The short answer
Why are my eBay sales slow even when I keep listing?
When I made this video in Nov 2023, I saw eBay slowdowns coming from two places: outside pressure and platform friction. Higher rates, inflation, and summer slowdown hurt buyer demand, while search bugs, promoted listings after checkout, combined-shipping issues, and rapid seller-side changes made it harder to convert buyers.
- In Nov 2023, I had about 9,800 items in my eBay store and was still seeing search and checkout issues.
- My guest separated the slowdown into buy-side problems and sell-side problems instead of blaming one thing.
- One buyer-side issue was items not showing in eBay search, even when similar eBay listings appeared through Google.
- Another issue was buyers seeing cheaper promoted items after purchasing, which could lead to cancellation requests.
- Sellers were having to adjust to many changes at once: promoted listing options, international shipping changes, payments, and interface updates.
Chapters (5)
When I made this video on Nov 13, 2023, a lot of sellers were asking the same thing: why does eBay feel harder than it used to? I was running a large store at the time, around 9,800 items, and I was seeing enough weird search and checkout behavior that it was worth talking through with TheJoshGalt.
This is not a “quit eBay” post. It is a practical breakdown of what we were seeing in late 2023, what was outside our control, what might have been platform friction, and what I would actually check in my own store before blaming the whole marketplace.
Is eBay slow because of the economy?
Yes, part of the slowdown we talked about in Nov 2023 was bigger than eBay: buyers had less extra money because of higher interest rates and inflation. That does not mean every slow sales day was caused by the economy, but it matters because eBay cannot fix a buyer’s grocery bill, gas bill, electricity bill, or credit card payment.
My guest’s first point was important: not everything is eBay’s fault. If buyers are spending more on debt and basic staples, they have less expendable income for used clothing, collectibles, and random replacement items. That hits every selling platform, not just eBay.
Here is the way I would frame it for my own store from that time:
| Pressure in late 2023 | What it did to buyers | What sellers could control |
|---|---|---|
| Higher interest rates | More money going to debt payments | Price with more discipline |
| Inflation | Groceries, gas, and utilities cost more | Source with more margin built in |
| Less expendable income | Fewer impulse buys | Improve titles, photos, and shipping clarity |
| Marketplace competition | Buyers compare harder | List items people are already searching for |
That last column is the part I care about. I cannot change interest rates. I cannot make groceries cheaper. But I can stop paying up for weak inventory, stop guessing on brands, and make sure the items I list have enough demand to survive a slower buying season.
Was summer slowdown part of the problem?
Yes, summer slowdown was one of the normal factors we mentioned, and bigger sellers often expect some version of it every year. The tricky part in 2023 was that it stacked on top of inflation, higher interest rates, and a post-pandemic reset in online buying.
During the pandemic, a lot of people were stuck at home and bought more online. My guest described late 2023 as a bit of a reversion to the mean. In plain English, that means buyers were not necessarily gone forever, but the unusual online buying behavior from the pandemic was cooling off.
If you sell on eBay long enough, you will have seasons where your store feels like it is broken even when you are doing the same work. That is why I try not to judge my whole business off one week. I look at a longer window and ask better questions:
| Question I would ask | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Am I listing consistently? | eBay stores usually need fresh inventory to keep moving. |
| Are my prices still realistic? | A slower buyer may not pay the same premium. |
| Are watchers turning into buyers? | If not, price or shipping may be the issue. |
| Are views low across the whole store? | That can point to demand or search visibility. |
| Are buyers messaging but not checking out? | That can point to checkout or shipping friction. |
The big lesson is that slow sales can have multiple causes at the same time. If you blame only one thing, you might miss the fix that is actually in your control.
Are eBay search issues hurting sales?
Yes, one of the biggest buyer-side concerns in the conversation was that some items were not showing up properly in eBay search. My guest gave an example of searching for snooker balls on eBay and not seeing the expected listings, then finding eBay listings through Google instead.
