Promoted Listings Changes - You Must Be Joking, eBay

[superchallenge]

Email from eBay this morning. 

If I read it correctly, from 24th June, if you use promoted listings and ANYBODY clicks on the ad one time...if the item then sells to ANYBODY ELSE within the next 30 days, you get charged as if the first guy bought it.

That means that if Bob in Scotland clicks an ad and doesn't buy, but Steve from Wales rolls in 29 days later and finds the item in search and buys it without clicking on a promoted listings ad, you get charged because Bob clicked it almost a month ago.

It's all well and good saying "You'll still only pay when your items sell" eBay, but that isn't the point. We pay for promoted listings in order to help find A BUYER, not a browser. If somebody comes in and buys an item organically, then the ad hasn't done its job and we're not paying for it.

We'll be removing all of our promoted listings campaigns later today, as this starts in 32 days, which is extremely underhanded. The reason being that there's a 30-day attribution window, so if Steve clicks on one of our ads this Sunday, on June 24th when Bob buys the item without clicking an advert, we'll get charged.

[britishpaper]

On your dashboard go to Performance > Sales > scroll down to the window with: All sales/Promoted sales/Offer sales > click on "Promoted sales" and it will show you a split where in blue you have Organic sales and in green Promoted sales.  Basically any sale from now on is class as promoted...

[triple512]

Yep, that was my worry with this nonsense. I stopped all PLs on both accounts months ago and after an initial dip sales quickly returned. But, this latest cash grab looks to be only giving visibility to PLs meaning non promoters will sell absolutely nothing and those continuing to promote will find ALL sales attract the PL fees.
That’s pretty much what was reported in Germany when it was rolled out there.

Only up side is that my views and sales currently (no promos) are going slightly better than usual which is odd but I suppose we’ll know more once this has been in place a while.

It takes a leap of faith but the best way to solve this is if everyone stops promoting. 
You can’t all be best placed, promoted or not 🙂

[chrledd]

Don't promote anything - don't see the benfit anyway, only winner is ebay making more money. I always scrollpast any random/promoted items that come up when searching - they usually bear no similarity to what I am looking for anyway. Always wonder where the benefit is if everyone is promoting anyway??

[iceblue_uk]

Also the site is never working properly, we can't look at sales history beyond the last week now, every attempt to view and compare more than a week of sales in seller hub now  result in a 'SOMETHING WENT WRONG' message. Even product research is hit and miss. Sometimes it says there have been no sales in the whole category in the last 2 days, which is clearly wrong, so how can we trust any figures provided to us by that system? 

Something else seems to have started going on with Pay Per Click now, which we do use on occasion. Suddenly, out of the blue, ebay is repeatedly telling us that we need to increase our daily click budget on a particular item from £15 a day up to £128 a day,  because the item is not getting the coverage that it could otherwise, this is despite the current daily spend not even getting anywhere near the £15 that we have set!

In addition to that... the ebay suggested PPC bid range on a particular item (which is supposed to be a guide to a bid amount that will give the best bang for your buck) always used to be something like '£0.40 - £0.60', but now it's changed to '£0.15 - £1.28'. Testing has shown that only a 25p bid on this keyword is required and anything above that is a waste.

These things may be site glitches of course, but such issues usually take months to resolve, if ever.

For us, the trust and cooperation between platform and members that's needed for the success of both has completely gone.

[nutrafituk]

We have been gradually switching off any promoted listing to avoid a sudden drop - not there yet. Having said that there is a massive difference in the balance as of this morning - see attached.

[kickin.assets]

As a US seller, I can say, we are keeping an eye on this and feel as many of you do; it’s definitely reading as a money grab/corporate greed thing. Small sellers have already been struggling and now with this, many will have to make the decision of whether it’s worth it to even stay on the platform, make big changes to their PL campaigns or quit PL altogether.

Personally believe that if you stay with PL you will just have to plan on all items selling this way or in other words; your basic listings fees have now increased indefinitely across all items. So instead of paying around 13% give or take, if you promoted at recommended 12-18%, your fees per item will now be 25-30% or more! That fee is (for US) on total (item/shipping/tax)! Ridiculous!

Couple weeks ago on US boards, there were a few different discussions going on about this. Some (myself included) do not believe we will have a 30 day notice as other countries have received as changes are already starting to be noticed. Others believe we will get notice. With the latter, sure, they may post a 30 day notice as to when it will technically start, but terms are already being reworded (without notice) to reflect this change.

Some have quit PL while others are on the “wait and see” fence or made adjustments accordingly, reducing PL%.

My sales HAD been a pretty good mix of organic/promoted, but this has stopped. As of a couple weeks ago, ALL my items were now selling via promoted! I’m in the process of making huge changes, as this just isn’t acceptable if I’d like to keep selling on eBay.

eBay will ride this wave as long as they can …

[stoney-racing]

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@kickin.assets wrote:

So instead of paying around 13% give or take, if you promoted at recommended 12-18%, your fees per item will now be 25-30% or more! That fee is (for US) on total (item/shipping/tax)! Ridiculous!

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To clarify for anyone who doesn't know, FVF, ad fees and extra fees like International/regulatory fees are all charged on ALL taxes and shipping - even taxes eBay collects and you don't ever receive. For example:

Sell an item for £100 + £30 shipping to Australia. Ebay collects sales tax of 10% for Australia, so the buyer will pay £143. You'll pay all of the following fees on £143, not the £100 you sold the item for or the £130 you actually received including shipping:

FVF - depends on category, say 11.9% = £17.02

Ad fee - depends what you set, say 10% (eBay generally suggests 18%-25%) = £14.30

International fee 2% (some countries as high as 5%) = £2.86

Regulatory fee 0.35% = £0.50

Total fees = £34.68, on an item you sold for £100 plus shipping.

