If you are a seller of beads, findings, or jewelry components on eBay then you have noticed that your sell-through rates on the items you are selling has dropped substantially over last several months.

A big contributor to this decrease in sales and relative increase in fees collected by eBay is due to the "best match" search result change.  Most U.S. based sellers in the bead categories will now find themselves 6-10 pages back in search results as international sellers enjoy top placement on the search results...

Why are sellers in China, Australia, and UK receiving the best placement?  We believe that it has to do with eBay's new algorithm which seems to calculate the distance the item has to travel against the associated cost to ship the item.

As eBay has not released the particulars of how it's algorithm works, (which takes MANY other factors into consideration as well) we have no way of knowing how to make items more search friendly for our U.S. based customers. 

Many of the sellers we supply have opted out of selling on eBay all together in search for greener pastures, or should we say "free-er" pastures.  We have received requests to sell our items on other free auction sites that don't employ such a complicated algorithm but focus on empowering their partners instead... 

We want to know how eBay's recent changes have affected your business and what you are doing about it.  Talk to us about the challenges you are now facing, and don't be afraid to log in and blog!