I HAVE A THEORY ABOUT EBAY...IT SUCKS...BUT WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?

It's a fact. Ebay sucks big time for the last month.

I don't do the pinterest thing or facebook thing to get sales. I don't have time to sit and post cutsey little things all day long. I know its social media but I don't want to be social. I want to sell on ebay so I can afford gas and groceries and prescriptions and all of those silly luxuries And I don't really care if you took a nap or ate lunch or went to the beach or mall or whatever. I do care what my family does, but not people I barely know.

So there.
(The following is a rant about ebay. I am sure that my SweetiePie is so tired of hearing me b**** about ebay that I just had to vent somewhere. I apologize for taking up your time and space in the galaxy for my rant, but I am about to pop a gasket because of ebay sales.)

I do know that ebay plays with us. I called ebay about an item that the customer was refunded for. I received a message from ebay that a package had been received and I closed the case. I had shipped on time, the post office delivered on time, the buyer was not home and did not respond to the notice left by the post office. The package was delivered again and accepted this time. End of story? You would think so. But ebay refunded their money. What? They received the item. Ebay acknowledged that they received the item. Ebay refunded the money. I told the "customer service rep" this information. You want to hear her reply. "That is not my department. It is handled by another department". True, ebay did not take funds from my account for this action, which was the post office and buyers problem. Thank goodness or I would have "pitched a hissy fit!!"

More ebay playing with us.

I have been trying to access my traffic reports from ebay all afternoon. Not available. Not available. I have also had no traffic in my store. No sales, no stupid questions, no nothing. Are ebay traffic reports only available when you are visible on ebay? I am beginning to think just that. I'm just wondering if that is the case for everyone else. I just typed, word for word, two items that listed this morning on ebay into google search. You would think that my item would pop up at the top or near the top. Neither one of them popped up. One appeared in a list after you clicked to ebay. The other one not at all and it is the only one like it on ebay. It was the Italian leather boots discussed in a previous post.

From what I gather from other sellers ebay is dragging along now. I know its vacation time and back to school time and whatever other time, but you would think that a store would at least sell something. It has been an almost over the edge of the cliff change in sales.I have gone from 3-4 sales daily to sometimes 1 and never more than 2 daily. And a lot of days just plain zero. Just a month ago I was averaging 8-10 sales over the weekend, most of the time more. Last weekend I had 2 sales. This weekend I have had woop woop 3 sales. What will I do? Set of firecrackers? Post it on facebook? No. I will just keep listing and hoping that something changes.

I would love to ask questions of people in the same situation. But where to ask? I participated in the ebug proboards and received lots of help, support and lots of helpful tips to work the ebay game. Now that has died because everyone has gone to .... yep facebook.

More ebay playing.

One of the things I have been doing is keeping within my 500 free listings for my store. The first month I used exactly 500 listings. Last month I used exactly 500 listings. I checked my traffic. When I reached my 500 free listings on the 28th last month my traffic dropped like a waterfall. Just a coincidence? This month I have already reached 500 listings and I had no choice but to pay 10c for each listing. So many things did not sell that virtually everything had to be relisted. I list 5 new things a day. Every. Day. I have only missed one day in the last 3 months of not listing anything. Most sources say keep listing, daily listing is important, it will pick up. I'm waiting....

Does the fact that you use a different size font than what is recommended by ebay make a difference in your standings?
Does the fact that you use an outside source to create and launch your listings make a difference in your standings? I still stand by my belief that if ebay owned SSB that it would be OK to use their services. Just my crazy theory.
Does it make a difference in my ebay standings that I don't offer free shipping on everything? I do on some things but most I don't. I refuse to list an item for $19.99 with free shipping if I can't make a decent profit of at least more than ebay and paypal make in their fees. That's just plain too much work and not enough profit. If I buy an item for $3, list for $20, and it cost me 10-12 to ship then I have NO PROFIT after fees. A bad purchase maybe, but I still need to sell to get rid of it so I can purchase something else.
Or is it because I have tried to upgrade the quality of items in my store to what ebay deems appropriate and entered a new ball game? I read blogs all the time about the type of items that sell and how they are flying off the shelf. It seems that when I try and follow their suggestions that I have a problem. I think the answer is that too many follow their suggestions and ebay gets flooded with that stuff. I read all of these blogs and try to pick and choose what I list based upon what is available in my area. Most of the brand names that appear on those lists aren't even available in my area. If they are then I am missing them. And I don't think I could miss all of them all of the time.

OK rant over. I feel better. But nothing has changed. I haven't magically had any sales or magically been able to access my traffic reports. I still want to grasp someone's neck at ebay and shake them until their brains unscramble...but that is just me.

Have a wonderful week.