How Do I Hide My Sales History on eBay?
Many reasons can stand behind your decision to hide your sales or purchase history on eBay. Sales history is available to everyone using eBay, by default. This can be dangerous since it can lead to someone copying your product.
eBay sales history is easily hidden by making your listing private before publishing. This way others will not be able to see the total amount of goods you have sold. However, by doing this you will also be hiding the feedback section.
Hiding the feedback section may not be the best idea, and the reason why is explained later in this article. No matter why you want to make your listing private, you need to consider the benefits and cons you will get with this step.
Why Would You Want to Hide Your Sales on eBay?
There are many reasons why you would like to hide your sales history on eBay, and the biggest and most important one is protecting your business from the competition. Usually, when you list a product on eBay, other users would be able to see how many pieces you have sold.
This may not be convenient for your business, because if you have a unique product and the sales are going up, others may try to copy your recipe for success. Since your listing is public on eBay, everyone can access your pictures or product description.
From there it is very easy for someone to steal your idea and implement it as their own, especially if the product has good feedback comments. This is why sometimes sellers on eBay want to hide their sales records.
There is actually an easy way to do this. Once you start building a listing (and before publishing it), there is an option to make your listing private. By doing this, you are hiding the sales records from the public eye.
Still, even with this option available, many sellers choose not to use it, simply because this option also affects the feedback comments. When you make a listing private, the comments are private too and available only to the seller.
This basically means that other people on eBay cannot see the experience of people who purchased your item. Being able to read other peoples’ experiences is a very important part of sales.
When you have that data available, people are more convinced that your profile and products are legit and you are not going to commit fraud. When these comments are hidden, they may look suspicious.
Mostly because hidden comments and private listings on eBay are connected to adult products and other items that naturally you would like to keep private and hidden from the majority of the eBay users.
At this point, you need to think is it really worth it to hide your sales history, or should you just leave it available. Based on the reasons why you want to make the listing private, you can make your final decision on this matter.
For How Long Can You See Your Sales History?
If you are selling on eBay and you want to keep track of your sales, you need to know that after some time you may not be able to access your sales records anymore. Currently, you can access and download sales history up to 90 days in the past.
Knowing this, make sure that you regularly update your sales record so you can keep track of your sales.
Also, some sellers had the issue of losing their sales history when listing the same item again. The trick here is to list the item with the out-of-stock option available. This way, once the item goes out of stock, it will not be shown on the website.
Once you restock the item, it will become available again, with all the sales records from the previous batch already available.
Can You Hide Purchase History on eBay?
On the other hand, you may want to hide your purchase history as well. If you are only a buyer on eBay and you are using a shared computer, or someone else has access to your account, you might want to keep some stuff for yourself.
Purchase records cannot be deleted from eBay in a way you can delete your browsing history, for example. What you can do is hide the purchase history or make it less accessible to others.
Besides hiding your purchased items, you can also hide the comments you have left on the sellers’ listings.
To hide items you have ordered, just go to the purchase history section where you will have access to all the products you have ordered in the past 60 days. From there just select the items you wish to hide and find the option “Hide items” and click on it. Note that this will only hide the item, not delete it from your eBay account.
However, this is not an ideal solution, because hidden items can be shown again very easily. All a person has to do is to the purchase history section and choose the option “Show hidden items”. This will make all the hidden items visible again.
If someone with access to your account is suspicious and is looking for hidden items, they will find them very easily, unfortunately. The only way to be completely sure nobody is going to see your purchased history is to change the password for your account so that only you have access.
When you choose to hide your comments, there is still a way for others to see your feedback profile. The only difference is that with a private feedback profile, others are only able to see the total numbers of positive, negative, and neutral comments.
When your feedback profile is public, people are also able to read those comments as well. This is always a better option since it helps you build trust with the users and potential buyers.
