Promoted Shops - My Experience

[darth_baggins]

I recently received an offer from eBay for £200 worth of Promoted Shops advertising. As I couldn't see a catch I accepted the offer.

For those that don't know, you pay to get a banner shown on other sellers' listings, something like 'This shop has similar items'.

I set up my 'smart' campaign, selected five categories and a budget of £10 per day (it's pay per click, default budget is £30 a day!)

Within about 40 minutes the £10 was already gone with zero sales. I actually laughed out loud at this.

I let it run for 6 days. Each day, the £10 was 'spent' very quickly with absolutely nothing to show for it. I had quite a lot of clicks and the cost per click peaked at 42p. Yes 42p for one click of a link.

Not only that but I had 10s of 1000s of impressions which is probably detrimental to my listings in Best Match. In fact, sales did nosedive while the campaign was running.

Once it got to £60 with zero sales, I ended the campaign. Sales immediately picked up.

Conclusion; your experience may differ but in my opinion it's a total rip-off and the only benefit is to eBay, who are charging money for literally nothing. As usual with these promotions I'm also now wary that they won't honour the promotion as I've seen before on the forums.

I sell mostly low value items so maybe if you're selling higher priced stuff, it might be different.

[moldosgifts]

Try the absolute minimum of 2% it tends to go quit for a week or so then things return to a slightly lower level then before but your saving money.

[auntietootieblue]

I'm exactly the same, accepted the offer, took if off within minutes, no sales from it and hardly any sales since so I'm guessing I'm not going to get much sales now until the promotion ends which is September, I knew I shouldn't have accepted the offer.  

[vintagechinashop]

I too removed all my promotions since eBay announced their latest money grabbing scheme  I made a thumping loss last month and I absolutely do not intend repeating that exercise. 
summer months are quiet for me but my yearly sales haven’t yet reached the height that they used to be quarterly. Bad news for me but also bad news for HMRC so every cloud 

I will never be using promotions again unless eBay do something miraculous and actually start given business sellers benefits instead of increasingly trying to grab the coat from our back 

I hope many others are voting with their feet too.   Incidentally sales nosedived when I removed promotions but are very slowly increasing not sure the reason for that but hoping it continues 

[the_book_seekers]

ebay's offers on promoted listings have become constant. I have two at the moment which I am ignoring. ebay has improved their offers, but there's no way I'm going to take them up. The comments here validate that decision.

ebay surprised me recently. I had a message trying to get me to list some drafts I have which I've never had before. The listings had been recently created, so hadn't been sat around for any length of time. It just smacked of a bit of desperation. 

[bongomancan]

This is crazy. I got the same offer or similar £200 free set it up and since sales have dropped day on day. Used to average 12-15 daily. Today as of now 1 sale and previous days down around 50%. I find it absolutely insane that they offer something and it negatively impacts your business. Really just in aw right now.

[bravergrace]

I doubt that I'm anyone's target demographic for ads, but for what it's worth, I actually clicked on a promoted shop link today - first time ever.

Why did I click on it?  Because it appeared at the top of the item I was looking at, and I assumed it was a link to that seller's shop - a "see other items from this seller" button - and I wanted to buy several of their items.   I specifically chose the seller rather than the product.

When I realised it wasn't "my" seller's shop, I bought the item I wanted to buy in the first place, but by then I was feeling cross and cheated at having had my time wasted by sneaky little tricks from eBay, so I never made those other purchases.  

Result: one seller had to pay for the free misleading click, and one seller got one purchase instead of half a dozen.  

[pure_seeds]

We were all offered this promoted shop voucher this week and so your shop appears on my listings and my shop appears on yours.

Imagine the next few weeks of people using this method.
EBay customers won't know if thery're coming or going (mostly going, to a less confusing platform). 

It's hilarious but also sad that can't work out how pointless this is for us all. JUST show my shop on my listings.