EBAY FREE PROMOTIONS YOU CAN DO BETTER

[aligolf]

First thanks ebay for free insertion fee promotions, they are helping me build a business and I am getting closer to wanting to upgrade to a store. BUT YOU CAN DO MUCH BETTER.

When I call you and ask you about the promotions you tell me they are random events and you do not know when the next one is going to be? In order to plan and build a business I need to know when they are going to happen to take full advantage of them. As an example you just gave me so many free promos over the last two months but I was busy switching my auctions from US to Canadian that I could not use many of them, now we have had nothing for over one month?

I need promotions that are going to help me as I mostly list in the 30 day fixed price but once in awhile like to list auction listings so sending me free auction promotions does not really help me. Why not make the promotions open format so the seller can choose the format that works for them.

Like many ebayers I have a full time job so I only have certain time slots to devote to ebay. It would be great to be able to request promotions when I have free time to fully take advantage of them. For example this past month I could be listing like crazy but I have had no free promos, I am sure that as soon as I go back to my real job they will show up again and I will not be able to use them.

All of this is costing me money and therefore you money, I am sure that alot of this is probably intentional by Ebay so that I will give you more money monthly for a store subscription. But hey I am going back to work in a few weeks and I am sure that then I will get lots of free promos but will not have the time to really use them.

and so the lunacy continues

[recped]

Yeah and I want the grocery stores to tell me what's going to be on sale next week, the week after and the week after that. Oh yeah I also want to give them a list of the items I want them to put on sale instead of them picking them.

I need to buy a refrigerator, I don't understand why Home Depot won't put the model I want on sale this week, if I don't buy the one they do have on sale it's costing me money!

You are a merchant do you not understand that promotions exist to make money for the company offering them not for the people who take advantage of them?

I use and to an extent depend on the promos but I'm certainly not planning my business as if they were a given and would come in exactly the form I want. That's not a "promotion" that would be a gift and eBay is also building a business and it's not the gift giving business!

[snoopwiz]

Yeah and I want the grocery stores to tell me what's going to be on sale next week, the week after and the week after that. Oh yeah I also want to give them a list of the items I want them to put on sale instead of them picking them.

Kumquats of course. Always "Bargain Harold" pricing the last two weeks of August.

[esclyons]

Free Promos are a double edge sword, be careful what you wish for..

-you need to come up with a solid business plan if your selling is anything more than a hobby..

- never list more than you can manage around your full-time job..

-never , EVER count on free promos when you need them..

- and be careful when you over list with the free promos, because when the next month comes around and you have hundreds of unsold items to relist you will pay full listing fees..

-see how many items you need to list in a month, how much you do in sales and see if a store is the right choice for you..

-the abundance of free promos the last 2 months is in my opinion because of the switch from USA $$  to Canada $$,and the potential postal disruption,,, a lot of people have jumped ship and they want more items listed..

--you can take this to the bank though, the free listing bonanza will not last....

[reallynicestamps]

The purpose of a promotion is to PROMOTE something.

The high numbers of free listings over the past few months were very probably given to PROMOTE selling on eBayCANADA in CANADIAN dollars-- a huge change for sellers who had been happily selling in US dollars.

It's something of a given that if you can't afford the 30 cent listing fee, then your item is probably too cheap to sell.

Depending on free listings is, as others have pointed out, no way to build a business.

You do get 50 free listings every month, and if you list on both dotCA and dotCOM, that number rises to 100 (50 on each site).

this is probably intentional by Ebay so that I will give you more money monthly for a store subscription.

Take a look at this and plug in your numbers before rejecting a Store out of hand.

http://www.fees.ebay.ca/feeweb/feeillustrator

Also, I notice a lot of your feedback indicates acceptance of Best Offers. You know your customers best, of course, but there do seem to be a lot of them.

Are your asking prices too high? Are you accepting Best Offers only on multiple purchases?

Have you considered using Free Shipping? Don't Panic! "Free' Shipping just means adding the cost of shipping to the asking price for your items.

It's advertising smoke and mirrors since a $20 card with $3.50 shipping costs the buyer the same as a $23.50 card with Free Shipping, but buyers, especially the impulsive ones shopping on mobile devices, love it.

(I'm also trying to figure out how it costs $3.50 to ship a card- something to do with those heavy plastic holders?

I mostly list in the 30 day fixed price

Have you considered switching to Good Til Cancelled and putting up more than a hundred or so cards at a time?

I know when my numbers went over 200 that sales definitely increased on my various accounts.

The saving in labour is huge. And time is money. (17 cents a minute at minimum wage here in BC).

From your feedback it looks like you are selling a dozen or so cards a week , although feedback is not a great way of knowing that. Perhaps you need to rethink and streamline your inventory and shipping systems so you do less work?

These are just thrown out there for consideration.You may already have thought about them and rejected them. You know your own strengths better than we do.

[aligolf]

thanks wow that makes a lot of sense.....?

promotions make money for ebay in final value fees and also money for the seller if the item sells, in my experience the more items I have listed the more money I make that month so win win for both myself and ebay

[aligolf]

Thanks some good advice I can use, most useful, cheers

[recped]

From 1996 to 2012 free listing promotions generally happened once or twice a year (almost always the week after Christmas). Starting in March 2012 the deluge of listing promos started and then continued right up to last Christmas, almost every month without fail 2 promos although you might not get an invite for every one of them.

Then the new "plan" started and there were only a few rather oddball promos not as widely available. Since March there have been very few, more in Canada in fact than in the US.

It was very nice for the 4 years it lasted, I personally love the promos while some hated them for "glutting" the site (I never found that to be true).

I don't think we will ever see a repeat of 2012 - 2015 but I do think some type of more sporadic promos will still happen.