Have promoted listings become a waste of time and money ??

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

In the early stages I think promoted listings were generally a success for sellers however as more and more sellers started using them they seem to have become a little pointless and very expensive.

Many of the items I sell are one off items however buyers generally find them in a general search, i.e. oil paintings or paintings which can return thousands and thousands of items. Despite selling one off items Ebay often suggests promoted ad rates of 11% !!

10.9% plus VAT plus 11% plus VAT comes to not far off 30%. 

Promoted listings do give you an uplift in impressions however I often believe they are pointless impressions where potential buyers don't even see your items unless they really look for them, i.e. low down on the page of another listing.

Promoted listings clearly helped a couple of years ago however like many things on Ebay they have become saturated.

Are they now worthwhile ?

All opinions welcome as I may well be wrong.

[watchfan700uk]

I only really used the 2% base level of promotion but the figures just didn't add up. 

I just looked at some stats. I am also on 2% but only on products where I have competition.

I paid £40 in fees which if 2% means £2K sales. The profit on 2K sales is maybe £600 (after all costs) so I suppose it would be a gamble to stop promoting. My sales are so shaky at the moment it is not something I would like to put to the test.

I am not tempted to try the PPC model

[simplyessential_uk]

I once was in a positions where sames were flododing in (it was when promos were 1%) and I thought the same snd switched them off,my sales dropped off a cliff and spoke to ebay and was told even though I only opted for 1% lustings are still "in a queue" so the first few slots are taken my lustimg sits behind and getting "free" slots.  So switched back on and sales went back.  Also as you can see from the attached graph, 18th july my impression plummetted so I upped my promos from 2% to 4% You can see what happened.  Loathes me to pay more but its 4% of something V 2% of less

[goingfishing]

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@simplyessential_uk wrote:

I upped my promos from 2% to 4% You can see what happened.  Loathes me to pay more but its 4% of something V 2% of less

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Is this promoted listings standard or dynamic?

[simplyessential_uk]

standard... tried dynamic week before and my graph declined, then (like many) took a jump off a cliff on 18th. Attatched is corresponding sales so it corrolates higher impressions resulted in higher sales last 2 days (quiet today).  Cynic in me wonders if Ebay are squeezing the 2% payers.

[watchfan700uk]

If I could double my promoted sales by going from 2% to 4% of course I would take that.

Maybe I will experiment for 1 week and see what happens. 

[goingfishing]

So I wonder if the new dynamic promotions are the ones that are broken and we are all better off reverting back to standard. 

I thought over the weekend it had been fixed but today thus far has been terrible.... and the voices from eBay are deafening us with the silence 😞 

[am117]

You are right.

Promoted listings have eatedn away all profit. As more people feel they have to Promote so the advised percentage goes up and up. So you are left with having to increase your prices or make little to no profit.

That means buyer migrate elsewhere. Eventually only the top most profitable items will be on eBay and the whole thing will colapse.

[simplyessential_uk]

the advised percentage goes up and up

I never take any notice of the advised % - Mine suggest minimum of 8% but Ive never paid more than 2% (I experimented with 3% but yielded no more sales) Most of mine sell with "via promoted listing" so clearly 2% is enough in my sector.  Have you experimented with % on your own listings or always entered the advised?

[tech-tonix]

Ebay no doubt anticipated it as being a kind of "sellers' bidding war" scenario when they added on the "Advanced" Promoted & now the "Dynamic Standard" or whatever the latest shakedown gouging is called. 

The effect of course is that the bigger fish with greater promotional spend, & whose selling rates favour them re: The Almighty Algorithm, become an ever-more-favoured elite. Giving them privilege to hike prices with impunity. Only the poor buyers & smaller sellers are harmed by this

[nigel_paul_wright7557]

If nothing is selling or no one wants you items it doesnt matter how much it is promoted.

I tried promoted items a few months back.

Two similar items for sale and one of them promoted and other not.

None promoted one sold !

