Do Free Listing Promotions Affect Your Sales?

[pierrelebel]

Way back in 2000, eBay would have a listing promotion once a year.  The number of listings would increase very substantially and many sellers would complain that their sales were negatively affected by the huge temporary influx of listings.

Over the years eBay has grown and listing promotions are now a regular feature.  Sometimes they are limited to "auction style", sometimes to "fixed price" listings. Not all sellers are invited to all promotions.

Now, in 2014, how do "free listing" promotions affect your sales?  Is there still that huge influx of new listings making it difficult for potential buyers to find your listings or are you benefiting from the promotion?

It was easier for me to answer that question when I was a very active seller on eBay with 3,000+ listings.  Numbers spoke for themselves.  Now, I need more data to reach an informed opinion.

To that end, I am keeping daily track of all listings and auction style listings in a specific sub-category "Stamps - Canada" offered on eBay.ca (some may prefer to keep track on eBay.com).  Over the next fifteen days, I will record the information daily to ascertain if the "free auction style listing" promotion really affects substantially the total number of listings offered on eBay.

I suggest you do the same in a category of your choice.  Often our opinions are based on old, no longer relevant sets of facts.  I think it is important for all sellers to understand how promotions currently affect the visibility of your listings and its effect on your sales.

Good Luck

[ricarmic]

The thing I don't like about the free promotions is that I believe it tends to foster lots of wee low value BIN or 99c or 1c starting auction lots being run which fill up the categories. It will be interesting to see the results!

[canadianfootballcards]

I can't imagine it wouldn't hurt sales.

What bothered me for quite a while is that the rest of the eBay world was getting these promos and I wasn't. From February to December I didn't see a single one, prompting a few calls to the fine folks in customer service.

During that time, my sales were down and I wasn't saving any money on listing fees. A friend of mine, who lives in the same city and does the same sort of eBay business, made a point of telling me about EVERY promo he got.

Maybe my last call to CS resonated. I was a bit more forceful in my complaint (still polite though) and requested a credit. Magically, I've received the last three promos.

So while my sales are still sluggish (December horrible, January trending upward), at least now my monthly invoice is such that I don't have to sell as much to break even and make some $$$.

In those calls to CS, the one thing I heard that really ticked me off was when the rep said, 'these promos are usually for new sellers, to encourage them to start selling.'

I understand the business logic of that. I really do.

But I also know that I've taken my business away from companies who've chosen to give promos to new customers and do nothing but consistently raise the rates of long-term customers (ask Shaw Cable how that worked out for them).

I support eBays efforts to generate new business, because that inevitably brings new customers to the site. But I'd encourage them to not neglect their existing base either.

[pierrelebel]

"these promos are usually for new sellers, to encourage them to start selling."

That customer service representative misled you. It is total nonsense.  I have been selling for over fifteen years on eBay and I still get invited to most promotions.

Now, from time to time, I do not get the invitation by email or through "my messages" but my account is still eligible for the promotion!  Whenever you see other posters starting a thread on this board about a listing promotion, check your Selling Manager the next day to see if you are eligible.  Do not rely on email or "my messages".

[canadianfootballcards]

Oh I figured that much, given I had received promos in the past, and my friend is a long-time seller.
BUT it still irritated me.

Here I was paying my eBay store fees every month, and I strongly suspected that sellers who weren't paying a dime were getting promos.

And if a CS rep is saying such things, odds are he/she has heard them from someone (supervisor, co-worker) and there's probably an underlying thread of truth to it.

If we were able to pull back the curtain, I think we'd probably find that these promos are, in fact, more heavily distributed to new sellers.

[recped]

I follow the listings numbers in Music during the promos, I've been doing this since the never ending promos starting in March 2012.

I see an increase in listings of 7 - 10% during promos, I have never seen the so-called "flood" that some people claim kills their sales.

Personally there has only been one consistent effect on my sales, free listings = more of my listings = more sales.

And as a bonus to get with more sales I have lower fees as a percentage of sales.

[farmingnorth]

Free listings are the only time when I list.  Now before you guys jump all over me I sell postcards and they are for the most part a low dollar purchase.  It's a quantity game and one that means a lot of listings do no sell.  Now on a low dollar item it's not worth listing it when you have to pay fees to list.  To pay 30 cents to list a $2 item does not leave any room whatsoever especially after the FVF are tacked on.  If you list ten items and only five sell, the other five that did not sell eats up a good chunk of the profit based on listing fees that you made on the five that did sell.

Ebay has effectively killed the low dollar item sellers on the site.  So the only time it's worth while is to wait and list when it is free to do so.  Unfortunately, I am at the mercy of the free listings which means some months I have lots of chances to sell and others not any. 