That is a big deal because buyers do not have unlimited patience. If somebody opens the app at a red light, searches once, and does not see what they want, you may lose that sale before they ever get to your listing. Most buyers are not going to run three different searches, check Google, come back to eBay, and troubleshoot the platform for us.
I had seen my own version of this too. I talked about not always being able to find my own items in my store. As a seller, that creates a weird problem: you start wondering if you forgot to list the item, if the title is bad, or if eBay just is not surfacing it.
Here is how I would check that without spiraling:
| Search check | What to do |
|---|---|
| Exact title search | Copy the full title and search it on eBay. |
| Short keyword search | Search the main brand plus item type. |
| Store search | Search inside your own eBay store. |
| Incognito or signed-out search | See what a buyer might see without your seller account. |
| Google search | Check whether the eBay listing appears through Google. |
If the listing shows up with the exact title but not with normal buyer keywords, I would fix the title first. If it does not show inside my own store search, that is when I would document it and watch for a broader issue.
The seller move is not to panic. The seller move is to verify. If I know an item is listed, photographed well, priced correctly, and still impossible to find, I can at least separate a listing problem from a platform problem.
Do promoted listings after checkout cause cancellations?
They can, and this was one of the most frustrating buyer-side issues we discussed in the video. The concern was that after a buyer completes a sale, eBay may show other promoted items, including cheaper ones, which can make the buyer question the purchase they just made.
The sale is the hard part. You did the sourcing, photos, title, item specifics, pricing, storage, and shipping setup. The buyer finally chooses your item. If they immediately see a cheaper alternative, some buyers may cancel and try to buy the lower-priced one instead.
My guest used a simple example: if another seller can copy the basic idea of your listing, price it 50 cents cheaper, and promote at a higher rate, they may be able to siphon off a buyer you already worked to convert. Whether eBay sees that as more ad revenue or more buyer choice, from the seller side it can feel like the platform is second-guessing the sale.
Here is the seller reality:
| Moment | What can go wrong | Seller response |
|---|---|---|
| Buyer purchases your item | eBay shows similar promoted items | Ship quickly and communicate clearly |
| Buyer sees a cheaper option | Buyer asks to cancel | Respond based on your cancellation policy and timing |
| Seller response is delayed | Buyer cools off completely | Check messages often if you sell full time |
| Buyer cancels and does not repurchase | Sale is lost | Track patterns, not one-off events |
I do not like building a business around fear of cancellations. But if you notice more cancellation requests after purchase, it is worth paying attention to price positioning. If your item is common, your title is generic, and your price is higher than similar promoted listings, you may be more exposed to that kind of buyer behavior.
Why do combined shipping and cart issues matter?
Checkout friction matters because a buyer who cannot figure out shipping may leave instead of messaging you. In the video, I mentioned buyers asking why they had items in their cart but could not make offers or combine shipping the way they expected.
That stood out to me because I had been selling for about two and a half years and had not really had that happen before. Then I had two messages in roughly two months where buyers were saying some version of, “I cannot check out,” or “I do not want to pay $8.95 shipping on each item.”
That is the type of thing that can quietly kill sales. A motivated buyer might message you. A normal buyer might just abandon the cart.
If you sell multiple similar items, especially clothing, smalls, media, or collectibles, combined shipping has to be easy to understand. The buyer should not have to know the inside of eBay’s offer and invoice system to buy from you.
Here is what I would check:
| Checkout issue | Why it matters | What I would review |
|---|---|---|
| Buyer cannot combine shipping | Total looks too expensive | Shipping rules and combined shipping settings |
| Buyer cannot make offers from cart | Buyer gets stuck before purchase | Best Offer settings on active listings |
| Multiple shipping charges show | Buyer thinks they are overpaying | Flat rate vs calculated shipping setup |
| Buyer messages confused | Sale is at risk | Reply fast and explain the next step simply |
This is also where clean listings matter. Once you have the item photographed, EasyFlip can help write the listing from a few photos, but you still need to make sure your shipping setup makes sense for the buyer.
The main point is simple: every extra step loses people. If the buyer has to ask how to pay, how to combine, or how to make an offer, some percentage of buyers will disappear before you ever hear from them.
