My eBay sales have been consistently slower than my Etsy sales for quite a few months. The switch occurred sometime last fall. I have had 73 different transactions on eBay since January 1, while I have had 110 different transactions on Etsy since January 1. I checked site traffic rankings, and I found where eBay is #17 and Etsy is #39. Etsy has less traffic than eBay by a good bit, yet my sales are consistently better on Etsy.
Why is this?
I can think of at least three reasons.
- eBay's search, especially for Nancy Drew, is too cluttered, and eBay manipulates search results instead of just showing buyers the results in a unbiased fashion.
- My eBay listings will not be promoted outside of eBay unless I pay eBay an exorbitant minimum extra fee of $5 per day, which is $150 per 30 days on top of other existing fees. I won't do that.
- eBay is hiding my store categories from buyers.
In the full web version, the categories are collapsed and easy to miss. It takes two clicks to get all of them open. It's illogical to hide the categories in the full web version. I'm confident that I'm losing sales because of the hidden categories.
On Etsy, the categories display in the full web version, but they don't in mobile. The situation is suboptimal even on Etsy, and yet, my sales are better on Etsy. I suspect that the main reason is the off-site ads. I am permanently opted-in to Etsy's off-site ads. I am only charged when I get a sale through an off-site ad, which is how it should be.
eBay's setup is to charge by clicks, which means that the ad dollars don't go very far. The pricing is quite prohibitive. I believe I need off-site ads in order to get more sales on eBay, but the pricing is so outrageous that I cannot justify paying for it.
So, I'm stuck. There are undoubtedly things I could do to help the situation, but right now, it's not a priority.
After some thought, I initiated a 10% off sale in my eBay store. I did it by store categories, so not all of my listings are part of the sale. Perhaps a sale will help move a few items.
I wasn't going to run a sale on Etsy, but I decided that I might as well.
Jennifer's Series Books on eBay
Jennifer's Series Books on EtsyI am auctioning one library edition currently, so check it out here.
Nancy Drew #32 The Scarlet Slipper Mystery Vintage Library Binding
Finally, I have a word of caution. If you sell on eBay and use calculated shipping, make sure you're okay with eBay's new settings. They defaulted all sellers to where the calculated shipping is charging eBay's reduced commercial rate to buyers, which means that buyers are being charged the bare minimum. I suspect that some sellers don't have a handling fee applied to shipping. Those sellers could really be hurt by eBay charging buyers even less for postage.
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