[recped]

Ebay has effectively killed the low dollar item sellers on the site. 

I don't agree. Were you selling here 6 years ago when listing fees were much higher? How about 15 years ago when listing fees were even higher than that? Listing fees is one area where costs have been in a continual downward spiral since eBay began.

[farmingnorth]

I was on Ebay six years ago (under a different ID) and overall fees have certainly increased.  You can not compare the marketplace now to what it was five or ten or fifteen years ago.  Back then (wow now I sound old) you were not competing with as many sellers and there was not as much selection in the marketplace in pretty much any of the categories.  So the percentage of listings selling was much higher.  When you are selling low dollar items you need quantity in order to make it worthwhile.  It hard to pick up quantity when the overall percentage of sales has dropped over the years.  To offset that I strictly list on the promotion days.  Therefore if an item does not sell it doesn't cost anything and you can simply relist it the next go around.

[bb_cool_stuff]

Great Thread Pierre !

Remember seeing this title last weekend.

In general January is known for high sales & usually on par with November & December.

February & April seem to be my slow months over the years.

To be honest,since last Saturday, counting friendly competitors & myself, sales are down forty to ninety percent.

Unheard of previously, though other factors could come into play.

Promos seem to saturate our already saturated category.

Have never really done well with the Auction Promos, but if I don't take advantage of them I may not be invited back.

Have you come to any conclusions thus far ?

[pierrelebel]

"Have you come to any conclusions thus far ?"

Much to early to reach conclusions.  Now is time to accumulate data.  Daily until January 29th when the effect of the current promotion should be more or less over (listings of January 21st ending January 28th).

So far I see auction listings increasing very slightly daily.

[bb_cool_stuff]

Have not paid much attention to the increase in auctions in my category, I imagine it is quite high.

We have never seen such a large decrease in sales in previous Januarys over the years.

BTW, I am the one that has a 40% percent decrease in sales, a full time seller has noticed a 90% decrease.

Of course other factors come into play, but I would think the ten day auction promo is definitely a contributing factor.

Interested to see what the regulars have experienced since last weekend.

[rose-dee]

---

@pierrelebel wrote:

Much to early to reach conclusions.  Now is time to accumulate data.  Daily until January 29th when the effect of the current promotion should be more or less over (listings of January 21st ending January 28th).

---

I agree.  This experiment is only valid if enough people collect enough data over the whole promotional period.  I've decided to take the challenge and have been recording numbers daily in 3 categories that apply to me.  I'll try to continue until the end of the month.

However, I must say that from an analytical point of view, looking at the numbers of listings during the course of one promotion doesn't address the question of whether there has been an overall swamping of the site with listings in, say, the past year.  I would think it would be a lot more meaningful to keep the data collected this month and compare it to another month later in 2014 (preferably in a month where there is a similar listing promotion, to keep other factors more or less equivalent).

That might give us a clearer picture of whether there is a massive increase occurring from somewhere else in the time periods between promotions which is acting, in effect, like an ever-growing tidal wave, topped up with these frequent free listing promotions from time to time.

Now that eBay offers free listing promotions in the hundreds of thousands at a time, I have to ask: why?  What's the purpose of these ridiculously huge numbers? 

What seller can make use of 100,000 or more listings in a one or two-week period?  This time it's 200,000.  I understand the argument about using roll-over listings, but honestly, even rolling every listing over 5 times within a promotion would require tens of thousands of individual listings.  Who has that many items to list, and the time to do it?  What individual sellers, even those with larger volumes, could physically manage to put up more than a few hundred listings a day?  If you made a Herculean effort and listed 500 each day for 10 days (5,000), and rolled them over 5 times, you'd still only be at 25,000.  Didn't eBay free listing promotions used to just offer us a few hundred free at a time?  I can't recall specifically now, but it sure wasn't 200,000!

My (completely biased) answer is that eBay is supporting particular huge sellers who they well know have the staff to be able to make use of these enormous numbers, people sitting in back rooms for days doing nothing but sending up listings of warehouses full of 'stuff'.  I noticed by the way that these gargantuan listing promotions starting popping up around the time big sellers like Target and the China-wave came to eBay. 

Anyone have a better theory?

[bb_cool_stuff]

...looking at the numbers of listings during the course of one promotion doesn't address the question of whether there has been an overall swamping of the site in, say, the past year.

Can only speak for my category Rose, but yes, some sellers are in a panic mode & are desperately trying to unload mainstream, new & pre-owned shirts.

Am seeing plenty of shirts starting at 2.98 & receiving zero bids since the promo started.

Market is definitely saturated & many sellers did not notice the trend moving away from pre-owned shirts.

I'm glad I noticed the trend last February.

2012 pre-owned was 46% of my sales, 2013 just under 3%.

