Stats that might be of interest to you

[theElench]

@ johnwash.

Yes, I agree a couple of numbers from random dates are not at all reliable or significant. I can't even remember why I jotted them down and was a bit surprised to find them again. But they do show where ebid was 2 years ago and that it has grown since.

I'm hoping to get back into my routine of regular listing this weekend and anticipating some listings from new comers in the same area as I've been reading reports from obay that buyers are only being given a choice of Standard or Express delivery without being told who is the carrier. Standard is evri. I can't imagine that any glass seller is going to be happy with obay over-riding their choice of RM only if a buyer ticks the Standard Box?

I know I wouldn't be.

[MPS16]

@ johnwash.

................ I've been reading reports from obay that buyers are only being given a choice of Standard or Express delivery without being told who is the carrier. Standard is evri. I can't imagine that any glass seller is going to be happy with obay over-riding their choice of RM only if a buyer ticks the Standard Box?

I know I wouldn't be.

Currently under The Simple Delivery system a seller can choose which postal service they use.

Either Royal Mail or Evri

If the seller offers both options then I believe the buyer can then choose the one they prefer.

[BordersBargains]

Well *bay made some rather stupid changes over the past year or so that really is hurting their platform

They reduced Private Sellers listing amounts to 300 from 1000 which was previously 3000, this was to try and make some people change to business accounts, This is when Vinted and some other platforms started growing

They then added Buyer Protection Fee's in an attempt to copy Vinted - Another massive mistake - *bay started to lose low value items being listed like Stamps, Comics, patterns etc because a cheap postcard for say £5 would lose £0.50p on fee's and now its loses 75p and 4% fee's which for some is just too much

Lastly they added the simple delivery - Its not as bad as people say it is, you can still opt out and add your own postage choices but you have to do it every single time even if you selected sell similar which must be annoying as hell. Along with that when you go to do your label, you then have to mess around a little more. Its time consuming and well just stupid.

*bay went from 179M users in 2018 to as of last year 134m (2 of which as added from somewhere else, so 132) - I expect that number to go down and their GMV to be really bad by the end of this year

This platform may have grown in listing amounts but has it grown in sales? People have basically started cross listing to all other platforms but most of those platforms don't tend to advertise

[theElench]

IMO they started their campaign of self harm well before that. I started here in '13, unhappy that they'd slapped 10% FVF on P&P. Sometime later the separation from paypal and going to in-house Managed Payments upset many sellers. More recently their introduction of IS and the removal of all the old categories in Collectables has IMO gone a long way towards wrecking buyers ability to find what they're searching for and they are slowly perfecting the algorithm that makes Sponsorship Fees necessary to get more than an occasional sale.

I listed about 50 items there last year and sold 4. I listed the same number here last year and sold 28.

I must admit I've given up trying to follow the introduction of Simple Delivery, there is no way that I'd allow even the remote possibility of some buyer getting the chance to select evri to deliver any of my pieces of glass. But to me obay has broken two of the 'golden rules' of selling with the Buyer Protection Fee and SD.

Most buyers know that obay's fees were hidden in the cost of the item, the BPF shows the fee at checkout. That not only shows just how big it is but makes it look like a new fee. Neither a good idea.
With SD anyone who buys regularly is surely going to notice that the postage they're paying has moved up a level, either they're paying for Tracking or ebay is charging Medium Parcel postage for a Small Parcel. I don't think it'll take long for buyers to work out that they can buy the same item for less on other sites.

I seem to remember that ebay at its high point had 185M users and had actually begun to decline by 2018. Apart from during the Covid Lock-downs that's continued, IMO, most of the lost sellers have been private/individual, progressively put off by them evolving into a more business focussed site.

I have no idea whether sales have grown overall here, or not. I can only relate my experience, which is single figures p.a up to Covid lock-down. My growing number of listings and perhaps buyers with a lot of spare time in-doors led to sales doubling into the teens p.a. Since then my sales have not dropped back to previous levels, but have grown slowly each year. Culminating in last year's 28.

This year has not been good so far, for the obvious reasons IMO. The iniquitous freeze on Personal Allowances is biting everyone, but with pensioners particularly hard hit. Add to that the continuing inflation of every bill and living expense by corporations announcing record profits shows where what used to be disposable income is going and until that is addressed I can only see hard times ahead.