No Sales MKII

[dwtrading2015]

Since the No sales board was abruptly terminated, after 88 pages of contributions, I've tried setting it up again here

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

I don't have any promoted listings at the moment however I just went in with my usual 5.1% and Ebay claims it's not competitive enough, they suggest 8% across every item.

Three years ago 2% was more than enough, now that gets no traffic at all.

12.9% plus 9.6% (for promoted listings including VAT) gives you around 22.5%, add in shop fees, fees on shopping, international fees etc and you are looking at approaching 30% just to be competitive.

I started my business on Ebay approximately 18 years ago, total fees were around 5%.

[dwtrading2015]

I think eBay thinks there is some huge margin they can tap in to, like were making 80% profit or something.  Bear in my shipping fees today compared to a few years ago, the margin is possibly in the 10 to 20% range.  And that is what eBay is taking.  They need to wise up and realise the only businesses that are viable on 2 - 5 % margins are the high volume retailers with multiple outlets with very large stock purchases.  Low volume retailers must have large margins to survive.  eBay is destroying the platform taking the low volume retail margin.  Save wisely eBay, the income stream is fast drying up!

[the-nutwood-collection]

Last time I set up a listing, the recommended PL rate was 13.5%.  With the VAT, that's 31.7% FVF - plus Regulatory Operating Fee and 36p transaction charge. 

Ridiculous ... and for what?  A chance to sell to an ever-diminishing pool of buyers?   

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

Yes, on individual listings I am quoted 10 - 16% for promoted listings. Crazy.

[the-nutwood-collection]

However ... an artist aquaintance told me that galleries charge up to 60% commission, and some won't pay out for six months in case there's a chargeback.  Also, they determine the price of the piece, based on what they think the market will bear.

Maybe I shouldn't mention this - might give eBay ideas.

[dwtrading2015]

40% of a £50,000 sale in 6 months?  I'm in!

[exponential_developments]

Aaaaaannnnnnddddd.............................It dead again...........  🙄

[oceanartsnorthdevon]

After reading through again with interest, about your one month experiment removing all promotions off listings, are you still not using promoted listings for any of your items?  Are sales still doing ok?   I am slowly removing the promotions off listings by going through them on a daily basis, ending and sell similar as not to get too much of a shock and everything plummet if I were to do it all in one hit.  Sales and interest have been slow but were slow anyway.  Did you go through a period where turning off promotions things flatlined then slowly increased or did it not affect your sales just impressions?  If all was quiet after the switch off, how long was it before they returned to normal? Sorry to bombard you with so many questions!

I have noticed a few glitches on site whether this is having any effect or causing issues or just minor things that shouldn't affect sales.

Out of interest of others opions, I see that private sellers free listings are to be dropped from 1000 to 300 a month which will of course free the site up of a lot of listings, do you think this drop will improve sales for businesses?

[dwtrading2015]

i doubt private listings barely reach 20 or 30 per month.  the 1000 or even 300 would be a heck of an undertaking and how many people would even have 50 items to sell.  I've always regarded such promotions as feel good rather than practical.

on promotions, with the end of August drop in sales I adjusted promo to 3.6 from the already reduced 5.6.  little observable difference compared to the glut.  last couple of days impressions risen a bit as back to school and work gets underway.  but the impressions are meaningless these days, it is about the page views.  impressions are being thrown out everywhere.  i wait for the impressions to be quater size so they can fit 4 in place of 1 and count each one!!!!!

[gift_of_sound]

I totally agree, all those 'private' sellers utilising their 1000 listing allowance are running a business.

[vintagewatchpart]

I have not used promoted listings at all since January 15th. 

This shows the time that it was switched off. Impressions plumeted but page views went down for around a week then went back up to levels higher than they were when I was promoting.

I have always put this down to unless you promoted above the suggested rate, your items will be shown way down in the search results, but by not promoting at all, they appear higher up organically.

I turned them all off in one go as well and not in drips, this didn't seem to do anything and everything recovered quickly and has been absolutely fine since.

I also don't end and sell similar, I tried a batch of around 20 items a month ago but this did not seem to impact those items stats.

[exponential_developments]

Not had a sale since Tuesday, seems to be costing more in electricity than is made in sales these days.

[oceanartsnorthdevon]

Thank you so much for your reply and taking the time to upload graph with detailed information, a great help!  I am definitely going to continue removing promotions and see how things pan out.  I may not be as lucky as we sell in different categories with different target audience but it is worth a try to see if it has any impact as not a lot to lose at the moment but the potential of saving on promotion fees

It is interesting to see the big increase in organic searches why do you think that is? (stupid question I know, other than the obvious that promotions are switched off and it is the only way your listings are found, do you think that it is because your items are being searched rather than interest on the ads as part of the promotion or manupulation with the true figures and the promotions make litte no difference at all?)

[vintagewatchpart]

I think almost all items we sell here are searched for, from experience looking at the sheer volume of impressions promoted gives vs the sales conversion rate and click through is poor. 

I found that when I searched for my items that they all only ever showed up as a promoted result and never organic. It got to the stage every single one of my sales was a sponsored sale and not an organic one, the only organic sales I got were from repeat buyers who obviously follow me and look at my items.

Its the page views that went up quite a lot. Because my items were appearing to relevant buyers organically in search results and not pushed down various pages due to not promoting at huge rates.

Organic traffic is king and is on Google too, it converts way better, but when you promote your website on Google at least Google will not hide the organic search results for your business forcing you to pay more, Ebay did that to me.

[divine0606]

Thats correct @vintagewatchpart  we find that since ebay has made the most recent changes to there promoted listings we find that 99% of our sales are coming through promoted just like you we've searched the platform and can only ever find our listing in promoted/sponsored to me this seems very greedy clearly there just trying to squeeze sellers for as much as they can. 

This is why we've moved majority of our stock to Amazon as they do not hide the organic version of out listing. 

[therenewalworkshopltd]

I think that you have actually missed the point there.

By stopping the promotions, it's highlighted the listings.....

So less impressions overall, but more page views!

[divine0606]

No @therenewalworkshopltd  i do understand this and i have implemented this on one of our account in the past only to find after a few months sales fell off the cliff so we returned back to promoting again. 

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Ok, the whole point that was previously made, is that it is working out better, to NOT promote.

So I really don't think that you do understand the point that was made.

You are quoting the person that promoted the idea of not using promotions to get a better result, then agreeing that it was a bad thing!  A totally confused point of view to be honest.

[divine0606]

@therenewalworkshopltd  Im just stating that i tried this on one of our accounts a few months back and eventually sales dropped off, what don't you understand about that! 

[therenewalworkshopltd]

lol, because that's not what you said.  Look back at what you wrote.