eBay tinkering with search? Server Problems? Cause of SLOW SALE

[HurricaneHuntr]

Things have been crazy so far this month for me.... 3-4 bins of mail a day

As much as i planned, didn't order enough in july and august

[SaiJin]

I found my notes from 2011, I did exactly 5x in sales income compared to oct and nov of 2012 .

This is bull**** and I'm starting to get rather upset. I don't think Sandy has anything to do with it. I'm really starting to believe that eBay is playing "search control" results.

Another thing I've been wondering about is the change from not allowing multiple auctions and only allowing 1 fixed price listing, if that has anything to do with exposure.


Update: A lot of my items "despite the not lowest priced" are still showing up on page 1 and 2 . So doesn't look like it's the search results now that I checked.

[torontomapleleafs]

Ebay, in my opinion, is trying to eliminate international transactions.
They elimated the option to search items located in any country/region and when you search worldwide you only get a small portion of whats actually available worldwide.
I buy and sell on ebay and produce the same searches everyday and it has all changed in the last few weeks. Way less search results show up for the exact same bookmarked search. I am fairly certain every seller is experiencing less traffic because of buyers, new limited searching ability.
This is potentially a good thing for my business as I will find better deals but I think it is a disgrace that ebay has actually done this without informing us.
any thoughts on my theory?

[SaiJin]

I don't know about international, but all of mine are domestic only North America. No international shipping.

What do you mean by buyer's limited search ability?

1. I read somewhere in an ebay forum from a retailer who claims he's been in retail for 30 years that his sales dropped to below 50% every 4 years on election year for 6 months and it's a trend for him.

2. I researched google and it's said that google's search engine update (panda) has eliminated about 90% of online merchants.

3. Another report I read from NRF is that this holiday season may start off slow.

4. Could the fiscal cliff have an effect on people's mentallity on spending?


Please share your thoughts on the above.

[stanislav]

Well I think we can all agree that economy in the entire world is not doing well. Sure it is worse in Europe than here in Canada and USA but it has affected everyone including online sales. I don't have statistical data but I remember that just before the financial global collapse in 2007-2008 eBay was doing well. In fact eBay in the years before this global collapse probably had at least 50% more active buyers (if not more) than today. Now you know WHY eBay sales are slow.

Well this is just one aspect of course but a major one.

[SaiJin]

For my notes:

Survey Reveals Impact of Google Shopping on Merchant Sales

Attaining Top Rated Seller Status on eBay Not Worth the Stress

eBay Sellers Stores Reports Show Traffic Drop

eBay Strategies: October 2012 ChannelAdvisor Same Store Sales (SSS) and 2012 Holiday Schedule

[SaiJin]

So I was talking with another business owner who exports plastic to China.
Apparently China went into recession 6 months ago and he said that the Consumer confidence level this year is not too good as well.

THe effect is that we aren't getting the volume we used to be the past 2 years.

[stanislav]

From what I understand Chinese economy is still shaky but recovering. It's your eurozone that is in big trouble. Canada's economy is recovering too but at a very slow pace.

[GhostWhoWalks]

I called them up once and asked them how to become top in the search they told me, it's done by randomly picking out sellers in the category, and giving everyone a shot.

But last year at this time of the year within 3 months. I had one of my auctions rank 8th in the search engine and I was selling a good 8 to 11 per day for over a month.

I did a lot of research on how to get there and it worked. Then I stopped it, (I met a girl). lol But yeah too me ebay $ is just a game really.

But yeah like they said they give everyone a chance to be in the top search. I also noticed when you are TRS you get double the sales. I went from 60 sales a month to 165 sales in a month.