Question
I've been sellng pretty regularly frm my eBay store averaging about 1-2 sales a day but now no store action at all for about 5 days! Has this happened to anyone else?
Answer
I only seem to get store sales at the end of the month, so I'll have to let you know later.
Hope nothing has changed.
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Yep. Mine have come to a screeching halt also. I've had the same thing happen in the past and then they just take off again.
It's a mystery to me.
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I may have noticed one thing... a couple times in the past I've experimented with doing searches in one of my specialized categories for a critical keyword that would pull up one of my store listings. When everything's on quicksand like eBay is with its rules and layouts sometimes memory doesn't serve accurately, but didn't results like that used to come up in a limited sub-listing of store offerings at the bottom of the page showing the search results for active listings?
Now what I see at the bottom when I search a fairly mundane and lower-priced item keyword is a clickable link, "See additional buy it now items in stores".
BUT, on doing a search in the same category for a rather expensive item's keyword, there's a sublist of those items in stores, complete with thumbnails, at the page bottom.
The stores with the expensive version seem to be the bigger "Powerseller" ones, the price difference was around $10-$20 for the search with no store listings immediately shown, versus around $1000 for store items seen at once.
Maybe this is the difference between the $10/month stores versus the $50/month ones? Or is there some software decision based on numbers of search results, prices, etc? Whoops, no, I tried an overall search on an obscure $300 item in my store and with a search showing zero active auctions, the thumbnail listing does appear very prominently on the results page despite my having only the $10/month version.
Anyway, maybe they previously showed store listings for all keyword searches but now only do so with expensive and/or obscure ones?
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My store sales have been slow for the past few days, but I attribute some of the slowdown to the devastation from Hurrican Ivan. Florida was not the only area affected. Here in Western PA, we had major flooding in areas that have not flooded ever before. Some small communities have had their business districts destroyed, not to mention the countless homes with major flood damage--no flood insurance, either, since these areas are not considered flood prone. From what I've heard, at least 19 counties in PA were designated disaster areas, and I imagine other states have had similar unexpected damage.
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Python, I may be totally "off base" but I think that when a search is done the auction/fixed items come up first and then if there are less than 10 they add the list of items from the stores. If there is more than 10 they put the note link about there being additional items in the stores.
What I would like to know is the criteria that they use to determine which additional store items that they will list in what order when they do add the store items.
Bet someone that knows about this better than me will come along and be more definitive.
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The newest listings are the ones that show up first.
Example:
You have 20 widgets in your store, but they were listed two weeks ago.
I have 3 widgets in my store, but they were listed yesterday.
My store's name would be listed before yours, even though you have more widgets.
Typical eBay logic.
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No significant change here - store sales are running 65% of my total eBay transactions...
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My store sales are slow right now, but this has happened for a couple of years running during September. I think it is a pretty dead month for my kind of item.
Plus you have a lot of sellers listing again who weren't listing during the summer, though things really won't pick up until the end of Daylight Savings Time.
Like others in this thread, I have sudden spurts of activity, usually near the middle and end of each month which may have something to do with paychecks...
Larry