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I hate to make this forum sound like the Ebay boards but it seems like I am the only one with slow sales the past few weeks. My overall sales are down a whopping 45% despite the fact that I have 928 items in my inventory and have a variety of items- and also sell a large number of clothing items (designer and contemporary brands).
I’ve been doing 24 hour sales on my store- but the sales are just not there. No questions, or offers, there’s no activity at all. I know slow periods happen but since this has been happening to me far too often so I’ve started to explore other channels to sell off what I have.Suzy
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I’m in the same boat… except I have over 1900 items in my store.
My sales have never been great, but I keep thinking list list list.
So far April has been a wreck.. less than $400 so far. March was a little better and February was really low. Of course the more listings I put up, the more I pay in listing fees at 10 cents each.
I don’t know what the answer is.
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Hi So Cal Joe,
I don’t know if others will agree with me but I really feel like social media is not something that you can decide if you want to use for your business, it’s pretty much a necessity. All of the Ebay power sellers I follow have a strong social media presence and I know that there is a strong correlation between this and their sales on Ebay. I know in the past, people have said otherwise but as far as clothing sellers- I definitely see that their participation on platforms like Youtube and Instagram seems to be driving sales to their page. I remember the old days when I started and had no problem making sales without linking to my Twitter (5 years ago).
I just don’t think I’m willing to start a social media presence related to my store in order to sell old clothing. I also do not want to be associated with clothing, as Ebay was always supposed to be a way to make money so I could focus on something else (writing projects,etc.). Seems like that’s the only way now. Having a buyer find your items organically through Ebay’s search seems like it happens less and less frequently. Just my 2 cents.Suzy
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My sales are slow too, but I attributed it to being little, not having much stock, and not listing enough. Yet I see folks with stores as small as mine hitting high numbers each week! That being said, my clothing hardly moves. It seems that shoes and non-clothing items sell more, especially home DIY and decor items.
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I am having a disastrous week–you are definitely not alone, I list, I post on pinterest, I pay for promoted listing on etsy–nothing has helped recently. It could be tax time. I try not to compare myself to high profile sellers such as Jay and Ryanne who have built up a “brand” with their various media channels, or clothing sellers since I don’t do clothing, but this is one of the times (and not even summer yet) where “woe” is definitely me, LOL.
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I had a really great 1st quarter of the year, but April has started with a whimper. It always does, though. The first of the month means people paying rent and mortgages. Now it’s tax time. Sales will probably continue to slow as the weather warms in the US. Once the kids go back to school, sales will start to increase again, build up to the holiday season. And then drop off again in April around tax time.
Round and round we go…
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I’m totally with you. This week has tanked and the latter part of last week was dead. I’m also working on my taxes this week – only held up by my ebay cogs bookkeeping, so not listing. I’m sure that is not helping matters at all. I might try a big sale memorial day weekend to clear out some old stuff, even though people are traveling in cars not on planes mostly.
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I watch a lot of Youtubers and read many of the forums and it seems like everyone else is doing just fine. My sales are in the toilet. I made 7k in March (i usually make 5k-ish) and now my sales are really slow.
I know, I know…I have been doing this for some time and have seen the sales dip like this before, but when you have 1,000+ items in your store and go 2 days without a sale it’s kinda scary. Especially since my wife and I bought a second car on the back of last month’s sales.
It’ll pick up, it always does but sheesh…$800/wk for a full time seller is frustrating.
Still beats flipping burgers though… -
I’m with you all on the slow sales, April’s super slow for me.
I can’t help but think eBay are having some technical issues behind the scenes at the moment. The eBay messaging system has been completely offline on my acccount for a few days. I can’t log in at the moment either because of a recurring error. I suppose if buyers’ accounts are being affected too that would affect our sales.
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It’s unfortunate so many of us are experiencing slow sales,but I’m glad we can all commiserate together without having the tone of this post become negative.
Paul- I would KILL for $800 a week in sales right now. How many items do you have listed?
OmFug- I too tried to do an auction for the L.L. Bean duck boots (saw a similar pair do well recently so I figured I would do the same with mine). They had 16 watchers and sold for their opening bid of $24.99 🙁 (never again.) Don’t think I have any super hot items so to speak.
Suzy
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My sales have been super slow too. I was super excited because I’ve been consistently selling at least one thing per day which is good for me. I just started taking this seriously and have consistently been making a little over 200$ per week for the past month. Last week I made about 75$. I’m just trying to focus on listing more and doing more research to make my store and listings better! The explanation of tax season makes sense! Let’s gonna go with that and hope people who get their refunds in a few weeks want to spend it all on eBay 🙂
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Our eBay sales have gone in the proverbial crapper as well.