Are seller-side eBay changes overwhelming sellers?
Yes, one of the biggest sell-side problems we talked about was the pace of change. My guest said that as full-time sellers, we are on the site constantly: checking comps, listing items, revising listings, answering buyers, and dealing with shipping.
Because of that, sellers notice when the site changes. We notice when the listing flow moves around. We notice when promoted listing options change. We notice when international shipping changes. We notice when payments, item display, or the user interface gets adjusted.
The frustration in late 2023 was not just that eBay changed things. It was that sellers felt like they had to keep relearning the platform while still running a real business.
Here are the changes we discussed in broad terms:
| Seller-side change discussed | Why it was hard for sellers |
|---|---|
| Multiple promoted listing options | Sellers had to understand more ad choices and rates. |
| International shipping changes | Sellers had to adjust from older programs like GSP into newer EIS-style systems. |
| Payment changes | Sellers had to keep up with how money moved through the platform. |
| User interface changes | Normal listing and management tasks felt different. |
| Search and display changes | Sellers could not always tell what buyers were seeing. |
My guest made a point that I think a lot of sellers felt: if eBay were a normal job and the workplace changed this much, some people would leave. But because we are running our own businesses, we try to adapt and keep going.
That is the right mindset, but it does not mean we ignore the stress. If a platform keeps changing, the seller who documents processes, checks settings, and keeps learning usually has an advantage over the seller who assumes everything still works the way it did last year.
What should you do if eBay feels broken?
Start by separating what you can control from what you cannot control. That was the real lesson of the conversation.
I cannot control inflation, interest rates, buyer confidence, eBay search tests, or the exact promoted listings a buyer sees after checkout. I can control what I source, what I pay, how I title, how I price, how I ship, how fast I respond, and whether I keep listing.
Here is the checklist I would use if my store felt slow:
| Area | What I would do first |
|---|---|
| Inventory | Check whether I am listing items with real demand. |
| Pricing | Compare active and sold comps, then adjust stale listings. |
| Search | Test whether my own listings appear for normal buyer keywords. |
| Shipping | Make sure combined shipping and cart checkout are not confusing. |
| Offers | Send offers where it makes sense and review Best Offer settings. |
| Cancellations | Watch for patterns instead of reacting to one bad buyer. |
| Platform changes | Recheck settings after major eBay updates. |
I would also keep notes. If three buyers in a week say they cannot check out, that is different from one random message. If ten listings do not show in search, that is different from one bad title. The more specific you are, the easier it is to decide whether you have a store problem, a listing problem, or a platform problem.
If you want more practical reseller breakdowns like this, I send them through the EasyFlip newsletter at /newsletter.
The bottom line
When I recorded this in Nov 2023, eBay was not “dead,” but it did feel harder for a lot of sellers. The slowdown was not one clean problem. It was a mix of macro pressure, seasonal softness, buyer-side friction, search concerns, checkout confusion, promoted listing frustration, and constant seller-side changes.
The move is not to sit around mad at eBay all day. Check your listings, test your search visibility, simplify shipping, price against reality, and keep sourcing items with enough demand. If the platform is messy, the cleaner operator has the edge.
Questions people ask
Why were eBay sales slow when this video was made?
When I made this video in Nov 2023, the slowdown looked like a mix of outside economic pressure and eBay platform friction. Higher interest rates, inflation, seasonal slowdown, search issues, and checkout problems were all part of the conversation.
Is eBay search sometimes the reason items do not sell?
It can be one reason, especially if buyers cannot find listings with normal search terms. In the video, we talked about items not appearing in eBay search even though eBay listings could sometimes be found through Google.
Can promoted listings cause buyers to cancel?
That was one concern we discussed in Nov 2023. If a buyer completes a purchase and then sees a cheaper promoted alternative, some buyers may question the purchase and ask to cancel.
Why does combined shipping matter on eBay?
Combined shipping matters because confusing checkout can stop a buyer before they pay. I mentioned buyers who had multiple items in their cart but did not want to pay separate shipping charges like $8.95 on each item.
