Nothing Sells Unless It's Promoted... Fees Are Getting Ridiculous!

90% of my sales are from promoted listings.

Only about half of my items are promoted, but I'm slowly converting them all to promoted. This seems to be improving sales.

But now I've just done the math, and I see I'm paying an average of 25% for fees, when I used to pay about 12%.

Is there any way I can reduce promo fees and still get my listings seen? I'm trying to think of some promo strategies.
Message 1 of 18
latest reply
17 REPLIES 17

Re: Nothing Sells Unless It's Promoted... Fees Are Getting Ridiculous!

Sorry can't offer much help with Promoted listings as I DO NOT use'em...I don't feel it is a necessity for sellers to pay extra to clamber to the top of the heap just to be thrown back down by other sellers who are willing to spend more on fees to stay at the top. I refuse to throw $ away on this PL game. My eBay fees are high enough without using PLs ...but I have never felt the need to "join in the game".  However, I am also not a seller "in need of sales"/"in business" and/or requiring sales as income.

Message 2 of 18
latest reply

Re: Nothing Sells Unless It's Promoted... Fees Are Getting Ridiculous!

You need to promote almost everything you sell. Even if it is just doing the minimum 2.1 percent. I don't disagree with people who are upset at a higher fee structure, but not promoting is cutting off your nose to spite your face. If the added sales promoting don't justify the fee, then there is a big problem with margins and demand for your product - which is something a lot of sellers are facing now that the big COVID surge is over.

 

The only contradicting point that I will add is that certain products are supposed to take a long time to sell because while highly profitable they might have a very limited market. You don't need promoted listings because these people are going to find these regardless and when people search for the item, it's not like you're competing for visibility because there will be little or no competition. Something like a very limited edition item might fit this idea. 

Message 3 of 18
latest reply

Re: Nothing Sells Unless It's Promoted... Fees Are Getting Ridiculous!


@teenytrinkets wrote:
90% of my sales are from promoted listings.

Only about half of my items are promoted, but I'm slowly converting them all to promoted. This seems to be improving sales.

But now I've just done the math, and I see I'm paying an average of 25% for fees, when I used to pay about 12%.

Is there any way I can reduce promo fees and still get my listings seen? I'm trying to think of some promo strategies.

@teenytrinkets 

For me what sells as promoted is veryyyy (almost entirely) random. Unfortunately for any seller using promotions we will  be constantly chasing our tails because there will be sellers promoting at higher rates getting that top slot.  See attached. I am currently promoting 2/3's of my items with very limited success.

 

lotzofuniquegoodies_0-1717215445670.png

-Lotz

Message 4 of 18
latest reply

Re: Nothing Sells Unless It's Promoted... Fees Are Getting Ridiculous!

I use only the 2% minimum PL fee and not on every listing.

I do put it on older listings.

It's been my observation that the percentage of PL listings that sell, is lower than the percentage of PL listings I have, but that they do get more Views.

So I use PL (at 2%) as a way to draw eyeballs.

I don't care what the customer buys once they are in my Store.

 

I also use Offers on older listings with Views in the past 30 days, unless they have PL, because I don't want to reduce my profit two ways, with higher fees on lower price.

Offers are time limited.

 

But I get the most sales when I have also been listing busily. Since I've been sloughing off this past week, I guess my sales will be down next week.

Message 5 of 18
latest reply

Re: Nothing Sells Unless It's Promoted... Fees Are Getting Ridiculous!

It is worth noting that once a buyer buys one thing that is promoted from you ALL things they buy subsequently that are also promoted for the next 30 days you pay the promoted fees for.

 

Before that rule came into place, I used to promote 100% of my listings, since then I do not promote "newly" listed stuff.

 

So promoting a large or entire portion of your inventory will punish you a bit more if you have a lot of regular repeat buyers.

Message 6 of 18
latest reply

Re: Nothing Sells Unless It's Promoted... Fees Are Getting Ridiculous!


@mrdutch1001 wrote:

However, I am also not a seller "in need of sales"/"in business" and/or requiring sales as income.


Here is a valuable advice form someone who is "not a seller "in need of sales"/"in business" and/or requiring sales as income":  "I don't feel it is a necessity for sellers to pay extra (...)"

 

All other sellers who also are not interested in sales - feel free to follow above advice. Good luck! 😃

Message 7 of 18
latest reply

Re: Nothing Sells Unless It's Promoted... Fees Are Getting Ridiculous!

It's completely random here. I promote all my listings at 5%. Sometimes 80% sell as promoted, sometimes only 20%. I do not see any pattern.  

Message 8 of 18
latest reply

Re: Nothing Sells Unless It's Promoted... Fees Are Getting Ridiculous!


@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:
lotzofuniquegoodies_0-1717215445670.png

 


It's basically the same here (listings promoted at 5%). 

Image4.jpg

Message 9 of 18
latest reply

Re: Nothing Sells Unless It's Promoted... Fees Are Getting Ridiculous!


@38e_avenue wrote:

It's completely random here. I promote all my listings at 5%. Sometimes 80% sell as promoted, sometimes only 20%. I do not see any pattern.  


@38e_avenue 

Stuff works on ebay....Until it doesn't!!!

 

We are just eBay's idea of 

 

lotzofuniquegoodies_2-1717381728329.png

 

Message 10 of 18
latest reply

Re: Nothing Sells Unless It's Promoted... Fees Are Getting Ridiculous!

For my listings, promoted items is huge. 93% of my impressions are from promoted listings. 330,000 promoted vs 25,000 organic impressions.

I promote at 5% regardless of what the suggested rate is.

Message 11 of 18
latest reply

Re: Nothing Sells Unless It's Promoted... Fees Are Getting Ridiculous!

