New - Set up Shop ads - anyone doing this?

[paul*tribesandvibes*]

Has anyone else noticed the 'NEW - Set up Shop Ads' in their Edit Shop tab? Or did I miss that announcement? How does it work? Is this a new way for ebay to wring even more money out of us - and please dont tell me that every time someone clicks on 'Visit Shop' from the listing that it is a charge for us if we set this up? 😱

I highly doubt very much that I will ever promote our shop: ebay is now killing our small business by charging us 19% final fees, plus whatever we set the standard PLs at, plus a listing fee (whatever that is for now), plus a monthly shop fee - Could they get any more greedy??! Yes. They could. And it looks like they just did - unless of course they are doing away with the listing fees and shop fees ... ??!

[goingfishinguk]

Yes I gave it a go... the results were...

Sales - £21.42

Ad Costs - £51.40

So well worth it in my opinion.... NOT

Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I've watched all the videos, read all the blurb and I still can't seem to get a decent return from Advanced, Off Site, Promoted Display Ads.  They all seem to run between 65% and 198% of the cost of the sale which is absolutely ridiculous.  They seem completely weighted in favour of eBay.  I mean paying for someone to click on a link without a guaranteed sale is never going to work for the seller.  They are very complicated to set up as well.  I mean how do I know the best 1000 words someone else will use to search for my products?  Also surely all the negative keywords are the ones that people do not use, again impossible to gauge.   Got us all by the short and curlies...

[paul*tribesandvibes*]

You've probably got more chance of predicting the numbers for Euromillions or Lotto!

I think this is all aimed at sellers that have their own marketing team, or how outsource their marketing. I wonder how many properly big businesses there are on ebay who have that kind of understanding of SEOs and marketing - personally I think it's a bit of a dark art, and I'm not entirely convinced that the results are not more by luck than judgement sometimes.

I hope someone gets it going on for themselves, I really do.

[goingfishinguk]

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@paul*tribesandvibes* wrote:

personally I think it's a bit of a dark art,

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Indeed, for example I renewed my car insurance yesterday from Google to compare the market.  Amazing enough all my suggested listings on eBay this morning are for Meerkat Manor DVDs... mmmmm 

I'll put my tin foil hat back on now...

[paul*tribesandvibes*]

@goingfishinguk 😂 definitely put the foil back on!

[bravergrace · Accepted solution]

I'm in two minds about this one.

I'm not an expert, but this is how it looks to a non-tech person like me.

eBay pays Google (and presumably other search engines) for advertisements sending potential buyers to eBay.  Lots of these are complete rubbish - the generic sort you get when you type in "Malachi Wanderers B team curling results" into Google and get half a page of ads saying "Buy Malachi Wanderers B team curling results cheap on eBay.  BEST PRICES IN TOWN" - and linking you to an eBay page showing zero results for your search.   eBay likes this sort of ad because it's cheap and auto-generated, and presumably drives some absent-minded people to eBay.  Lots of clicks, a few sales, but very, very cheap.

Google doesn't like them, because it ends up with people not using Google search if the first page of results are all this sort of useless stuff.

So from time to time Google raises its prices and/or its standards, and tells eBay it will have to use proper ads.  These are expensive and don't result in so many sales.  They aren't good value for money, but they do get some people on to eBay.  They probably won't buy the item they click on - but they will buy some other sponsored item, generating more fees for eBay.

So traditionally, these periodic "negotiations" result in eBay not advertising on Google at all for a few weeks.  This hits sales for some sellers (ones whose buyers Google rather than specifically coming to eBay).

eBay's new wheeze is to persuade sellers to pay for this advertising.  They have to persuade sellers that clicks rather than sales, to reduce the sellers' interest in whether it's worth paying £50 for an extra £20 in sales.  Focus on the fact they've paid £50 for 70000 clicks, and the sellers may feel they got a real bargain...

From the point of view of the average seller , these ads are a good thing, if they drive more customers to eBay.  Especially if, like me, you aren't paying for the ads.

If you're choosing to pay eBay's advertising bills, and do all the work for eBay, do your sums carefully.  Because if it was easy and cheap to do this sort of stuff, eBay would be employing someone to do it themselves.

[paul*tribesandvibes*]

I had the same thoughts cross my mind too - but you put it more eloquently than I would. My thought was, if ebay wants me to pay for its advertising, it can think again.

I feel the same way about promoted listings, they probably use the money to pay for advertising outside of ebay. They want me to promote my listing on my social media, which is a cheap way for them to get advertising. I understand how their business works, they have costs and they pass those costs on to their customers, which are their ebay Sellers. In the end we all put our costs up to cover the 30% and more trading costs, so the Buyer ends up paying for it all. And then everyone wants a pay rise because the cost of everything has gone up, and then we get ridiculous inflation percentages.

I dont know. It's frustrating. Damned if you do, damned if you dont.  OK, that's my rant - I'm off to add more stuff to our website ... 😁

[homecrafts-shop]

Ebay charges

listing fees 
shop fees
FV fees 
and now they want us to advertise our products to sell on their platform, which they should be doing it anyway as we are already paying to be on the platform!

Also when you promote via standard ads - they don't show our products organically at all, only via promoted listing, and when I questioned the sales team ( who apparently know less that I do!) , she said someone will get back to me and they never did ( which is typical). I told her when I search for an item with my item number, why is only the promoted listing showing and not an organic one! She had no answer.

ALSO BE AWARE THAT THE IF A POTENTIAL CUSTOMER CLICKS THE PROMOTED LISTING AND DOESN'T BUY - THEY STILL CHARGE US UPTO 30 DAYS EVEN IF THE CUSTOMER GOES DIRECTLY TO THE LISTING!

I experienced this as I gave the item number to my customer to purchase directly and I was still charged the ad fees! as he must have clicked that within 30 days!

EBAY IS NOW BECOMING GREEDY AND SQUEEZING ALL OF US 

MY FEES ARE 30% 

IF I SPEND 10% ON ADS ON MY WEBSITE - MY RETURNS AND PROFIT WOULD BE MUCH HIGHER!

SO NOW NOT LISTING ANY MORE PRODUCTS ON EBAY  AND MAKING ALL THE EFFORT TO PROMOTE MY WEBSITE

AND WEBSITE IS YOUR PROPERTY UNLIKE EBAY!