You can cut this to £20.38 if you stop promoted listings completely, but of course you may not make the sale at all if this tanks your items visibility.

It also means you have to bake in all of these fees to your shipping prices, making shipping look really expensive to buyers, because they don't realise ebay is taking about 25%-28% of the shipping price in fees, plus an extra 2%-5% of the item value in extra international fees.

[triple512]

Exactly, so the higher the prices go the less people buy on eBay. That equates to fewer sales so sellers panic, increase promotions and repeat the cycle (or spiral of doom as I like to call it!).

[into-healthsupplements]

I wondered why ALL of our sales today are "promoted listings", even though 50% are repeat buyers!

Promoted listings served a function - a few extra sales on top of organic sales - for a small cost, and roughly 1 in 8 of our sales used to come from a promoted listing.

If now every sale is being charged as a promoted listing it is going to hugely increase our selling costs. 

We either stop promoting or put prices up - as if we haven't had to put prices up enough already over the last couple of years to cover various increasing costs.

[kickin.assets]

@triple512 

Sellers need to know their numbers. Unfortunately many do not. Surprisingly some sellers forget that when they promote, the fees are on the TOTAL as @stoney-racing just posted about, not just the item. If like other platforms, the fee's were just based on the item alone and not all the "extras", this, although a huge deal, probably would not be so much so.

It's the FOMO that seems to be happening. Ebay and others will have you believe, that your items will not be shown if you do not promote and that you will not sell anything. That's just not true. Ebay still wants your money, even if just the basic fees. Your items are still in search. You will still sell things. Yes, things may seem to slow down a bit, but your buyer pool will be better.

I can say this with confidence, because even in the saturated clothing market that I am in, I quit the rat race. Cold turkey quit last week. This is not my season (I sell denim), so typically my sales are slow June/July. Figured it's a good time to take the leap ... before this PL thing gets any worse. And guess what? I had sales. Were they over the moon fantastic? No. But the first two days of no PL, I had better sales than I had for quite awhile, and in June, one of my typically slowest months.

So I'd say ... know your numbers if you want to continue to play the game. If PL works for you, great, if you're over it like myself ... 👏👏👏

[into-healthsupplements]

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@jonatjonatjonat wrote:

Why not if you are selling something with a lot of competition.

even second hand there are thousands of say game boy advances on eBay at any one time. If it promote mine to shift it quicker, I’m fine with that.

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Yes but if you have 10 items in the listing, it means you will pay the promoted fee each time you get a sale even if only 1 of those sales if from someone buying through the promoted advert and the rest are organic.

[jiffybagtackle]

I don’t use promoted listings anymore, sales were down for about 3 weeks but they are trickling through again now but I’ve given up taking eBay seriously now and concentrate on other platforms.

well worth dropping promoted listings and going cold turkey for a few weeks, luckily I’ve never had my eggs in one basket and there’s thousands of sellers like us on eBay who can do the math and know this platform needs a complete overhaul.

[jonatjonatjonat]

That's true-  though unrelated to the post I was actually responding to.

[arksglobal]

My biggest grievance with promoted listings ad fees is that if the buyer changes their mind and requests to cancel the order, while we get final value fees back, we don't get any ad fees back.

No wonder eBay made it "even easier" for buyers to cancel orders! 🙄

[into-healthsupplements]

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@iceblue_uk wrote:
For the life of me I cannot imagine why you would think that.

Look, whilst it may not be 100% clear from their poor choice of words here, basic common sense tells us that it simply cannot be the case. It would be completely ridiculous, beyond the pale in fact, to attribute hundreds or perhaps thousands of sales from buyers all over the country to a single click on a promoted ad. Ebay means to charge 1 ad fee for each click received, it simply cannot be any other way.

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Today tells me that it is the case.

Every sale is now a promoted sale.

[brindsey]

 Should have listened - is this what is being referred to, this 'Ad fee general', if not, then what is it for?

This item wasn't promoted.

[iceblue_uk]

Indeed and I already ate public humble pie on that one lol. The idea of it
just seemed so far beyond reasonable that it just couldn't be the case.

[gardenhomeuk]

Damn, is this really the case?? 

[into-healthsupplements]

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@iceblue_uk wrote:
Indeed and I already ate public humble pie on that one lol. The idea of it
just seemed so far beyond reasonable that it just couldn't be the case.

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Anything is possible on eBay.😔

[custom-giftsuk]

Every sale unless you have zero promotions will be a promoted sale. 
So far eBay have decided to get under everyone's skin, private & business seller alike with Simple Delivery & BPF for private sellers and promoted listings for business sellers and the few private sellers who use promoted listings. Lots of extra cash for eBay to take. 

But they are rapidly running out of room, and good will.

The only thing I can see going forward is Simple Delivery & BPF for Business Sellers as well but that's the end of the road unless they come up with something new - which as we know, eBay tend to copy, not innovate. PPC from Amazon/Google, SD/BPF from Vinted.

The next "cash cow" is probably eBay live (a la Tiktok) - where for a fee, you can get someone to shake their shammy in front of a camera for you, or you can do it yourself and constantly promote yourself.