What do you think is putting people off?

[CarnoustieCats]

I must admit I am not buying as much just now from anywhere - too hot, watching the money, all the usual....

mind you I always buy more in the winter anyway ... is this a trend or is it worse this year?

[Juliebabe25]

Xcess Baggage

You say online sales are down.
Unfortunately we will never be able to get a handle on it.

The auction sites never publish actual sales figures in dollars or units.
So we can only go by our own circumstances or what we read here.
Some of us are new (me) so I don't know what it was like before.
Some of us are in good niches and report sales growing or steady
Someone of have built up good customer bases and say sales are still good.
Others report slower sales than usual
Others report no sales at all.

Then there is the summer factor - a lot of people believe sales are slower in summer as people are out spending money on entertainment, because etc, not at home on pc. Some things are seasonal.

I read some other forums and they are full of doom and despair also.

And the western economy is not good - and its getting worse (imho) no good news anywhere.

Yet A survey just published in the UK said that online sales are going to grow to 20% of all sales within 5 years.
But when they or the OP says online sales - don't forget their are online air fares, brick & mortar shops with online shops, and standalone websites.

[moonwitch]

Just to compare prices...I just looked up a bunch of book titles where I was wanting to buy those books.

I have just spent less than £10 on a major site for books that would have cost me nearly three times as much here.

I also sell books on the same site as the site is better known than eBid...amongst my neighbours, friends and family anyway.

One of the things I do to earn some extra cash is to shop around on the internet for neighbours who don't have internet access. I charge a commission and they are happy to pay that for me to shop for them....I have only found a couple of items here that I was able to get a better price than on other sites (in the last year or so...that's a couple of items out of several hundred items)

[jumiclads]

I have only found a couple of items here that I was able to get a better price than on other sites (in the last year or so...that's a couple of items out of several hundred items)

We are not all more expensive, I work very hard to only make as little amount of profit as I can.

[MagnetsAndHangers]

We are not all more expensive, I work very hard to only make as little amount of profit as I can.

You deliberately set out to make as little profit as possible????

[jumiclads]

Maybe I should have said that I keep my margins very tight. I am in the same boat as everyone and don't like paying too much for necessary items. I always work on the theory of sell a little get a little and sell alot get alot, and keeping the prices low helps to sell more.

[moonwitch]

We are not all more expensive, I work very hard to only make as little amount of profit as I can.

I totally agree...but I do shopping for other people so I am looking for particular items and shop on a lot of sites using shopzilla (more often than not) to compare prices.

Ebid sellers don't show up on shopzilla so to compare prices between auction sites I need to do an extra search. Since most of the shopping I do for other people is for items widely available on the internet...I only do my personal gift shopping etc here.