Pay per click

[trade-price-stamps-2015]

Pay per click seems to be the ultimate promotion, fees paid for items wether they sell or not, or is it money for nothing? I would like to hear from sellers who have positive feedback about this promotion, how it works for your business and wether it is value for money or not, or do you feel that this promotion is never going to work for sellers and it should be binned and we go back to just standard promote your listings.

[vinylscot]

When it was first introduced, eBay ran an offer, I think giving the seller 50% off the cost.

I tried it for a week or so, with a pretty low daily limit - I can't remember the exact amount. However, as my items are available to buyers worldwide, I was finding that my entire daily budget was used up before the UK had got out of bed. I sold precisley zero on that promotion.

It may be better targetted, and overall better now, but I don't think it can possibly do anything for a small business seller like myself.

[hudsonsclothes]

I've also tried it once or twice in my first few months on here selling and I think I've made one sale from it in total. I find regardless of what budget you set it goes almost instantly and page views don't pay the bills, if I were to choose promotions going forward I would go for the % of a sale if any at all.

[howmuchtobid]

It's a waste of money, avoid.

[trade-price-stamps-2015]

Yes, pay per click simply will not work for small businesses, i consider myself to be a small business, although maybe bigger than some others, and this promotion can not help my business at all, with the £500+ monthly subscription and fees and the almost compulsory standard promotiontion %,or your items will not be seen at all, there is no money spare to pay for pay per click. I can not help feeling that by the way the pay per click promotion is so heavily subsidized, that it is not being taken up by the masses and that it is struggeling to gain any motion. Does pay per click have an adverse effect on standard promotions? Do we get a lesser deal on our % of standard promotion, because of the pay per click?. This is why i am asking the initial question, are the good reviews for pay per click, it would be helpful to know.

[johnwash1]

I'm sure ebay finds it worthwhile, so they won't be in a hurry to discontinue it.  As long as there are mugs around who'll give it a try, why would ebay give it up?

Ebay's search is a joke, even without skews like this.  Today I looked at my own items and put in a search term to see only a certain type of my item.  My search, as always, was for lowest price+post first.  Yet some of the results were out of order.

[trade-price-stamps-2015]

Sometimes we stick with an idea hoping it will grow into what we want it to be, it is clearly not as ebay would like it to be or why subsidize and promote it so much ?, I feel the pay per click has had plenty of time to get up and running and would like to hear from those it is working for, lets see some positive feedback for it. For a lot of businesses it wont work, we can not make any use of it and there for its excistance is detrimental to our businesses success because we are all in a bidding war for top place, we are bidding against ourselves and continually bumping up the cost of running our businesses, but along the way there will be the casualties of businesses failing and not starting up, all of which is not good for a thriving ebay community

[trade-price-stamps-2015]

I am surprised to see 672 views so far and as yet no positve feedback for pay per click, if you read this and can give some positive feedback about this promotion, please do share your experience with the rest of the community , this may useful to others and help us to maybe use this feature in some way

[robbtyke132010]

I wrote about this before - I was selling nothing but getting charged £16.00 a day just for standing still. The culprit was the Pay-per-view probably the greatest eBay scam since they started - with promotions it pushed my percentage costs made to eBay to a staggering 40%. I cancelled with immediate effect & then decided to canel all the promotions too. I was really suspicious of how many sold items were being "promoted" & therefore incurred charges. Many of my sales were to return buyers who just needed to visit my store to browse & order but in 90% of cases they had bought items & I was charged a "promoted" fee. Strange but true! Anyway I am down to a percentage fee of about 16% with no noticable drop in sales. There may be scammers out there but by & far eBay seems the worst.

[trade-price-stamps-2015]

Well 747 views now and not one positive comment so far, surely some body has had a good experience that they are willing to share about pay per click ?!?!

