Sales Slowing On Ebay

Sales on Ebay seem to be slowing down a little. I’ve noticed people are complaing in the forums about slow sales. I’ve also noticed a slight drop in my own sales. The question is is this because of the recession? Is because of Ebay pulling their adds to save money and please their stock holders? Or is it just the time of year? It’s probably something to do wth all three reasons.

There’s no doubt that Ebay’s decison last year to pull some advertising has affected the amount of traffic it is attracting. As its stock plummets. The changes it made last year, many of which were unpopular with sellers, have forced many sellers away. The huge cost of selling on ebay has also stopped people who might have just sold a few items from their home from listing them. If Ebay is the only one going to make a profit from it then why bother. This means unique sellers selling a wide variety of items are disappearing taking with them one of Ebay’s early selling points; that you could find anything on Ebay. The problem is, when sellers pack up and leave, buyers soon learn that the marketplace is not as full and the chances of a bargain diminishing so they don’t bother turning up. The end result is a market with few buyers and sellers won’t stand that for long. They can’t afford to.

It’s easy to check if your slow ebay sales is down to ebay. If you have a shop check your traffic stats using overture. If your traffic is down significantly then ebay is not pulling in the buyers. It doesn’t matter what you do you will not sell products if you don’t have any buyers turning up. If your traffic is down contact ebay and ask why. You have a right to know. You are paying them a lot of money on the basis of their traffic pulling capabilities. If they are failing in this then they are not fulfilling their part of the agreement.

What about the weather? There’s no doubt that when the sun comes out people like to get outside rather than sit on their computers. Who can blame them, I love to get outside too. I can’t imagine anything worse than sitting on a computer on a hot sunny day. Days end however and the night draws in and the compouter screens flicker back to life. So realistically sales may drop off slightly in summer for most items, (they’ll probably increase for summer items like sun glasses) the weather shouldn’t effect sales too much. I notice my own sales dropping off in summer before leveling out and then rising towards the back of summer. my best month last year was September. So we can expect some drop in sales online during the summer but not a significant one.

We also have the recession to deal with. How this effects your sales depends on what products you are selling. To be fair we don’t really know to what extent the recession is going to hit us yet. Are we going to see empty ebay shops with brush weed blowing round the virtual counters that were once bursting with products? I doubt it. Even in a recession most people stay in work and their buying power increases. I don’t think we can blame the recession entirely for the sales slump some people are experiencing on bay. If you have a website compare how this is performing. If sales on the website are constant and sales on ebay are falling then the problem is ebay.

Selling online is all about traffic, same as selling in a real market. I used to go to a computer market, it started to go down, slowly but the trend was obvious. Less and less people were attending and consequently we were all making less and less sales. We persevered, hoping that next week things would be better. The promoter assured us it would be and he blamed everything he could think of for the fall in people. You can’t go on throwing money away not to mention the effort required to sell items so sooner or later you have to leave. We did and saved a lot of money.

If your ebay sales are slow you need to find out why. First check that you are getting traffic to your shop. If you are not ask ebay why. Draw their attention to it. Even if you only have a few items ask them what’s happening, you’ve a right to know. you’re a paying customer. If you are getting traffic but no sales then the problem is with you and your stock. Are you over priced? Have you listed it correctly? Is there a competitor much cheaper than you? Look into all these things to try to pin point the reason.