What should I check first if my eBay store feels slow?
Check the controllable parts first: listing consistency, pricing, title quality, shipping settings, Best Offer settings, and whether your items appear in search. After that, look for patterns in buyer messages, cancellations, and cart problems.
Sources
Prices are eBay sold listings, and every fact below was checked on November 13, 2023.
Read the full video transcript
what is your kind of theory as to why eBay might be going through a different season um in some of the problems you may be experiencing okay I've got a few things here so I think that first of all the first thing I want to say and feel free to cut me off wherever and welcome to all the viewers but here we go I don't think everything is eBay's fault so there are some macro things going on in the economy right now that eBay can't control one of them is higher interest rates um this this is happening and it's it's hurting our consumer because they're spending more on their debt uh and it's you know it's a it's a little they don't have as much Expendable income so there's that uh on top of that you have higher inflation so our consumers everything our consumer spends their money on is getting more expensive including Staples
so their groceries are more their gas is more electricity everything everything is more expensive so we have to we have to see those macro events and see that yes our consumer is hurting right now and there's nothing eBay can do about that that's a trend that I think every single platform uh is experiencing so let me put that out there there's another thing that is not eBay's fault and that we are in summer slowdown it is a bit slower this summer um but that happens every single year if you talk to some of the bigger ebayers and I don't consider myself one of them but I thank you for that introduction it was very kind of you um if we talk to some of the bigger eBay sellers they say yes there's a little bit of reversion to the mean happening we had the pandemic we had people trapped buying things online now we're revert
reverting to the mean a little bit and it's summer slowdown and then those two factors are a problem now those two things do not in my opinion absolve eBay from the issues that are on the platform right now now do you want me to jump right in or you want to jump in on that no yeah I I agree I as well you know I have 9800 items in my store and yeah I'm experiencing all those errors and seeing all those things in the macroeconomy okay so then there's there's two issues that I see on eBay so we'll divert it into two the very first one on this side is the buy side one of the issues that I am noticing that has been going on for a long time and hasn't been fixed is that when you search on eBay and this may be a regional thing and maybe not everybody is experiencing this
but they're showing interal items first or items are not showing up this video is sponsored by Zeke analytics are you looking to grow your eBay reselling business well I've discovered an awesome tool to help you find winning products that can help outsell your competitors this powerful software helps you research profitable niches spy on your competitor's best-selling items and help you optimize your titles and listings so basically Zeke analytics is a tool that can scan all of eBay to show you realtime data on demand competition pricing and more you instantly know what products are hot and which niches have low competition so you can rank higher in search the product research and competitor tracking tools are game changers if you're looking to scale your business with just a few clicks you can identify top sellers in your Niche and uncover the winning listings whether you're just starting out or a Season Pro Zeke analytics will take
your eBay business to the next level the software pays for itself by helping you find winning products faster and will help you increase your sales so you can check it out down below you can use the promo code Linked In the description to save on your first month and Zeke analytics will become your goto research tool for eBay success now back to the episode for example if I put uh snooker balls up sometimes when I'm doing my research and I look for snooker balls none come up however when I go go on to the Google search engine eBay items will come up in the Google search engine I click on it then I see a listed item and on top of that I see all these recommended items that are the exact same thing so what is what is the issue with the search algorithm that it's not showing um a seller's items and the
reason in my opinion this is a big deal is because most of your buyers you want to capture them and complete the sale yeah in the time that it takes for them to wait for the red light to go to green right maybe they're sitting at a red light they're looking at their app they're thinking about something they want to buy you want to get that sale very very quickly because the buyer's attention span is like the length of a goldfish's uh attention span you want to capture make the sale and move on yeah so that that to me is a big big issue is that the items aren't showing up when the items do show up um when the items do show up and the buyer goes into someone's listing makes makes the purchase and as soon as the sale is completed they're showing other promoted items some of those promoted items are going