It’s interesting because I have been trying to determine a correlation with new listing. We stopped listing as we worked on other things and our sales went down. Last weekend we cranked out 35 new listings. We had a slight bump, but not anything exciting.
I attribute our issues to two things– lack of consistent listing and just the general tbings that are happening– tax time, spring break, etc.
Despite this, my mantra has always been “don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.” We have switched what we do with Amazon and things are picking up quickly. Our rental still pays. And eBay will pick up again for us. Of this I am sure. And we will list this weekend to make it happen.
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Remember that the coming slow days of summer should be no surprise. It happens every year. Some of you know this very very well. The slow days are coming and it sounds like it may already be starting. We never expect Xmas-kind of sales in the summer. It’s not an eBay conspiracy. It’s just the retail cycle.
And I don’t know how social media helps sales. Can someone explain how that works? I know there are some people who use Instagram to sell items, but their volume seems really minimal. How does having a youtube or twitter account help? I’ve never ever bought an item this way.
Sure, we have a podcast that people listen to, but you guys don’t buy our items. You are sellers, not buyers. We get a lot of listeners scrolling through our store to see how we sell, thus boosting our views. If anything, we may even be hurt by this if eBay doesn’t like a lot of views without sales. It’s nice to be listened to, but it doesn’t help our sales that I can see.
We really don’t know the secret to selling lots of items. Instead we focus on constantly looking for new and different kind of stuff to sell…never getting bogged down in the same stuff. And always keeping our monthly expenses as low our our worst month on eBay.
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Yeh our sales tanked this week too… to the point where we’re still waiting for our first sale this week…..
But I’ve been looking at it as an opportunity to build my number of active listings without the number going down on me 😛 Try and flip a negative into a positive and treat it like we’re being given a cheat week to increase our inventory numbers quicker.
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I don’t think that slow sales are an ebay conspiracy–my etsy sales are nonexistent as well–but keep the faith people I had a $125 sale on ebay this morning! and yes, I am going to start saving to get over the summer hump–summer is buying time.
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We’ve made progress! I think it was good opening an Etsy store so you could compare. I know at one point you did think eBay’s algorithm was possibly hurting your sales. Now it’s pretty obvious its just the retail cycle.
Taxes are due Monday. There’s millions of people freaking out.
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I’m a firm believer that consistent listing is the key to consistent sales. Just keep listing! March and April have been great for me. I list a minimum of 10 things a day, do zero social media promoting and very few markdown sales. (I use Best Offer on majority of listings, so there’s always a discount available.) There are about 2800 items in my store, and I’m now selling 5-12 items per day.
I had some family emergencies in January/February, and did little to no listing for about 3 weeks. My sales plummeted during that time. Even now, I have $400 days and the occasional $16 day. But it all evens out if I just keep listing! Hang in there.
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I’m just beginning but even with my few listings 60 and counting. I’m selling more each month.
Do you think that is because people are watching your site to see the new items coming in?
Do you have a few specialties people look for?
Just trying to figure out the secret sauce.
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Hi Jay,
To clarify my stance on social media I’m not saying it’s necessarily why things sell at the rate they do for your store but I do believe they help sellers that I follow on IG and YouTube. Not sure if it’s kosher to mention them by name but the two I’m referring to both have very different business models. One sells nearly everything free ship and tries to put up 100+ items a day while the other one sources more expensive brands and puts those up at higher prices and charges for shipping. The first one’s sales are definitely helped by her social media presence bc people that follow her are now emotionally invested in the lives of her and her family. How do I know this? They refer to her by name in the Ebay feedback and openly discuss how happy they are supporting the family. It works for them so good for them but I’m just saying I have no interest in doing that. The Second seller There’s no direct evidence but the amount of followers she has on Ebay (propelled from IG) probably help sales and occasionally she will sell on IG before posting on EBay.
Suzy
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Well, things are still slow but I at least woke up to a $95 offer on a coin I had up for $99…………. done. Thought I was about to do a $0 week for a bit haha.
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Nice one! I think it’s important that we have a place like this where we can come and have a whinge and complain and egg each other on to keep trucking 🙂 We all know how retail works and that there will always be slow patches, at the end of the day the decision on when the money comes in comes down to the customer… but we also feel the fear when it does happen. It’s nice we can prop each other up to keep working towards a goal rather than becoming too focused on whats happening to the point where we aren’t listing anymore.
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