Ebay - Where did all my sales go?

A funny thing happened in March this year (2013), my Ebay sales fell off a cliff. Overnight something changed and then BOOM, I was no longer in favour with the bay. Of course I contacted Ebay, to which I got 'The Generic Beanie Baby Email' about sales patterns, which anyone who's ever had to contact them about poor sales will know well. Predictably they suggested that if I spent more money with eBay my sales would improve, 'Hey - Why not upgrade your shop....'. Grrrr, she quietly growls in annoyance in the corner.

Thing was they were talking to me about 'sales trends' and how things change. Now I sell a variety of items on good old fleaBay, lots of different things from tech to vintage, new and second hand, clothes to household. So eBay are you seriously telling me that suddenly no-one wants any of these items? Hmmmm I just don't take that. I protested explaining my sales are good on other venues but suddenly here on eBay I can't sell for toffee, so what's changed with eBay? As you can imagine no-one gave me a straight answer, except 'why not offer free postage' which really equates to put your postage in with the start price, now I wonder why they'd tell me that?

Since March sales have just trickled at a steady rate, then bang in October it got worse BUT this time it seemed to be affecting more and more sellers. This shift happened shortly after the new seller requirements were introduced (Sept 2013). So you'd expect that perhaps those people who weren't playing ball with the new requirements were going to suffer? Wrong, many of the people commenting on the forums were people who had 'ticked all the boxes' and had complied to the new requirements, but like me in March overnight their sales vanished. They protested too, they contacted eBay, and they too are still waiting for an honest answer.

Now IMO something seems to be very wrong with eBay, why do sellers in so many different areas wake up and find that their sales have vanished? New algorithms? Flaky search facilities?  Poor mobile browsing? Are they quietly trialling Cassini in some areas? Can buyers simply not navigate the site anymore? Who knows, something has changed, but us sellers don't know what.  Are the smaller sellers simply not part of eBay's new vision, are we quietly being 'put out to pasture' to make way for a new 'shiny mall like experience,  combined with cheap tat from eBay's new BFFs in China?' Who knows. If this is it then I just wish they'd grow a pair and tell us.

I have my own theories on this, which are largely drawn from my experiences when browsing eBay. As a fairly tech efficient person I have found that the almost daily changes to the eBay site are making the site virtually unnavigable. I have REALLY struggled to find what I want (and I never used to so something changed here), struggled to find links and buttons to certain essential functions or gone to complete a task and found that it's all changed, then ended up banging my head against the desk and going to Amazon. Coupled with the fact that the mobile browsing experience on eBay leaves little to be desired makes me wonder how many people simply naff off and go elsewhere, seriously have you tried completing a purchase with variations on a mobile recently? It's truly rubbish. This is of great concern at a time when purchase via mobile are on the increase.

As a seller I frequently find that people pay for things one by one, even though I have instructions on how to use the 'Shopping Basket' and on making 'Combined Purchase' on most of my descriptions. When I asked why they simply couldn't work out how to (or sometimes claim it didn't work). I often get new users ask me questions about completing purchases, I've even had to walk a few right through the entire purchase. I wonder how many people who were going to make a purchase simply abandon their browsing session out of sheer frustration?

What I do know is that I will now be slowly, but surely, moving my products away from eBay. I am no longer prepared to pay for 'limited exposure' based on if eBay feel like 'throwing me a bone' on that day. I have already started to list more and more on Etsy, which has a brighter, friendlier more contemporary look than many of it's competitors, and hey stuff sells there too. Additionally I am going to start moving stuff across to Ebid, its a growing site but sales are still slowly here but at least I am not paying out every month for my stuff to sit there and not sell.

I'd be interested to hear anyone else's views on this, what are sales like for you?

To see more about this topic visit,
http://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Business-Seller-Board/Switched-OFF-again/td-p/430753
or
http://tamebay.com/2013/10/lack-of-sales-complaints-is-it-just-you.html