[trade-price-stamps-2015]

Very well done to get fees down to 16%, in my mind that is about the rate we should all be paying to get good value but slightly concerned that business fees are going to go up further to compensate for the no fees for private sellers just introduced

[the_book_seekers]

I currently have 3 offers on promotional listings.  Light Up Your Peak Season Sales which is basically 20% off any advertising campaign (priority, general or off-site) probably with a £100 limit although I haven't found that yet. A specific 20% of a general startergy campaign up to a max of £100. Finally £100 off promoted off-site fees. Do I believe that I would get anything out of one these campaigns - no. 

[trade-price-stamps-2015]

£524 a month anchor store subscription

selling fees %

standard promotion fees %

pay per click fees %

Discount on items %

buying in costs

this all adds up to an astonishing amount, a very large % 

yes i know we can control some of these costs to an extent but just saying, there is only so much money to start with. It is very hard for Business sellers.

[lets_solder_on]

I've had a positive result from using pay per click but I think this is down to the fact I have a very high conversion rate (20%).

Which means the increased traffic to my listings is converting into higher sales.

Before having it active I was making around 2-3 sales a day but since having it turned on it's gone up to around 7-8 around sales a day (set at £6 per day).

I've increased my prices slightly to help cover the increased fees so all in all I am making more profit.

So I think the key is that it works great if you already have a high conversion rate.

[trade-price-stamps-2015]

Hi, thanks for the positive feedback, now there is more information to work with, yes i can see that makes sense, if your visitors are buying, the extra visitors will make more sales.

so we need to check our conversion rates, i have seen that the average is 1.35 % which seems very low and would maybe not be worthwhile doing the pay per click, However at 20% then 1 in 5 visitors buy so we need to look at conversion rates. Thanks

[theelench]

In olden times courtiers with elaborate titles (I particularly like Chamberlain of the Stool) and close to the king claimed to be able to influence the monarch into granting favours to those with no direct access, in return for a bribe.   This became known as "Selling Smoke" as no-one really knew how much influence they really had.  It's probably the origin of todays "Smoke and Mirrors" allusion.

It seems to me that instead of concentrating on selling more items for all sellers, ebay is now selling its own Smoke but has cut out the middle-men.

[trade-price-stamps-2015]

Yes, in the post office recently a woman was told the price for her parcel to be delivered and then the assistant asked if you would like to pay more for guaranteed delivery.

The woman asked, what is the standard price for delivery for then, is it a maybe or maybe not delivery.Are you not obligated in the first instance to deliver the parcel, this is what i am paying for.

We were paying Ebay a commission when an item sells, but now we are paying for a chance to sell an item, its not the same

[johnwash1]

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@theelench wrote:

In olden times courtiers with elaborate titles (I particularly like Chamberlain of the Stool) and close to the king claimed to be able to influence the monarch into granting favours to those with no direct access, in return for a bribe.   This became known as "Selling Smoke" as no-one really knew how much influence they really had.  It's probably the origin of todays "Smoke and Mirrors" allusion.

It seems to me that instead of concentrating on selling more items for all sellers, ebay is now selling its own Smoke but has cut out the middle-men.

---

From Wikipedia:

Smoke and mirrors is a classic technique in magical illusions that makes an entity appear to hover in empty space. It was documented as early as 1770 and spread widely after its use by the charlatan Johann Georg Schröpfer, who claimed to conjure spirits. It subsequently became a fixture of 19th-century phantasmagoria shows. The illusion relies on a hidden projector (known then as a magic lantern) whose beam reflects off a mirror into a cloud of smoke, which in turn scatters the beam to create an image.

By the way, Wikipedia is supported by donations and today is seeking a couple of quid from visitors.  I donate, seems little enough for a superb resource.  A lot better value than pay per click to ebay, methinks.

[trade-price-stamps-2015]

Yes a great resource

[theelench]

Yes it is, I sometimes send them a couple of quid usually when my PP account is reasonable.  I must admit, not every time I use them, but I hope enough keep them going if most people did the same.  I've never looked for info. and been given a "We can't find anything about that" page.  

So not the origin of "Smoke and mirrors" ?  "Selling smoke" was used by the Romans / Greeks, perhaps to big a gap?