The site's total listed items number is just slightly above 3 millions for many days

[MintTechUK]

It looks like there is very little movement on it.

[theElench]

It moves up and down between about 2.8M and 3.2M quite regularly but I have absolutely no confidence that it's showing anything like accurate figures.

Look underneath at the categories. I sell vintage glass in the "Pottery, Porcelain & Glass category".
Click on the icon for glass and right now it's showing -473 items for sale. I have somewhere around 250 items of Art Deco glass for sale in that Date Lined Sub-cat. Off the top of my head I know that there are other sub-cats. for Victorian, Depression, 40-50s and Contemporary glass (probably some others as well) so how can can there be a minus figure for items in the category ?

Personally I've sold 25 items since Jan.1 this year. Check my FB Left For Others, I always leave FB for my buyers and use it as a sales / transaction counter.

[MintTechUK]

Maybe a glitch.
Why can number of listed items be negative?

[BordersBargains]

It won't move much, there's not really any new sellers or buyers coming here. A large % still don't even know this site exists and other new platforms are starting to grow even more like Vinted, Whatnot etc. As mentioned many times by many people the site needs advertising which isn't something they have done since the old days when we had branded tape

[MintTechUK]

Advertising not only benefits us as sellers but also provides eBid with an opportunity to generate more revenue.

[theElench]

Maybe a glitch.
Why can number of listed items be negative?

Just my guess but as it's so regular it could be something to do with auto-re-lists ?

[theElench]

It won't move much, there's not really any new sellers or buyers coming here. A large % still don't even know this site exists and other new platforms are starting to grow even more like Vinted, Whatnot etc. As mentioned many times by many people the site needs advertising which isn't something they have done since the old days when we had branded tape

But you're replying to a seller who joined this month and I've seen questions from a couple more recently, plus a few more returning after long breaks. There are probably even more who haven't come to the boards, now-one seems to bother with "Welcome to New Members" these days. This year I've had a flurry of sales to repeat buyers, but the majority of my buyers are making their first purchase on ebid.

I beg to differ about "As mentioned many times by many people the site needs advertising which isn't something they have done since the old days when we had branded tape".
I'd say advertising is mentioned many times by the same few people, most sellers on here don't call for it and just get on with their own efforts to sell stuff by using social media, google shopping or whatever other means they can think of and judging by the Sold Items strip on the Home Page, quite a bit of stuff seems to sell here.

[billsstamps]

I do not believe that my listings alone are 1.7% of Ebid's total listings worldwide.
I sell over 100 items a month, but the fees I pay per month, times 60, are not going to make Ebid rich.

[theElench]

Neither do I Bill, @ FortesMentum made a good point when they said on the "I've returned to find..." thread, "...the US market is bigger than the UK..." (roughly).

When I realised that the numbers of glass listings couldn't be accurate, I tried to work-out what the real total might be. I must admit I gave up, but repeatedly I found that US sellers had as many, if not more items for sale, than UK sellers. Something that was repeated again and again during my meanderings around ebid and GS when trying to make some sense of GS.

I think I've established that GS, when it shows "Ebid - (username)" on its side-bar, will show the ebid seller with the greatest number of listings. When looking at Art Deco Glass, it shows "theElench" , most of the ads. in that category are mine. For other collectables it shows other UK sellers. But moving out of the type of items collected in the UK, to new items in a more international market, if I found "Ebid - (username)" it would be a US seller. Ticking their box often showed that whereas UK sellers had a few of the item listed, US sellers had hundreds listed.

Quite what the figures on the HP are showing, I really don't know. If it shows anything meaningful it could be that ebid.uk is (like the boards) mainly inhabited by sellers of collectables, whereas the US might be more day-to-day mainstream consumer items.

I also, when I remember to check, keep an eye on the "Recently Sold" strip on the HP. Yes, plenty of stamps, postcards, the occasional piece of glass but also, regularly, a suprising variety of "New" stuff from sellers that I never see on the boards. There are probably, even in the UK, sellers who never make themselves known but are quietly selling stuff all the time without complaining about low traffic, slow sales or the need to advertise. Because they (possibly) don't need to advertise and are happy with their return on the time they invest here.

(Which makes me think about another correlation that might be worth looking at in relation to GS )

[billsstamps]

Everything I list is exempt so nothing listed on google shopping, but as I have an image of everything on my own website, linked in the description of Ebid items, I get a trickle of sales from people who have done an image search and get to Ebid that way.