'Promote it' - How does it work?

[a9brs]

eBay keep offering me this 'Promote it' thing, but how does it actually work and what precisely do they charge? They seem remarkably coy about explaining this. I agreed to two of my three items being 'Promoted' but it seems to have made little or no difference to views and sales. I see from another post that there is a percentage charge which can be adjusted. I did not get this option when I agreed to them being promoted. How can I find out what a sale (if I ever make one) will cost in terms of fees? eBay is now ludicrously complicated and hardly worth the candle.

[jonatjonatjonat]

There's two ways you can promote. General and Priority

General Promotions are an overall percentage of the final sale. You can set what you want this percentage to be, but I believe the minimum is 2%. HOWEVER - due to a recent change, you will be charged this fee on ANY sale of the listing in question provided its in a current general promotion and ANYONE has clicked the listing promoted listing in hte last 30 days. You don't have any control over what search terms your ads appear in - its all defined by ebay though you can pull reports that show some of this data

Priority Promotions are Pay Per Click. In this case, you will get charged any time any one clicks on your listing. The top promoted listings in a search are exclusively held for priority ads. On Priority ads you basically say how much you want to aim to spend per day and you can either let ebay decide search terms and what you want to bid for a click OR you can set it all up manually. There's a lot to go into on Priority Ads, so its best to have a read

[a9brs]

Thanks - however I don't recall being offered any of these options when I
agreed to the Promote It thing. How can I look at what option I am on - I
can see no way of doing this? And how can I cancel the Promote It because,
as I said it has made absolutely no difference. In fact I have less views
and sales than before. To be honest I don't understand the things that eBay
are getting up to these days and I know that I am far from alone.

Thanks again.

[jonatjonatjonat]

I am first of all assuming you are using a desktop (not an app) in the below.

You can see what campaign a listing is on in your Active Listings view

There is a Promoted Listings tab there and it will have Promoted in green if something is promoted

You can also go to Campaigns

Here it will show you any campaigns you have setup and you can pause and end any campaigns from here. I wouldn't say your items need Promoting. The ones listed are very specific so if someone is looking for a book about Cosby in leicestershire, they will likely find yours.

[moonlight-rhapsody]

No need to promote your Cosby books - it's very easy to find those using organic search.

Re your brass band book, searching for "Beyond the Box" in Books didn't bring up your listing that I could see, even when I put in the author's name.  It did bring up a listing by another seller though.  Another fruitless search was for "Grimethorpe Colliery Band".

When I searched for "History of Brass Bands" in Books, the other seller's listing appeared, but not yours.

If you're not getting the views for your listing of this book, you could try putting "History of Brass Bands" in the title, leaving out Grimethorpe etc.  And I would recommend cutting down the text in your description, and making sure "History of Brass Bands" is prominent.

I've seen other people say that when they delete a promotion, it can take a few weeks for the listing to reappear in organic searches so even if you change the title and description, you may need to wait a while for the book to appear in search results.  HTH.

[britanniabug_stamp_store]

I am of the opinion it is just another money grabbing scheme. Ebay is basically saying to Private Sellers, if you want your items to sell through "improved" visibility, then pay for the "privilege".

Before this money grab scheme was implemented my sales and visibility were ok. Now they are pants. I accept that BPF (another ebay money grab scheme) played its part in tanking what were once modest sales of my items (collectables/stamps).

As an example (this has been the trend now for the past 4-5 months) here are my latest sales stats:

Sales are down 78.6% from the previous month which was also bad.

Traffic - Listing Impressions down 51.2% and listing page views down 36.9%

As I wrote, this has been the trend now for the past 4-5 months.

I did try promoting my listings during May and June with a General Strategy and it showed a small improvement in sales. But after taking in the fee's (average 10%) plus the high BPF, buyers stopped buying in favour of Business Sellers who don't have the BPF added.

[wgwillia]

It's call Ebay rip off.

[a9brs]

Hi,

Thanks for your response. Your experience seems to be the same as a lot of
other people - it must be very frustrating as clearly you had a thriving
business which eBay have all but destroyed. I am only an occasional seller
but I have noticed that I get no apparent interest in items that would
previously have attracted a lot of views and several sales. I now have
just a couple of self-published books listed which are supposedly
'promoted' but are in fact attracting much less interest they used to.

All this must be having an adverse effect on eBay's profits - I wonder when
the penny will drop...

Best wishes and good luck,

Brian

[a9brs]

Hi,

Many thanks for your helpful response. I will amend the Brass Band book listing as you suggest - although the strange thing is that I am getting a lot of views (26 at present) even though the book is not 'promoted' like the Cosby books. Very odd - although the views are not turning into sales at present. Views on the Cosby books are in very low single figures.

Regards,

Brian

[a9brs]

Thanks, I've managed to do that - although strangely the views have
increased sharply on both books in the last twelve hours or so - is someone
watching us....?

[a9brs]

Agreed! Or should that be 'a greed'....?

[moonlight-rhapsody]

"although strangely the views have increased sharply on both books in the last twelve hours or so - is someone watching us....?"

It's likely that it's due to people reading this thread who are curious to see what your listings are.

[a9brs]

Ah, didn't think of that - pity they're not curious enough to buy a few
copies!

[britanniabug_stamp_store]

Thank you ... however I have never had a "Thriving ebay Business". My stamp sales over the years have been no better than "modest". Many of my listings were created years ago and they continue to run as Buy it Now(s). I list on average 2-3 new listings per month with the majority being single Buy it Now lots. I might increase the number of new listings as and when "listing visibility" is sorted out by ebay. I certainly don't want to pay for a so-called enhancement just on the off chance I may get more "clicks ", "views" and a tiny increase in sales.

When ebay stopped charging Private Sellers sales fee's, they immediately looked for new ways to make money. It has been, and I quote what many other ebay members have said "ebay give with one hand and take more back with the other" including "pay for the privilege so that others can find your listings".

Just to reiterate my point (that I do not have a "thriving business") my monthly sales (on a per customer basis) are on average over the past few months, 5-6, and they are almost all in the £0.99 to £3.50 price range ... hardly a "thriving business".

Good luck to you Brian in going forward with your ebay sales.

[a9brs]

OK, sorry about that. You are quite right on your other points.

Hope things improve for you.

Kind regards,

Brian

[edwardian-dreams]

In my experience promote your listing has never worked over and above not promoting your listing 

Vinted have a similar option called bump your item which takes it to the top of searches 

but there again you don’t need to use that you just delete your item and list again which bumps it to the top 

[a9brs]

Yes, exactly what I have found.