Is ebay dead?

yorkiefiona

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I remember the good old days when I used to have a few sales every weekend on ebay. I was so excited to check my sold area and find something had sold. These days, sales are much slower (despite selling popular items) and these last few months, sales have been incredibly dire - 1 sale every 3 days if I'm lucky and in the last fortnight I've not had one sale!! Many listings have almost been on the site for 30 days and still have 0 views. Watchers are almost non existent and gone are the days where you could have 100+ views in a month, now I'm lucky to get over 10 views during the whole listing duration. I even checked out my competitors and typed in to search what I usually sell and the listings are way down by over 25%.

And then the new layout today. It is bloody awful. Too big on my screen so I have to do scrolling each way just to see everything and it doesn't show how many sold items you have - even though that's easy for me as it's been 0 for so long...too long in fact.

Oddly enough it can't be the weather as about 2 weeks ago when my sales fell off a cliff, I decided to list some items on ebid and they have had a lot more views than the same items had on ebay (there is a first for everything) and I've even had 1 sale! OK nothing to get too excited about, BUT in that time nothing has sold on ebay so something is definitely wrong with ebay.

How about you. Are you finding ebay dead at the moment?
 

Jon

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I remember the good old days when I used to have a few sales every weekend on ebay. I was so excited to check my sold area and find something had sold. These days, sales are much slower (despite selling popular items) and these last few months, sales have been incredibly dire - 1 sale every 3 days if I'm lucky and in the last fortnight I've not had one sale!! Many listings have almost been on the site for 30 days and still have 0 views. Watchers are almost non existent and gone are the days where you could have 100+ views in a month, now I'm lucky to get over 10 views during the whole listing duration. I even checked out my competitors and typed in to search what I usually sell and the listings are way down by over 25%.

And then the new layout today. It is bloody awful. Too big on my screen so I have to do scrolling each way just to see everything and it doesn't show how many sold items you have - even though that's easy for me as it's been 0 for so long...too long in fact.

Oddly enough it can't be the weather as about 2 weeks ago when my sales fell off a cliff, I decided to list some items on ebid and they have had a lot more views than the same items had on ebay (there is a first for everything) and I've even had 1 sale! OK nothing to get too excited about, BUT in that time nothing has sold on ebay so something is definitely wrong with ebay.

How about you. Are you finding ebay dead at the moment?
Trying to sell home things is an absolute chore for me
Planks of wood, flag stones, building sand none of these damn items can I sell - well I can but I get stupid offers for them!!

Plus I’m still salty about the face I sold a bike for £270 odd and had to pay about £29 in fees let alone the PayPal ones!!
 

Dick Barton

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Items sold this week on ebay:
Item cost £5 sold £30
item cost 40p sold £48
Item cost £1.50 sold £50
item cost £2 sold £20
 

yorkiefiona

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Items sold this week on ebay:
Item cost £5 sold £30
item cost 40p sold £48
Item cost £1.50 sold £50
item cost £2 sold £20

WOW that's fantastic profit figures. Hope you can keep it up. I can only dream of those figures. When things were selling I was lucky to get £5 profit per item although I was happy enough with that. My total sales in the last 2.5 weeks have been a grand ZERO on ebay and £3.23 profit on ebid
 

Dick Barton

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There are lots of items I could make a small profit on, but I prefer to pack one item for a good profit rather than mess around with the lower prices. This is not meant to sound arrogant, but by looking for specific items you don't get too many and have stuff everywhere. Do you sell books at all?
 

Dick Barton

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Another 20p into £17 yesterday. Am I the only one making money from reselling?
 

Jon

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Another 20p into £17 yesterday. Am I the only one making money from reselling?
How about the products you don’t make money on or just sell for what you paid for them minus eBay and PayPal fees

I assume not everything you sell on eBay hits a 800% markup :)
 
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Cas

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Another 20p into £17 yesterday. Am I the only one making money from reselling?
I think so.

was this book made of gold your doing well.

nice work.
 

Dick Barton

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How about the products you don’t make money on or just sell for what you paid for them minus eBay and PayPal fees

I assume not everything you sell on eBay hits a 800% markup :)
Hi Jon
No, not everything does. Here is an example from today. Paid £8 for two tools. One has sold for £17.99 (and I made a postage mistake). However, after all fees I made just over a fiver on the whole deal. However, the main tool that I bought is still for sale at £35 so, it has cost me nothing and a decent profit when it sells! I always have a plan B!!
 

