Suspiciously not getting ANY views of Items since ebay has started asking to (pay to promote)

[my-old-stuff-clear-out]

Is anyone suspiciously not getting ANY views of  some of their items since ebay has started asking to (pay to promote)?

Im hearing people saying that ebay  are shadow banning & secretly penalising private sellers who haven't (paid to promote any of their items) .

I mostly sell off my old bmx parts from my collection , as such I have a lot of duplicate parts  many (hot items) that I have sold consistently over the years when I've put them up for sale on here.  They always get views but recently i've noticed some items not getting a single view after weeks & weeks of being up for sale  which is simply not possible . 

Others have said the same & its all been since they changed the payout system & started asking private sellers to (promote their items) at a cost ?

[goldenwolfman]

They started 'hiding' listings months ago - when I used to keep about 900 items listed I regularly made sales and then they stopped and slowed to a trickle. It did not bother me as i was clearing so slower but still clearing. Now I don't list just keep testing the ability to opt out of SD and don't like BPF tax. I've sold a couple of stamp lots and been able to post, however buyers are now paying through the nose for what is cheaper elsewhere!

I won't promote, straight fees are fairer and no SD !

[akemp1]

I've never paid to promote and have still sold 11 items here in the past 2 weeks despite the buyer tax so the buyers must be finding my items somehow even if they are disadvantaged in the broken search results.

Maybe try relisting them via sell-similar to get a visibility bump assuming that's not against the many rules I struggle to keep track of?

[sylviaattic88]

I was the same so I experimented by promoting a couple - made zero impact on views; in fact, non-promoted are getting more. So I would say, it’s a waste of time!

[irobot100]

Well i ended all my listings a few weeks back because of the BPF and the looming SD. During March 

my viewings went down to rock bottom even though my books was priced competitively.....after reviewing my

listings even though my books was priced competitively, they was priced oddly (BPF) being newly back to Ebay after a long break i hadn't kept up with the changes....Anyway after drastically reducing my prices 2 times i did sell a good handful....so the viewers are there but with the odd prices i found i had to not only reduce by the BPF amount but over half as much again to make any sales..........

[peturning]

Same, next to no views and noticing items don't even appear in category listing sorted by new.

[akemp1]

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@peturning wrote:

Same, next to no views and noticing items don't even appear in category listing sorted by new.

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I just looked at the make/model of your laptop listing (without clicking on it) and searched for that item and yours was the top result. I then sorted by newest listed and again yours was the top result. Is that your only listing?

[greencrest-intl]

Sadly ebay over for us. 

Down on some stats 80% on last year

Promoted listings was a con, some categories have 80% sellers promoting totally unsustainable.

We have actually searched our products and sometimes found only the promoted listing with no organic listing. Other times we could only find it if we entered 3 or more words from title in specific order.

Visibility in general has also been broken, we just sold 12 pallets of quality gear rrp £30k+  ending on a Sunday evening for a grand total of 0.99p. Most of the listing views (total of just 90! Over 3 days) were our store followers and friends.

I invested 10s of thousands all gone down the drain as no visibility.

It's hard for private sellers selling their hobbies and collection they were hoping to redeem later in life, however, for me its just painful to have to close down and clear 50 pallets of stock for pennies  as its just too expensive to get started elsewhere. 

Thanks ebay while it lasted,  we had some very profitable years.

[peturning]

Can search for it, doesn't show up in category though.

Only listing right now yes

[*maetrix*]

On a slightly different platform Instagram are the same - 5 years ago I was getting 30 or 40 likes on posts - since they changed things on there (i.e. wanting payment to promote) I get 3 or 4 likes.

I'm not paying for a con.

[goldenwolfman]

I've been using facebook groups who specialise in stamps, diecast and other associate interests and made a few sales. I also list on other similar platforms like e bid - it gets some stick but I've made sales and the number of listings is growing daily - still tiny by Obey standards but worth a punt, costs little and does not charge buyers a fee - so there are starting to be cheaper items over there. Any businesses should consider it as more places they sell the better visibilty they will get.

[ankocat]

I've noticed it too, I have one listing that I just assumed was completely dead as it was stuck at 5 views for weeks, while similar listings I had would change by a few views a day as time went on.
Tweaking the price to more closely match others selling the same wasn't making it budge

Even doing a search with -price & PP low to high- my listing isn't where it should be, items costing 2 or 3 pounds more are listed ahead of me (not listed as promoted), it's just weird.

[welshjester]

Same here, I'm either getting 0 views or very few over the course of days. I have some excess - some of it I've had a while and not even used.

Is it to do with eBay's BPF that has put people off ? I'm not sure that is fully to blame, because even if I lower the price (like others have said) it makes little/no difference.

Maybe it's because they've screwed up the order of listings? Or is it time of year? Or a combination of everything?

It seems like nobody actually knows the reason.

[71dolly71]

yes they want sellers to pay to get their items viewed.

pure greed as usual from ebay 😬🤐🙄

[cartermk]

As far as I can see my views have dropped to about 50% of what they were jan-march and sales are through the floor 

I think that is what the data from the overview seller section is showing. The scale on the lower figure is half the size of the upper one so that basically the drop off from early March has continued.

[rogerimps]

I've been selling old books on ebay and used to get many views now it's mostly zero or 1 or 2 views.which again is impossible...ebay is up to something wanting you to promote.. ...I'm getting many more views than ebay says I'm getting..very fishy...ebay needs to charge to list a small fee...and put the true views back..are ebay not listing your auction unless you pr

[robin1941]

It was dropping way before they introduced that,they inroduced it to convince you into thinking using it would help but it won't.The search method they've incorporated complicates it too much for buyers to find unless you are searching for a specific worded item.It takes way too much time and effort to filter out what you don't want that buyers give up so items get a lot less views.

[smarts-gaming]

I think traffic has just been driven away from ebay in general, i dont believe listings are being hidden if not promoted. Search parameters bypass promotions anyway. 

On another platform i get 5x as many views, no promotions on either platform. 

Everyone is skint, ebay has p*ssed everyone off, and a competitor is offering no fees to sellers. They need to divert yesterday, but we all know they are too incompetent to do that. 

[adullaghan2008]

My sales have dropped off to 15% of what they were a couple of months ago. of course the summer is aways a downer but never in 15 years like this. i never knew as a fact that they "ebay" could play around like that but came up with the idea on a couple of other occasions in the past when sales were illogically low. i am not very tech savvy but never-the less the idea of their tinkering came to me as if i had been suffering from paranoia.  Only 15 minutes before writing this, I discovered this forum sharing and effectively confirming my suspicions. cutting off their nose to spite their face yet again after so so many other hair-brained ideas have been and gone. barely a couple of months ever pass by without another greedy corporate marketing/banking blunder. maybe they should employ me to run the show. i could hardly do any worse! could they ever consiously try to make our lives any harder or discourage us any more from making them money. this is why other sites are gaining in popularity. carry on cutting.