier services got things together

Every year there has been an increase with online holiday sales, so if they couldn't handle things last year I'm not putting my accounts fait in there hands again this year with estimated increase in package delivery

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

For me, it's not exactly sales drop related to buyers, but MC999's seems to be more prevalent for the holiday season. It's just a day by day thing.. I usually avoid a category when I get an MC999 in it and switch products for success.

However, I have noticed a drop in the sales pricing itself.. Just in general. It's like everybody wants everything cheaper. Lol.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

thanks guys for the shares of current trends.. i haven't jumped in the pool yet this year..
good luck to all on this board :)

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

Yea it seems that the cheaper items are selling, while items at 2-5$ more aren't really doing hot at all.

Maybe I should lower the prices a little bit.

It's Nov, but I remember last year I did tripple the sale between Nov 1-3rd.

I'm getting worries since this time I stocked up completely, unlike last year

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

I sell on both platforms and I and attest that both are down for me compared to last year. I dont know what is causing it but other then Oct, 2014 I was breaking records every month.

I took out a $24,000 loan in Sept, you would think Oct would be my best yet with the added inventory, but it was my worst :(

I dont know what is causing it but I did read an article on bloomsburg that google changed their results sometime in on sept/oct, and the results they provide now are more sponsored then links. They provided Alexa rankings for Amazon that shows drop in traffic around that same time. The lost in traffic is amazing.

Im sure you could pull up the article or since Alexa data is public you could just manipulate some dates to see if traffic really did go down for Amazon.

I will say someone turned the switch on at Amazon this weekend, because I sold 40 items. The past weekends I was lucky if I sold a handful :/

In the past Thanksgiving night is usually when my rush starts. I hope it picks up for everyone this year.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

Dmshark,
You have multiple accounts right?
Quick Question: did you or do ever list same items on more than one account?
Like listing same item, at similar price, with same shipping details and similar descriptions?
So moral of the story, is that you can see that the only variable is eBay ranking or visibility, when that item sells.

Like if u have a bunch of accounts with same stuff listed.
And something sells from account A for $49.99, and you had that same item listed on account B for $39.99

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

I was selling 100-120 products every Sunday on eBay until about September. I am more than confident now than ever before that Google has something to do with our sales slump on Amazon, eBay and other eCommerce platforms. We all know eBay and Amazon are throttling sales according to geographical location, monthly income etc but this time it's not only Amazon, eBay but eCommerce websites too. Google is the king of traffic so they will do however they please. It's one of the reasons why I support people who utilize Black Hat SEO to increase their ranking.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

Yes I did the exact, because early this year I guess when eBay presented the changes that would take place in August, my sales just stopped

An item I was selling at a great price and high volume a month before I could not sell one BIN listing on a TRS account , I switched to auctions and they were all selling but with not many bids so the final value was $20 less than normal

So before ditching my product I listed the same item at the normal cost BIN listing on a new account and hours later it started selling , and this is a new account with 1-2 Feedbacks and I couldn't sell one on my TRS accounts I couldn't even find the listings

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

Yes there is no doubt eBay is manipulating search results and is hiding our listings. If you aren't selling as many products as I do everyday you might not able to notice much of a difference. Once you start selling 60 - 120 different products every day and all of a sudden your auctions or buy it now aren't getting views (and sales) then you know something is fishy. I miss the old days. Back then you could actually become a millionaire on eBay, these days it's not even possible.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

But why would eBay prefer to offer sales to new accounts? I dont see the reasoning behind it?? It doesnt make sense. But enough sellers on this board have said the same thing so I am thinking eBay really is starting to hide listings from old accounts. I'll have to test this out one day.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

They give boost to all new sellers in order to encourage them to sell on eBay. Also they prefer new sellers over old because they tend to be more complacent as they don't know how eBay was in the old days ... I think they want to get rid of as many old sellers as possible and substitute them with new sellers who will be happy with little traffic they will get for lack of not knowing any better. Meanwhile they will feed their Chinese mega sellers & Big name stores with real traffic.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

Also big sellers pay less in fees all around. Ebay makes A LOT more money on small sellers and offer 1/100 of the human resources in support.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

I just paid ~3500USD this month for one of my eBay accounts. Now tell me, how many new sellers it will take to generate this much money in fees? 10? 20? 30?

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

So if you stop selling today on ebay, NO other ebay seller sells the same items and ebay will loose sale?
The Answer is no.

So we will take my big account I lost last year about this time when I came to this forum. It sold $680,000.00 in September. According to terrapeak ebay total sales of this product was $816,000.00 for I literally sold 80+% of the market on ebay on this one account. Now I paid the lowest ebay fees, thousands of free listings every month the lowest paypal fees, called ebay and paypal more than 10 times a day everyday.

When that account was restricted, October according to terrapeak ebay sold $856,000.00 without me at all.

How many more thousands of dollars did ebay make? How much support did they offer those other small sellers who now picked up those sales? Also, eliminating me who controlled the market and set the price, etc...How much more total revenue in FVF did ebay make?

