Where are all the bidders?

Is it just me, or is everyone finding it slowing dramatically on ebay at the moment?

These last few weeks I have almost run myself broke buying all the bargains that are around lol. Just doesn't seem to be many bidders out there at the moment at all, quite bizarre.

I've been getting some absolute steals, so much so that I feel guilty when I go to pick up the stuff lol. I've just given up trying to sell anything at the moment, the market is just too flat.

I've never seen it quite like this, even video games sales are way down, when they stop selling then something is going on lol

What's everyone else experiencing at the moment?

Bit of a slowdown myself, aside from my one-at-a-time gift card debacle, which is going ok. I had chalked it up to lack of listings on my part -- been slacking off as I tend to more pressing business -- but interesting to hear it isn't just me.


Frank

No, not just you Frank, it's quite a strange market at the moment. We are seeing our page views down around 40%, and that is being reflected in the sales.

I can say that I've never seen it like this, and anyone game enough to kick an auction of at 0.99 at the moment is really taking a risk lol

Good to hear those gift cards are working out for you mate, at least you should still have a few left for Christmas gifts at the rate you're allowed to sell then at : )

Nah; they're flying out like hotcakes. Every time I sell one I offer more to the buyer for 5% less than he paid for the one from eBay eg. if the auction ended at $90.xx (pretty normal for $100 cards so far) I offer him a few more for $85 each, discount available only for pay-now-ship-now sales, not a recurring thing. So the same people come back to later auctions and that's getting the job done. Not as fast as I'd like but I'm clearing 85% face on the cards net of expenses, and the best rates at bulk buying sites top out well below that for the particular cards I have, usually 75-78% at those venues. And we're talking about a lot of cards, so that extra money is worth the wait.


Frank

Well worth the wait, they are nice numbers!

I suppose this makes me feel a bit better in my listings. I was thinking it was quieter than I thought it would.

But then again I'm for Buy It Now items, I'm getting views and enquiries... just... no buyers.

I'm also new to the game and don't really have the "trust" in the market so-to-speak.

Hey guys,

My auctions too are way way down! my slow down started 1 month ago and those same products I was selling in high high volume just a few months prior plus my page views are also down. I actually had to pay my ebay fees just this month out of my own pocket, now thats telling you something. I actually had to find a part time job because my ebay business is just not cutting it anymore. Right now even though ebay is pushing the free listing fees on auctions with a higher fvf they are at the same time more so pushing their BINs format and trying to get away from auctions all together so I have this feeling that ebay is doing very big testings with their search engine and thats dramatically effecting our page views and where our items are falling under in the search results.

To me eBay is just not cutting it anymore and as of now im just pushing as much as possible to get on more growing marketplaces like Bonanzle, eCrater and Wigix.

Yes, quite bizarre at the moment, numbers way down on averages. Definitely a reminder that it's important to be getting as much effective market exposure as possible.

I know we won't be running any games auctions now. Everything will go to a BIN option until we see a serious improvement on page views at the very least.

ebay has always been a buyers market, but I've never personally experienced anything quite like this.

I have been watching Auction site count and it is amazing that every hour EBay is losing about 1.5 to 3 percent of their total listings since yesterday. That is not a daily percent that is a hourly percent. Seems people are not listing. Ecrater is gaining that same percentage each hour. Interesting!

That's actually very interesting.

Will be even more interesting to see how that trend pans out over coming weeks dmd, keep us up top that if you can.

Sure will Marc. Just checked again and as of 8PM CST yesterday they have not posted a single gain. They are close to if not 1 million auctions less sence that time.

dmd - are you able to setup a page we can view the stats and have it update every few hours at all?

Or is there one already available?
On that note in regards to trying to get away for bidding. In my recent searches I notice I have a lot more Buy it Now's come up on screen than Auction ads, even though there might be numerous Auction Adverts..

Hi vichardy,

I think this is the auction site count watch dmdiscounts is referring to.

Link hidden: Login to view

Cheers!

Hey just wondering if business has picked up yet on ebay? mine are still pretty much flat and not sure whats going on with the consumer these days.

We are still seeing lower than average page views on our business account, so we aren't running any auctions at this point. Having said that, our BIN options are still turning over, all be it slowly.

Strangely enough, I've listed quite a lot of personal stuff on another account to clear out some of the old and unwanted clutter, and that's been going off big time.

You gotta love the second hand market, I don't think that ever slows down, just goes from strength to strength the tighter the economy gets : )

Hey Mark,

Have you noticed the new fee structure? I was about to change over my auctions to BINS but then noticed the reality! 50 cents! and if you have a store if practically robbery yeah your only paying 3 cents to list but your then paying a stiff 49.95 a month for that store. Shoot guys its really not even worth using the BIN structure anymore.

Yeah, we run a feature store ourselves don, but we have spent some time testing and fine tunning our shipping cost to finally arrive at the figure of $6.99 per item.

That figure allows us to not just include within it the cost of packaging and postage itself, but also the cost of listing, final value fee and any PayPal fees incurred on payment transfers.

That pricing model has moved around a bit as we tested the limits, but now we can cover all those fees and still average over 4.6 for our shipping fee DSR. We also make on average around $1.00 to $2.50 on top of covering all those costs, which then goes to offset the cost of the ebay shop.

So we are effectively running our ebay format cost neutral, and maintaining an acceptable DSR ratting across the board, with our shipping fee rating being the lowest. That said, our 30 day DSR ratings average shows that the shipping cost average is getting stronger, so we are confident that we can get that average over 4.7.

Big thing with shipping price feedback, if you ship quickly you can have a seriously positive spin off on your price average, within reason of course.

: )