[bricklanebargains]

Promoted listings may work for one off listings that are already likely to sell. They won`t work for multi variation/quantity listings in a highly competitive segment unless you put %25 or higher (and that`s not guaranteed). I`ve playing around with it for years now and still use it for most of my listings but only at %2 to %3.

Here`s what you can try to boost multi variation listings. Start a promoted listings advanced campaign with say a daily budget of £2 (which should put the listing at top of the search for at least few hours every day depending on the competition) and once you sell a few items daily , your listing should get an organic boost in ranking. Then you can adjust the ad budget to the amount you feel comfortable with. If that doesn`t work, then you should probably try to sell the stock at cost price, move on to other things and never look back.     

[supsef7890]

A 30% or even more final selling fee is extotionate, especially with eBay undoubtedly hiding listings visibility at times. 

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

Yes 30% plus is absolutely ridiculous.

It just isn't viable / worth it for most small business sellers. 

Example:

Sales of 80k, cost of goods 40k, at 30% fees Ebay is taking 24k, there will be other non Ebay running costs of say 5 - 10k.

Out of that turnover of 80k you may end up with a net profit of 10k.

Ebay has built a platform where most business sellers are working for Ebay, not themselves. 

[Anonymous]

I have just noticed something about promoted listings. I listed several items and was not getting any views  I checked by searching and even though my items were 'live on eBay they seemed to be hidden? Could this be to encourage promos?

Also when using the promo feature last year it was possible to switch it on and off in the app. This feature as gone? Very shady. Anyone else seeing this kind of behaviour recently? 

[knit-in-styles]

I had the same too. I had items listed that were promoted and I used the search button to search for my items more or less word for word what I had in the listing title and my items were not coming back in the search results at all.

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

This is nothing new, for a long time I had lots of items that were not showing in searches, I was promoting all of my listings.

If I turned promoted listings off all items would show, the problem was that most of them were way down the searches so impressions and page views were low.

You cannot win.

[fatbobfan]

Ive taken the advice of a few on this subject especially from @simplyessential_uk its been sound advice. 

Have taken time to put into practice as not to upset the algorythm too much but have dropped our rates from 9% at highest to 5% at lowest, its now 5% and 2% respectively doing so very slowly, I did, early last year, drop PL in one swoop and it was a car crash if your looking to do it, reduce so so slowly

2% for items with Sales history (thanks simply) 3.5 for my OAK items and 5% for higher value/saturated market.  You cant escape people will search on low P&P and in some markets your never going to be seen page 1 on those results,

I think you also need to take into account standing, again this is my understanding, but seems logic to me,  Ebay 'streamlines' results  in competitive markets so if your not carrying out 'the best practices' and your line is sliding down the algorythm,  logic says to me your in the stream lined results, I say logic, I know ive seen it on our account, thats why we had so many zero views. 

As said earlier in this thread, its advertising, the old ways of online selling are no more, I dont like the extra cost, it, but think it needs to be taken into account

[simplyessential_uk]

thats good news,less unecessary fees is always better.

Few weeks ago i put an item back into stock (clicked relist, not sell similar, as i ended them over a month ago) but forgot to add in promo and sold 2 straight away, went out of stock again and did the same few weeks later when i got stock back in, again sold straight away with no promo.  This is not what has happened in the past, id sell lots of something but once it went out of stock, by the time i put it back in stock, sales were off a cliff, so i just started ending the listings to sell similar when stock came back in so for me to press relist was a test.  So the sales history seems to hold more weight in the algorithms than promos, whichbis why id rather save money on promos and send offers on items that need sales 

[fatbobfan]

If I recall correctly on the Ebay business YT channel a 'new' listing gets a bit of bonus visibility.

I dont know the answer to this but if your OOS items had watchers and you relisted would Ebay send this info to the watchers? Would have thought so

[simplyessential_uk]

Yes true - I know all new listings get a bump hence the "sell similar" gets more visability than just relisting, never thought about the watchers, but goes to show that very little (or no promo) on a good selling item is all thats needed