Cas

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sorry where do you find these items loool
 

Andrew

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Been doing reselling for just over a week now (focussed on sci-fi collectables though unlike @Dick Barton so a different market/niche).

Done the following:

£20 into £43 (About £16 profit after fees)
£20 into £50 (About £20 profit after fees)
£0.99 into £9.99 (About £5 profit after fees)
£2.50 into £18 (About £10 profit after fees)
£2 into £18 (About £10 profit again)
£5 into £21.99 (About £11 profit)
£0.99 into £9.99 (About £5 profit)
£2 into £25.99 (About £17 profit)
£9 into £34.99 (About £18 profit)

So there's definitely money to be made.

Best things to do are to build up your positive feedback first (by buying stuff on ebay). Take good pictures and write good descriptions - have a look at sold/completed on eBay as well to see how much stuff sells for (and whether it sells!). List like crazy (I revise listings and add stock every day so that the eBay algorithims think I'm an active seller and push me up the rankings). Work out whether you want to offer free P and P as well. I do because people seem to like it (and it's not really free as I charge more for an item to cover the P and P costs. But others prefer to add the P and P as a seperate cost.

Also I never ever put anything on auction. Everything I sell is on buy it now as I get the best prices that way.

In terms of sourcing stock I find the best places are Carboot Sales, eBay itself (there's a lot of stuff on local collection which goes for about 99p!), charity shops, facebook marketplace and oddly enough for my niche Home Bargains as well! Freegle and freecycle can also be a source of good stock (I always make it clear to anyone I'm picking up from that I'm a reseller - I have the same arrangements in place with the charity shops I source from as well so there's no moral ambiguity!).

I also get given a lot of donations from friends and family who are looking to free up space which helps. As long as you're honest about what you intend to do with the stuff you get you'll be amazed at how much stuff you can get for little or no money!
 

Andrew

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Did a vlog about the kind of stuff I pickup when I'm not focussing on my niche as well which you can view here if you like.

 
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Dick Barton

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sorry where do you find these items loool
Car boot sales are my favourite, but charity shops are always worth a look. I have has some really good finds at jumble sales. Where I live now, not so many of them, but they do have street sales in the summer. At a street sale I purchased a wooden tree trunk that had been carved into a head and painted for a fiver. This sold for £80. So, in reality I look anywhere and everywhere.
 
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jackieblack

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I used to love eBay. In the good old days (2007) I had a shop. It was the first time I actually started making money self employed and loved it. Things went rapidly down hill once the Chinese sellers moved in so I then had my own website. Anyone remember 'mr site'? Not had a proper job since :eek:
 

Jon

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I used to love eBay. In the good old days (2007) I had a shop. It was the first time I actually started making money self employed and loved it. Things went rapidly down hill once the Chinese sellers moved in so I then had my own website. Anyone remember 'mr site'? Not had a proper job since :eek:

Yeah this was how things went for me sadly. I even tried drop shipping which a few years ago was meant to be the holy grail of saving your ebay career but the reality was that you were selling DVD or Games for literally profit of a few PENCE so now not only were you competing against all the Chinese sellers but those items you did sell made you naff all!
 

asajj

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Items sold this week on ebay:
Item cost £5 sold £30
item cost 40p sold £48
Item cost £1.50 sold £50
item cost £2 sold £20

What could possibly cost 40p but would be sold for £48..

I did few sales over the past years with good profit margin but not everything will fit into this category surely.
 

Dick Barton

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What could possibly cost 40p but would be sold for £48..

I did few sales over the past years with good profit margin but not everything will fit into this category surely.
Books for one asajj. My record on a book was £92 for a book that cost 10p or 20p (from a jumble sale). I have sold countless books for £20+ that cost coppers.
 

asajj

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Books for one asajj. My record on a book was £92 for a book that cost 10p or 20p (from a jumble sale). I have sold countless books for £20+ that cost coppers.

Nice one! mostly reference books, study texts? Having been selling on several platforms, I think there is still life on Ebay - I just find it a bit fiddly for my stuff (clothes, shoes etc) but for things like computers, it is still the best.
 

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