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

[skylarstuff]

The answer for me is yes.................Free listings allows me to do a shotgun approach.  List a ton of goods and watch some sales come in.  I used to have better results when they allowed 1 day free auction listings.  It also allowed me to use up more of the free listings that way.  Three day listings are still good, but not the same results I got for 1 day auctions.  The bigger question is.......Does Ebay see increased sales in listing promos........and I am certain that they do, that's why they continue to run them as often as they do.

[bb_cool_stuff]

Pierre, had a great idea, unfortunately it will be very difficult to track my categories due to ongoing promos.

Oh well, back to tracking my own sales.

[bb_cool_stuff]

I don't think I can attribute slow sales to the listing promotions now even though I thought that a couple of weeks ago.

Sales are up from January 2013 & I will probably add a few more bucks by the end of the month.

I made a few minor price adjustments, whether that helped, I don't know for sure.

Bottom line, my category is saturated & one must find unique items to sell.

I think promotions will now be the norm & sellers will have to be very creative with their business models, plus make adjustments when necessary.