 Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Coffee Break with Karl. So I just thought today we'd take it a little bit easier. It's not going to be too structured, just covering a few things as they come to mind and give out some figures that I've got on the screen just to the side here. So I apologize if I have to look away from time to time. So how has your week been going? There's the question. You know, leave some comments in the box below. You can have a chat, see how your week's going in comparison, seeing how things are moving for people on eBay at the minute. For myself, a bit of a mixed bag in all honesty. The last few days have been a bit up and down. There's very much a lot of control going on by eBay again. Absolutely stand by this and I deny anybody that says otherwise. I like James like to do a lot of deep diving on data and statistics over time and watch movement. And if you were to look at your figures daily, not just your sales, not just your page views or your impressions, any one particular area, you will see a pattern appear and you will notice when they are manipulating figures. So just before I go into anything on my figures, there was something that was mentioned in another video yesterday that I'd watched where it was mentioned that their impressions were through the roof. And then after a couple of days when they looked back, it was gone again. Josh was the one that mentioned it. That was correct. Now this has happened to me before. I've even pointed it out in an earlier video in the journey way back when and when I kicked off with politely with eBay, which was when I partially got threatened by eBay with suspension and removal from eBay because they didn't have the answers and they didn't want to tell me the answers. And because I wouldn't take no for an answer, I wanted factual answers. They'd pushed it further. So obviously after that learning curve, we know that we don't push eBay too far too hard because they're the boys with the toys in the playground. And if you want to play with them, you have to play by their rules. So yeah, don't push too hard. So yeah, just to clarify what happens there, it's not a glitch. So for example, say you suddenly have a massive spike in impressions and then I'll tell you when it'll happen. It will be within 48 to 72 hours later, generally on the 72 hour mark, it will then remove that mass amount of impressions you received from three days ago. That's when it recalculates it back down. My understanding of how this works and what it is for is as we know they control the traffic we receive. We also know the amount of traffic we receive is down to the sell-through rates. Now in order for the algorithm to decide on what amount of traffic you should be receiving, it will look at the traffic you've received. Now the point of where I'm going with this is obviously this is my thought process of how it's come about and how it happens and why it's done. I have no data categorically to back it up other than my own experience and the fact that eBay ended up pushing me back because they were in a corner for answers. And obviously they played the bigger card I had to behave. But what basically happens is the system will look back at what you've received and if your sell-through is higher it can then calculate how much more of the power of those impressions you should be receiving. So when it looks back and it removes those impressions, it's then got a lower amount of impressions to work out how much you should be receiving more. For example if you were receiving 100,000 impressions for two or three days running saying let's just say that's higher than you would normally receive, then it sees that your strike-through rate is whatever percentage it's at. Maybe it's increased slightly from previous. It then has to calculate how many more impressions give you a percentage wise of impressions from those last three days. If it's calculating on three high peak days or a higher amount, it then has to calculate with a higher average. Whereas when they remove a big chunk of it, they have a smaller amount they can then calculate forward to you. So if you're not getting sales, you're not increasing your sell-through rate and it looks back at how many days to work out the average of how much you should be getting, how much more it should be allowing to give toward you, it's working it off a smaller number. This is my thought. I cannot guarantee it. I cannot say without, for want of a better word, without clarification from eBay. They wouldn't give it even if we'd ask them. But this is my experience of what I have seen. And it would tally with what I'm seeing at the moment. So for example, for me at the moment, I am receiving. Let's have a look. So for example, on November the 5th, I had zero sales for the whole day. And I received 165,605 promoted impressions and 19,352 organic. Now that was very high for organic because my organic for almost a year without fail has always been around six to seven thousand. It doesn't matter if I have 100 listings or 1000 listings, it only ever gives me six, six and a half thousand organic impressions per day without fail. The only time that peaks is if I end all or a majority of my listings and sell similar to those listings, then you get a big boost in your organic. The promoted impressions, as I say, on the 5th was 165,605. On the 6th, 165,002. So there's only 500 impressions difference in two days. And today we're currently running at 71,450. So I can say from my experience, we're at three o'clock in the UK, I can estimate that and I'll report back in the comments below tomorrow what it ends up as. And if I'm wrong, that's fine. But I will calculate that I will come out with, unless they spike it, I will come out with around 162,000 is my calculated assumption from my experiences. Now, as I say, they could spike it. And if they spike it, I will sit around 172. So that's my guess. So 163 is my expected. 