I guess you can just imagine why panic mode has set in for a lot of sellers.

[rose-dee]

Hi 'bb'  --You make an interesting point about pre-owned vs. new clothing items, and the slumping prices. 

In one of the categories in which I sell (antique/vintage garments, mostly ladies' garments, which are pre-owned by definition), there has been a huge influx of what I'd call dumping of junk at lower-than-bargain prices over the past 1 to 1-1/2 years. 

This was not the case previously, when a good quality vintage or antique garment could fetch a decent price and would sell fairly quickly.  In fact, I recall eBay specifically encouraging listings of garments a couple of years ago, because they said there was a shortage of them on the site! 

Another signpost of the times that is not directly related to eBay, but may have an effect on expectations of buyers here:  I've noticed for some time now that independent sellers of antique/vintage garments have not only lowered their prices on more valuable articles but are offering more and more items of poorer quality at bargain prices.

I've also noticed that a number of competitors in the category left eBay en masse in 2012.  One of them who was a long-time seller with a great reputation and always very nice items at reasonable prices, even put up a big "explanation sign" on her storefront describing the reasons why she was going it alone on the internet and how it had become impossible (largely at that time because of eBay policy changes) to do well as a professional vintage dealer on this site. 

Now I seem to be competing with legions of inexperienced, sloppy sellers who throw up a dismal-looking photo or two of an item drooping on a hanger, with two or three lines of description.  They often have the bidding start at under $10, or they just appear to be unloading basement/attic "junk" at low prices as fast as possible. 

It's beginning to feel like a race to the bottom around here.

[i*m-still-here]

Free Listings won't have an effect on higher end items limited in quantity, but they will on the lower end items for which there is less demand than there is supply.

In short, it's all about supply and demand interacting with quality and quantity.

[bb_cool_stuff]

Now I seem to be competing with legions of inexperienced, sloppy sellers.... They often have the bidding start at under $10, or they just appear to be unloading basement/attic "junk" at low prices as fast as possible.

Agree, however I'm resigned to the fact that many of us are going to ride this promo out.

I say let others work hard for minimal or no profit & they will soon come to realize that eBay might not be their cup of tea.

We knew last year was shaping up to be a tough go & this year will probably be the same.

Met with a guy late afternoon willing to let me buy a hundred , new, vintage shirts for three dollars a pop.

Of course I was interested until I saw the shirts were vintage reproductions of mainstream Giant Tiger carp that he probably bought at GT during their Boxing Week sale.

Could tell he was in a panic mode as the lot went down to two & then one dollar each.

I guess he thought I was grinding him down, which I never was, & just told him I could not move what he was offering.

Savy buying practises are now paramount.

While this deal would have been great four years ago, at his price, that is no longer the case.

[bb_cool_stuff]

In short, it's all about supply and demand interacting with quality and quantity.

Yes, we have had these discussions on the boards numerous times in the past year & I don't see anything changing anytime soon.

Ride the promo out, do some minor tweaking & I'm sure everyone will do well.

I can't recall many regulars leaving the site since I've been involved on the forums.

Still a great thread & am looking forward to the regulars opinions at the end of the month.

[pierrelebel]

Unfortunately, eBay is screwing up my plans to properly evaluate the effect of the January 11-21 listing promotion.  Typically, one would need to check all listings until eight days after the end of the promotion to get an accurate picture.  However, eBay has a new "free listing" promotion starting tomorrow, January 24th, making the accumulation of additional data meaningless.

So I have incomplete data leading to the following observations:

Over the last ten days, the total number of listings in the "Stamps Canada" has increased marginally (from 138,413 to 143,415 (5.06%). there was a slight decrease in fixed listings and a small increase in auction style listings but the variations were not really meaningful.

In conclusion, that eleven day promotion had little effect in the total number of listings available on eBay and was largely a non-effect.

As stated earlier, this study was limited to a specific sub-category.  However, looking at other categories on eBay I do not think you fill find a substantial difference anywhere.

[rose-dee]

Pierre, I stopped recording yesterday too when I saw the announcement about the new promotion.  I deliberately chose to track 3 categories I'm familiar with, one a very broad, major category, the other two sub-categories. 

The results of the data I recorded from January 16th through 22nd led me to the same conclusion as yours: there was no significant impact from the promotion, at least not in the 3 categories I was tracking. 

The numbers fluctuated slightly from day to day in each category (as you would expect), but by less than 100 in the two sub-categories, and less than 1,000 in the major category. 

However, I'm going to keep my table of figures and try this experiment again in a few months' time.  The numbers in my 3 categories at the start of that period will be indicative of whether there is simply a constantly growing number of sellers and/or listings being added to this site, quite apart from any promotions.