Big Drop In Ebay Sales This Week

This time of the year is usually the busiest time for sales on ebay for postal history and stamps. It was last year at least. Yet for some days I have noticed a big drop in sales. With no new bids being placed on my ebay auctions, yet plenty on offer. Unusual for my auctions as there is usually a lot of interest and heavy bidding. Just curious to know if any other sellers have also felt a big drop in sales this week on ebay.

The entire month has been slow for me but the last week to 10 days have been especially so.

I wonder why sales have suddenly dropped like this, where have all the bidders gone?

If ebay continues to annoy sellers - sellers will not offer quality product at good prices. That may be the explanation. Maybe their awful seller relations practices are finally coming home to roost.

Sellers are also buyers and the more that get upset and leave buy elsewhere. I personally have put selling on hold for now (too many aggravations) and buy stamps exclusively from auction houses/Delcampe. In a very small way I am demonstrating to e-bay my displeasure at their continuing harassment of sellers. I will be back once they let me run my business the way I know how (thousands of transactions - not one complaint ever). I don't think I'm alone in abandoning e-bay which must be affecting sales.

I haven't put anything up on the bay for ages, and I am reluctant to do so now as I do not feel protected from scammers by the bay, or paypal. I will have lots of stamps and philately stuff to put up end of October and I am seriously considering Delcampe and Skrill. Do any of you have any experience of them, or advice. All advice most welcome.

Terry

ebay has done nothing to remedy malicious negative feedbacks I have received from fictitious buyers, so I am not relisting anything that wasn't already an automatic relist. Like Jenny, this is my small way of protesting. I have presented extensive evidence to support my claims, yet nothing is done, no personal contact about it, nothing. Under the current system, it is very EASY for crooked/rogue buyers to harm sellers through the flawed Feedback system. They can literally steal products from the seller AND get refunds AND leave malicious feedback! What a place!

I've sold on Delcampe and actually I suspended my sales there due to lack of activity.

Cons:

If you want to be noticed on Delcampe you have to be constantly adding new material otherwise your listings just get buried. It doesn't help that some sellers will end their old listings and relist them as new just to get back on top of the listing feeds.

Also, Delcampe installed a fee for every item that is sold. It ranges from 12 cents to 18 cents depending on your subscription status. It acts like a retroactive listing fee. Intentional or not, it prevents the sales of lower priced items. It's actually cheaper to sell low priced items on ebay if you list on ebay without a listing fee.

There is less activity and potential buyers on Delcampe thus the auction format is probably not the best way to sell. Most people who are successful on Delcampe use fixed price listings.

The bulk listing program is absolutely horrible. The page to list items one by one is a better format and easier to use.

Pros:

Sellers can select a variety of payment methods.

Final value fees are less and they do not take a percentage of shipping costs unlike ebay.

The categories for most countries are better defined (although you can list an item only in one category).

Easy to send invoices, leave feedback and mark items as shipped.

Feedback is more open and one can edit it.

You can write longer title descriptions than ebay.

It's a true international site - no .ca, .uk, etc.

There's a lot going for the site however I found out that I just don't get the same volume of sales as I do with ebay. If Delcampe ever removed that fee per item sold I'll probably reopen my store there.

ebay knows this, which is why I don't see them becoming any more accommodating toward sellers anytime soon. My main frustration with ebay as a buyer is that it can be very difficult finding the stamps I'm looking for. For collectors of worldwide stamps, their categories are horrible. "Germany and Colonies" and "France and Colonies" et. al. (just to cite a couple examples) are far, far too broad and I constantly have to wade through scores of unrelated listings to find what I'm looking for.

Yahoo owns a pretty good stake of Alibaba ($36 billion) and there are rumors of a possible collaboration in starting a new auction site. Yahoo failed at auctions in the past, but in combination with Alibaba, who knows? Interesting times ahead.

No question that some sellers are rattling the sabers, but disgruntled sellers have always been pretty vocal with their displeasure on ebay's policies and practices. I assume that there is some 'line in the sand' which could be crossed by ebay which would be the 'last straw' and really impact them but I don't see it happening any time soon.

The number of listings continues to climb (180 million listings). The number of transactions continues to climb. And their stock price (stock up 400 percent from its $10 nadir in March 2009), investors, and net worth are all very healthy. So while it may irk me that ebay continues to strong arm sellers it certainly does not appear to be hurting their bottom line at all and in fact they continue to grow at rates any company would be happy with.

Other online auction sites like Delcampe pale in comparison to the ebay machine; if you think that sales are slow on ebay right now there is no way you will be happy with the sales volume you will see from a site like Delcampe. This 800 pound gorilla is alive and well for now and is not showing any real signs of decline.
Don

Don, do you sell on e-bay?

The Jewish holidays also began last week, so a lot of people are observing those. Not sure how it impacts all stamp sales, but it sure does have an impact on many that collect Israel.

Yes, I do. (Sold approximately $10k in last 12 months)
Don

Today ebay announced splitting off PayPal - Don't know how this is going to effect things

Thank you Battlestamps, ArtfulHinger, and 51studebaker for your most helpful feedback. A lot of good info to consider.

Terry