172 is my cap if they spike it. So we'll see how that comes out tomorrow. But yeah, so they do control the impressions and it's very frustrating because it doesn't matter how much extra you list, what the quality of those listings are. If you're promoting and I do promote very high, unfortunately, in order to play the game. And you can always tell when it's being controlled, but it is the platform. It's their playing ground. We playground even, we just have to play within their rules. So that's okay. It is what it is. And we play their game. Organic, sorry, external is massively down month on month. I'm down down 37%, which is curious because I've been listing new stock every day this week. And I'm still not increasing. So that's curious. Let's have a look. Page views is another one, just general page views. So the fifth, I got 302. The sixth, I got 263. So pretty much same ballpark again. So definitely a control. There's just no fluctuation there for the amount of listings I have. It just doesn't make sense. But maybe, maybe it's to do with the new algorithm possibly. Yeah, you know, but either way, at the end of the day, this particular video wasn't meant to be more statistical and data driven. It was more just an overview of how the week's going. It's been a bit frustrating. Like I say, November 5th was the zero sales day. Yesterday spiked through the roof in sales, which was great. And now we're back down to zero again so far today. And this is a pattern that a lot of sellers are seeing is when they have a duff day and then a great day. And then it'll go duff again and you can see it coming and you know when it's coming. I'll probably finish on maybe one, possibly two very small item sales by the end of the day. That is my prediction. It won't be a zero day because I only seem to get one zero day a month. And that has been the case for the last couple of months now. But on the whole, it's been pretty steady, which I've been able to rely on. But yeah, it was surprising that we've had two or possibly end up getting two dead days, but it won't be a dead day. It will get something. But it's always at the beginning, always early on in a month to struggle. If you start peaking early, you're going to struggle later on in the month because it'll start dragging you back down. And I noticed this because my 30 day sales was actually up to nearly 80 odd percent above or up, so should I say. And then obviously it's just been slowly dragging back down again where it's being controlled. Here's what it is. Quarter four isn't quarter four. Quarter four is a normal month for me. I'm not seeing any spike in month on month. Yes, OK, I'm up on sales, but I'm still down on what I used to be. I'm down on what I was earlier on in a year. I was probably making more during late spring early summer than I am now, in my opinion, definitely for sales. The quality profit margin is better for me, but the actual pound notes going through the till, as it were, vastly down, vastly down. But we'll get through, you know, we'll get through. We'll see what they're going to throw at us next. For me at the moment is I'm not looking at it for making money at the moment or making lots of money even. I'm literally just making sure that I've got the foundation correct again since all the changes. I need to make sure that my my listings are beefed to the best of their abilities on the platform. And that that's really what I'm focusing on at the moment. And since Jeff's video yesterday, which obviously I have covered as well yesterday in the live. I'm now implementing those a few at a time on my second account to see the hopeful results that will come out. And I'll report those back at least from my accounts. My second account was running fine. It was just like a baby version of my main account. But implemented a couple of these were hoping to give it some oomph. The zero promotions, not doing promoted listings, I have ceased all promoted listings on my second store. I'm going to try it on the second store. But obviously it'll be a limited results for when I report back in a week's time because obviously they did specify you need to give it three days for it to clear the system. So next week's report on the second store as far as no promoted impressions will be a four day basis results at this stage. But we can give it a go if I can get some sales without promoted impressions. Even if it's not a lot, I'll probably still then make as much as I would have done if I had been paying eBay those promoted impressions. The other ideas that were mentioned, obviously I've started implementing those so I can feedback on those as well. You may have noticed both Jeff and myself totally unrelated in random situations. YouTube's silenced us for a day. Stuck us in the naughty corner for bizarre whatever reason. They won't tell us. I know they've not told Jeff. I haven't found any answer either. They think we're spamming. Obviously we just pressed the submit on a comment button a couple of times too fast and the system's got a bit twitchy. But I know I'll be back commenting later on this afternoon. I'm sure Jeff will be up and running again by later on this evening. Possibly in the morning depending on when he got his slapped fingers as the YouTube's algorithm. The world we live in is all algorithms, isn't it? Gone are the days of simple listing. Get your good products up. Somebody's interested. They pay you for it and happy day. You should take the cash home. It's not that simple anymore but this is the world we're in and we'll move forward. So yes, what else have we got today? What else have we got? We've got increasing my prices. We're trying that out. Putting them back to an area that I think is more realistic instead of trying to panic sell. I'm not playing that game anymore. We're getting a lot more as we do always around this time. We're getting more buyers trying to cancel, complaining and obviously they've seen better prices. I'm not interested in that. If you get a few returns here and there. That's fine. I'll just accept them. Get them back. Make sure they're fine. Get them back on and get them resold. It's not worth the time of day worrying about, is it? Especially if we're this close to heading towards Christmas now. Getting into the speedy rush then we've got to be ready for... Excuse me. The New Year sale. Got Black Friday coming up as well. There's so many things still happening. There's plenty of options to get some sales out. We just keep plugging forwards. Not really a structured video of this one but I'm going to leave it there for you today. Again, it is just a coffee break. If you want to share any of your experiences over your last week. Whether it be good, good sales. A particularly good experience. A good sourcing experience or some negative experience. That's fine. All information shared is knowledge grown. Let's just keep it real guys and keep it moving. Take care. See you in the next video.