No Promoted Listings for 1 Month Experiment - Results

[vintagewatchpart]

I wanted to share this with everyone in the hope it could help others increase their sales and margin on Ebay. 

Firstly, you can see what I sell and it is pretty much unique second hand items that do have some competition but not as much as those selling new goods. This may not apply to everyone, but you may find it interesting.

Will try to keep it as concise as possible!

These are my sales for last year. In April last year something happened, my organic sales plummetted compared with Jan-March (Ebay changes) and this resulted in me increasing my promoted listings percentage.

I had it set at 3.5% for ages then early last year changed it to 6.5% as it became more competative. 

In May last year I increased the percentage to 11.5% which saw my sales recover and I kept it that way until November.

The graph speaks for itself, clear patterns! But in November I changed tactics. I had listed everything as promoted all year, so if its new, get it on, and bam! Promote it!

In November I started listing new items and not promoting them, notice the organic sales increase.

Then in mid December I lowered my promoted listings percentage down to 6% from 11.5%.

I noticed that when I searched for any of my items, they only ever showed up as promoted. The only way anyone could ever buy an item from me and it not be sold as a promoted listing would be to have me saved as a seller and look at my new items. On another thread I mentioned this:

August last year was my best month, ever. 87% of my sales were promoted and 13% organic. 477 transactions so a pretty big sample.

Each and every of the organic sales came from a repeat buyer or was for an item where I had sent an offer, obviously to someone who had watched the listing more than the 31 day cookie window apart from just 1 sale. So I can't explain that 1 sale and how they found my item, we don't have that detailed a level of analytics but I suggest everyone look at their own results and see if there are any similar themes.

So 1 sale out of 477 came from an Organic non-repeat buyer.

My two months of listing new items and not promoting them seemed to create no change in sales so I turned off all promoted listings on 15th January. Here are the results:

The results:

• Impressions down a whopping 87.7% eek! But hold on...
• Page views up 2.8%...
• Click through rate went from 0.1% to 1.3%
• Conversion increased 0.1%
• My sales increased volume £££ by 21.5%
• There was a big increase in the numbers of Top 20 search spot impressions (Up around 50,000) and rest of search impressions (Up around 100,000) vs previous month.

I thought if I turned off promoted listings my sales would fall off a cliff, it turns out they don't.

My theory about search spot impressions increasing as a number is this: by me promoting at a low rate over 10% less than recommended, my promoted items were buried somewhere in the search so that the better paying % items appeared first. But by unpromoting them, they appear organically higher up than if I were to have promoted them as a low percentage. I don't have any other explanation for this unless anyone else does.

Selling costs:

My selling costs in May-Oct last year were 29.1% per month on average, the past month without anything promoted has been 17.7%. A difference of 11.4%...

It is difficult because I cannot say what my sales would have been had I kept on promoting everything and kept selling costs high at 29.1% but my sales value £££ is the same as it usually is.

But for the past month if my sales had been the same as they are now but I had promoted everything as before, my Ebay fees would be £2159 higher just for this month.

Final thought

For me it seems promoting just gives you millions of impressions, mainly irrelevant and non-search.

We do not know where the customer comes from when you sell a promoted item, do they come from a search result or from a non-search promoted placement such as within another listing? 

I'd be willing to bet they almost all come from search results based on my past month of data, because search impressions are way up and sales volume is up.

By promoting my listings, am I just allowing everything that is ever found in a search by a customer be sold as a sponsored? From what I can tell the answer is yes. 

If I were to promote everything of mine now at 1% say, would my Top 20 organic search impressions suffer and bury my items on page 17? Therefore actually hindering my sales and not helping them.

Something is not adding up. Promoted/Organic traffic to listings does not correlate between Promoted/Organic sales.

On websites, organic traffic has a conversion rate of 16% vs a 2% conversion rate for paid for traffic, so why the disparity on Ebay?

This data and pattern won't apply to everyone but its worth experimenting and exploring your options.

[vintagechinashop]

This makes very interesting reading. The last two weekends I've had zero sales.  Friday I decided that I couldn't continue with such high fees so I stopped all promotions 

this weekend I have had 3 sales.  Not as high as last month by any stretch of the imagination and it could be a coincidence but I'm prepared to continue without promoting as an experiment.   I agree with the OPs comments that promoting at a lower rate is really of no benefit  so let's see how things go 

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

FAO vintagewatchpart,

When you stopped using promoted listings completely how long did you find it took for the better click through rates etc (from not promoting) to feed through to your organic listings being moved up the searches, did you find it happened instantly or did it take while for the data to feed through to the Ebay system.

Hope this makes sense.

Thanks.

[vintagewatchpart]

I had a 5 day dip in impressions after turning it off but then it recovered quite quickly, in terms of click through rate, when I go into my analytics on Ebay, my CTR rate when promoted was 0.1%. Sales converion was 0.8%.

When I change the date to my first full day of not being promoted, my click through rate was 1.2% with converion of 0.9%.

The numbers arent really applicable to everyone, I have a lot of new items listed frequently. For every 100 I sell, 100 new ones appear, and sometimes a certain item can get thousands of views from people who have no intention of buying and that can skew those numbers.

There is also a very useful report that you can look at. Go to Performance > Traffic and on the right there is a link called "Download active listings traffic report" and it will show you your items and the number of impressions by search slot organically and promoted and the growth up or down % wise.

[fatbobfan]

As with all the above posts, thanks for your time its a good read.