People are going to buy on ebay no matter what. It is not your or my account that matters.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

I seem to be doing fine via sales managed to sell
20 items over a 2 day period (Saturday and Sunday)
And made around £8 total profit per item (after postage etc)

So yeah i havent noticed anything

Maybe its just demand for item that has decreased or there are cheaper sellers etc
google your product and take a look at deals and prices

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

You dont think out of 856k$ eBay did not receive 10 calls a day? Free listings etc is BS because anyone with an ebay store gets free listings. eBay is still making money either it be old sellers or new sellers. The only thing I can see is that a big seller may control the market but you get rid of one, and then another one must take the lead. Its a never ending process.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

No and No.
Big accounts have an ebay rep, one person who waits on them. Good size sellers get top customer care and have a hold time on a minute or two at most. Customer service is not even comparable to small sellers. I doubt any small seller calls in and has 50 cases closed manually by ebay. I doubt any small seller has 10-20 negative feedback removed daily.
The service supplied to small sellers in outsourced, LONG and slow.

Not remotely comparable.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

Any one else keep track of their sales for holiday items / gift type items since 2011?

My records are only from 2012 till present

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

So not like us peasants that wait up to 2 hours to talk to a rep? Haha.

(yes I did this once last month...)

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

Yep I totally agree, eBay has built there site up , just imagine one big store called eBay, and a constant line around the block 24/7 7 days

Now the sellers on there site are just basically workers inside their store , there's really no difference .

Just like any company, when there employee that has been working there for many years and now commands a big salary, what does the company do, they fire the older more experienced worker and replace them with someone right out of college and pay that employee a fraction of what there predecessor made but they are still making the same amount of money for the company

And now the company makes higher profits.

When you work for a company and put your life into it and many years, it's hard to imagine that your replaceable , but the fact is everyone is replaceable and life goes on.

So eBay needs to run just like any other corporation and when there employees, all us sellers, get to big they cut us out, because they know no matter what with the traffic that they have created that it makes no sense to keep a big seller in with all the discounts when they can just replace that big seller with new ones and make a ton more in fees

Somehow they are definitely manipulating traffic, I changed everything around and pretty much ditched my older accounts back in March and just went on an account making binge from June to August

I'm trying my best to keep the accounts new and not do too many sales a month , or gain TRS status or Anything, because than its the beginning of the end

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

Its kind of crushing at the same time to read this :( I've been aspiring to get a TRS account for the discounts, seems counter productive which in itself is a contraction. Ebay at its purest form.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

My sales have fallen off a cliff, I sell items that are perfect for gifts and this time of year has been booming for me the last 3 years and only gets better as Christmas gets closer. This year I am TRS, I offer premium service, I appear at the top or near the top for all my listings, my sales have increased by 30% compared to same months last year. Then all of a sudden October is an awful month with lower sales than last year and November is turning out to massively down so far.

I sell the same items on Amazon and sales are up so it would appear to be an eBay specific issue, I'm at a total loss as to what's going on and I'm getting very concerned.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

My sales still have no recovered from about 2011. When I first started I was probably one of 50 sellers in this category of products. Now I am about one of 5. Sales have been way down and its not really products that something like Amazon would steal market share.

I will say end of October and November there is always a slow down. But just keep trying everyone its getting tougher and tougher to make it on eBay.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

I was doing excellent until somewhere between March - April of this year but then I noticed a big decline in sales and views. Instead of giving up I introduced even more products to my inventory and it seemed to work for a while until May. Once eBay announced their 150 million active accounts were compromised by hackers and then Google demoted their eBay links for being too spammy, all hell broke lose. In fact during July it looked like eBay was coming back to normal. Since August sales took even a bigger nosedive. October and now November have never been this bad for anyone on eBay even during recession. Conservatively speaking I lost at least 80% of my sales. Technically if traffic was as good as it was at the beginning of this year with the amount of products I have in my inventory right now I should be able to ship about 250-350 products everyday. I am now shipping around 40-50 only.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

Sales have been 0 since November started. I did not enlist in the extra long return TRS offer by ebay. So don't know if that is why the sales are so bad.

I have checked out terapeak, and my competitors have all been down as well. About the same percentage as my sales have been down. Huge reductions in gross sales since the same time last year for me and competitors. 60-80% less gross sales! Crazy! plus, I sell in a couple different categories.

Hard to speculate on why ebay is such a crappy place to sell products. I personally think ebay is going to get worse in regards to sales. Their bad practices with google and their data breach do not give much consumer confidence. Anyone who has attempted to sell their old phones or random stuff more than a few times has probably ran into a buyer who has ripped them off somewhere along the way. There is not an infinite pool of sellers and buyers willing to use ebay. Especially now since paypal has a 6 month refund period. An average, non techsavy person is going to go somewhere else.

Glad I have diversified into other market places

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

I don't even have TRS, but my sales is similar to 2012 which was not great, but I still made something.

I was told that 2013 (when My november sales were great) Stores were rolling out early black friday sales, whereas this year is just the traditional Black friday timing.

So could this be why?

Is your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

Sales are down and views are extremely low as well. I hate how slow things are going. It's not like it used to be when I would have to spend hours packaging and organizing orders.

I used to wake up every morning with at least 3-4 over night sales. Not much action at the moment. I used to always brag about making money while I'm sleeping to my neighbor lol.

re: ARE your sales still slow this month? Oct - Nov 2014
 

It's pretty darn bad. Actually trying to venture over to Amazon a little bit for what few products I can sell on there. Anything helps right now.