to be cheaper again this is a problem because eBay has already completed the sale so the buyer going to move on if they can get something cheaper some buyers will so they'll click to the next listing they'll want to buy it but first they got to cancel the sale with you they cancel the sale with you you don't respond right away um maybe it takes eight hours now maybe this buyer changed their mind and they don't want to buy it all so again they have the sale it's that's the hard part is getting the sale the buyer wants the item sale captured and they move the sale to someone else I think it's a big mistake do you know what I'm talking about with those promoted listings it's an issue with a lot of that a lot of sellers are happening are having right now what's your take on that yeah uh issue with me
is I've had buyers come and ask hey I have items in my cart but I can't make offers on them how do I combine shipping and I'm just like I've never had that happen before like ever in two and a half years but I've had two messages in the last two months you know where people are like I can't check out like I can't I don't want to pay 8.95 on six items each shipping yes so that's strange and they don't know right they don't know about even if you have combined offers if eBay is not showing that to them or automatically uh creating that calculation for them um then the buyer's just going to move on you know what I'm not going to pay I'll delete the app and I'll move on so I think Bow's Frozen but I'm gonna keep going yeah you're good okay you're good okay okay so yeah and and
that to me is in the buy side and and the way I the way I kind of frame that is Imagine Costco and all the money they spend and time they spend on building the infrastructure and they're selling sausages they don't allow a sausage vendor to sit outside their sign that they're promoting their sausages for in the parking lot and sell them for 50 cents cheaper if they did then the buyers would just buy the some of them would buy the sausages from the vendor in the parking lot but that that vendor didn't do any of the hard work if you're selling a lady jacket I can literally copy your listing verbatim M sell it for 50 cents cheaper and promote it at a higher rate now you put all the work into it you got the sale everything and I'm kind of like the lamp Ray on a shark and I just swoop in
and take the sale from you I think that as far as eBay is concerned now that pisses us off but as far as eBay is concerned I think overall that will lower revenues from them even if they're rating and we can get into the promoted rates so that's a whole other story I could go on for an hour about that um but think eBay questioning the buyer as to whether or not they made the right Sal is a huge problem on the platform so those are the buy side issues I see yeah yeah um just that example I brought up earlier and um also too like not being able to find my own items in my store right is like because I think like oh did I not list this oh no it's just an error on it's not there yeah it's just not there and I think uh these perennial I want to get
into the cell side issues I I'll wait till you fuzz back in B's having trouble with his internet he's out in the mountains in the middle of nowhere um so if you can hear me and we're not Frozen um I'll just keep chatting away I should watch this live to make sure that we're still going we Frozen Bo let us know in the comments are we Frozen we're still going okay Bow's Frozen I'm still going okay let me get into the cell side part of this now if you're a seller on the platform a full-time seller Nobody Knows the issues better than the sellers James is one of the best uh when it comes to uh susing this out so check out his channel my boring reseller life just to plug in yep but uh we're on the site 12 14 16 18 hours a day checking comps listing items so we know functionally how
the site works better than everyone in the past 3 years I feel as though I have to be an expert computer programmer in order to navigate my way around the site now eBay is a product of Silicon Valley their motto is move fast and break things so they've been making all these changes but us as businesses we have not had the opportunity to adjust to these changes they've rolled out multiple promoted listings options they've rolled out new international shipping two or three times from GSP to e Eis to the new Eis they have changed um the way in which uh payments are made they've changed the way in which items are shown user interface and the list goes on and on and on and on and what happens is your your lower tier of sellers I don't want to call them lower tier but you have a a tier of sellers that is unable to
adjust to the changes because things are switching so quickly and at the end of the day eBay's users are not the buyers they are the sellers because we are eBay's customers we pay them money and then we get our own customers off the site so they're spending a lot of time not only changing things and I'm going to give you the reason why I think this is changing all these things um but they're pissing their users off and we talked a little bit about this before the show you have your their users their customers saying you know what I don't want to do this anymore eBay if if eBay were a corporation that I had to work for and I was an employee I would be longone already I would not put up with this but since we're running our own businesses we don't we don't really have a choice kind of have to to
roll with the punches so