You can see why Ebay call the algorythm the 'Dark Art' in their YouTube video's its just not easy to understand. 

Out of interest whats your competition like and their PL activity? I dont know your market but guessing its speicialist and you have a unique service?   

[vintagewatchpart]

Its a pretty big category, a lot of customers are 65+ age range, hobbyists who dabble with repair or people seeking watches or parts for their own watches. 

Competition is pretty big, a lot are doing what I do, but a lot of what I sell is unique, but it doesn't necessarily give me an advantage. I may have a pocket watch movement on that no one else in the world has, but no one may be searching for it because no one may know it exists! So they have to find it through browsing and broad search terms which have competition for sponsored slots.

My category suggested promoted rates are 9-15% 

[fatbobfan]

I think everyones suggested rate is that! 

That does seem strange (im no expert) you have a competitive market, where inventory may be hard to find yet you've dropped PL and the accounts performing better.

The only logical (to me anyway) is the way your account is performing and your inventory is presented is making the algorythm happy which can only be a good thing so congrats are in order. Please say of you think otherwise.

I find this so interesting,

Ive dropped my PL 12 months ago and it was a car crash, panic and stuck it back on and higher. With advice from other sellers have been reducing from 5-7.5 to 2-5 but ever so slowly over many months. Inventory is seasonal so not sure but recently did a comparison  to last year and its a great improvement.

Something I was once read (on the forums) from their CS call that if there was a slot free and no one else was using PL as someone who was  youd get the slot, I like to cover my bases and take that opportunity (rightly or wrongly) 

Thats some savivings your making, so again congratuations

[sportex-uk]

Thanks for inspiration. I've always been using PL at 2%, but switched everything off last night, as I need to reduce sales/profits to certain limit for tax purposes. So far, the morning began with exactly opposite, if it continues this way, I'll have to pause sales until 5-Apr and will stay away from PL completely afterwards.

My experience so far was that Impressions did not have much impact on sales, it was Page Views that count. So if organic Page Views increase (as per some observations shared here), the conclusion should be obvious. Although I'm aware it's dependent on the item category as well.

[santlache_sales]

This data and pattern won't apply to everyone but its worth experimenting and exploring your options.

Good post and well thought out.

However, it basically says one thing, eBay is no longer a level playing field anymore and searches are now highly manipulated by eBay.

In other words, it is has ceased functionality and is no longer a search engine anymore.

[vintagechinashop]

You are so right. If everyone promotes as they are told then the lower your percentage rate the less visible you are. It's quite ridiculous that eBay are playing a game with us here. Increase your percentage rate on promotions and you will be playing that game. How long before we are encouraged to give away 25% or more of our profits just to stand a chance of being seen. I've turned the promotions off and this week so far has been the best week of the month. It's still nowhere near my sales for last month I'm actually 59% down but it's better than the first two weeks of March 

[santlache_sales]

eBay's answer to everyone using promoted listings, whereby making it redundant, would be to offer a new higher tariff called 'Promoted Listing Plus', whereby you give away even more of your hard earned profit to eBay.

Let's face it the only reason 'promoted Listings' exist is to make eBay more money, as opposed to giving a level playing across the board, and in the process they are shafting all business sellers and totally manipulating the search engine.

I am currently in a promotion eBay offered to dealers in my line back in late December, for those who have so many items listed with a ticket price over £250. In the offer, which is free, it works out with levelled off fees above £250 and you end up paying 10% in fees or slightly less.

While items aren't exactly flying out the door with these ticket prices, and they never did that fast, it is a help and it was free.

Cheers

[sportex-uk]

Only few days passed and I'm almost convinced not to use PL again. While the number of impressions is minimal (which as I noticed a while ago, is useless), the total number of page views appears to be similar as before and sales didn't change much. I consider that Organic views are likely to be more valuable, as people actively search for items, in opposite, Promoted may quite often be irrelevant for potential buyers. Why the majority of sales normally go from Promoted, I have no idea. I'll share traffic screenshot in a fortnight and  although part of this period will be paused sales, I'm very much looking forward to see this 'long-term' picture.

[bojangled]

@vintagewatchpart 

Like others I just want to thank you for this thread, and the detail to which you've gone to.

I'm tinkering slowly towards reducing my PL.

Jo

[bazinga-games]

I don't pay for PL but read this with interest.

What I gather from the OP is that eBay are making their money from business sellers paying for something that is sold to them as being beneficial, when in fact it is only beneficial to eBay due to the huge fees sellers incur for this 'benefit'.

Is this the gist of it...? 🤔

[vintagewatchpart]

I think the gist from my perspective is if you are promoting then you need to promote near to or on the suggested rate. If you don't promote near those rates it seems to negatively affect your search results placement sometimes pushing you down onto page 2, 3, 4 etc.

When I promote my items, they only ever show up in search results as sponsored and not organically... so by promoting at a low rate im pushing my items lower in the search results than if they had not been promoted at all. By unpromoting all my listings they are being shown higher up in search results than if they were promoted even slightly below the suggested rate.

This is what people need to check, it is different for everyone.

[vintagewatchpart]

Its been nearly 4 months now and I am still not promoting. It was this time last year that my listings started getting buried on a low promoted percentage and made me increase it to maintain my sales.

This month last year my selling costs were 26.2% but now they are averaging 17.1%. 

YTD my sales are up. March was flat on last year and April was up 38% on last year.

Has anyone else been playing with this or seen similar results?