May 31, 2024 Impression Report:

 

 

lotzofuniquegoodies_4-1718197771078.png

 

 

June 12 Impression Report:

lotzofuniquegoodies_1-1718197629753.png

 

It's getting more and more like the only way listing are getting seen is if they are promoted. That's a 10 day gap with no new promotions added. 

Message 12 of 18
latest reply

Re: Nothing Sells Unless It's Promoted... Fees Are Getting Ridiculous!

It seems to me that once you engage in the PL game you are "hooked, line and sunk" into that never ending circle of that game...

for those of us who don't use PLs, it's business as usual, our listings must still get seen as we still get sales.....

Message 13 of 18
latest reply

Re: Nothing Sells Unless It's Promoted... Fees Are Getting Ridiculous!


@mrdutch1001 wrote:

It seems to me that once you engage in the PL game you are "hooked, line and sunk" into that never ending circle of that game...

for those of us who don't use PLs, it's business as usual, our listings must still get seen as we still get sales.....


@mrdutch1001 

It could also have to do with sellers than specialize vs sell a bit of everything affecting the wagon cart....getting seen. Even a basic search limits what you see. In most cases you have to check promoted listings to get a better idea of what is truly available. As a side promoted listings do not give out there whereabouts as easily compared to a list of items gleaned from a search.

Message 14 of 18
latest reply

Re: Nothing Sells Unless It's Promoted... Fees Are Getting Ridiculous!


@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:

May 31, 2024 Impression Report:

 

 

lotzofuniquegoodies_4-1718197771078.png

 

 

June 12 Impression Report:

lotzofuniquegoodies_1-1718197629753.png

 

It's getting more and more like the only way listing are getting seen is if they are promoted. That's a 10 day gap with no new promotions added. 


I have one selling account reserved for my "garbage" listings, these are listings that have been up almost continually for many many years, 10+ in most cases. I use 2% promo rate on those , I get lots of Promoted Impressions but very few views and almost no sales.

 

I don't believe promoted views have anything near the value of organic views. For example, promoted slots on the listing page are often way down the page or off the screen in the carousel, those all count as impressions but are totally unseen by the majority of users. On the other hand, an Organic view only needs a user to scroll down the search results page and at the default setting that's only 25 listings. Other promoted impressions come from the "spam" emails eBay sends out, I suspect the vast majority of those impressions barely get a cursory view.

 

On my primary selling accounts I don't promote, get a reasonable amount of impressions and views and have a fairly good conversion rate.

 

One thing that matters is how easy your items are to find in search. I sell in the Music category, users mostly search by Artist name which means that regular search results mostly contain the things they are looking for with very few spurious listings to wade through.

 

 

 



"What else could I do? I had no trade so I became a peddler" - Lazarus Greenberg 1915
- answering Trolls is voluntary, my policy is not to participate.
Message 15 of 18
latest reply

Re: Nothing Sells Unless It's Promoted... Fees Are Getting Ridiculous!


@recped wrote:

@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:

May 31, 2024 Impression Report:

 

 

lotzofuniquegoodies_4-1718197771078.png

 

 

June 12 Impression Report:

lotzofuniquegoodies_1-1718197629753.png

 

It's getting more and more like the only way listing are getting seen is if they are promoted. That's a 10 day gap with no new promotions added. 


I have one selling account reserved for my "garbage" listings, these are listings that have been up almost continually for many many years, 10+ in most cases. I use 2% promo rate on those , I get lots of Promoted Impressions but very few views and almost no sales.

 

I don't believe promoted views have anything near the value of organic views. For example, promoted slots on the listing page are often way down the page or off the screen in the carousel, those all count as impressions but are totally unseen by the majority of users. On the other hand, an Organic view only needs a user to scroll down the search results page and at the default setting that's only 25 listings. Other promoted impressions come from the "spam" emails eBay sends out, I suspect the vast majority of those impressions barely get a cursory view.

 

On my primary selling accounts I don't promote, get a reasonable amount of impressions and views and have a fairly good conversion rate.

 

One thing that matters is how easy your items are to find in search. I sell in the Music category, users mostly search by Artist name which means that regular search results mostly contain the things they are looking for with very few spurious listings to wade through.

 

 

 


@recped 

 

Total agreement with what your saying in regards to those counts. I have been basing my findings on my previous checks of those reports. In the past my items were being found via eBay vs the rare outside of ebay search.  ( Ratios were in the 3:1 / 5:2 range consistently. Mpw that data keeps flip flopping.)  Once ebay started tinkering with categories.....merging and deleting that all went out the window. Now when I click on just the category I am researching an item in I routinely find items that nowhere close to belong. In the past if you put something in the wrong category you got a message from eBay telling you so. It would be either ended or you had to correct immediately. Now with AI it's plunking lots of new listings in the incorrect categories as standard practice. (I've gone to list a HC book using the code. eBay has dropped it in eBooks totally incorrectly. I have seen adult type magazines in Autoparts and Pokeman cards EVERYWHERE). In the longrun all this does is mess up the search experience when noting can be found where it should be. And please let's not even talk about Mixed Lots. That was sooooo badly messed up it's next to impossible to list correctly and simply as it once was in the past. 

 

Finding what you are searching for should not need going through the carousel. Unfortunately that is what we are stuck with. It's just making the shopping experience on eBay more difficult to manuever in and frustrating many buyers...both new and long time. 

Message 16 of 18
latest reply

Re: Nothing Sells Unless It's Promoted... Fees Are Getting Ridiculous!

There's probably something silly going on like eBooks having the same ISBN as the physical copies or something. I suspect a lot of the new product catalogue listings are generated with AI and probably don't distinguish between them. I've run into it as well. You can contact the product catalogue team to ask them to fix individual ones that you run into if you find things miscategorized when you list.

Message 17 of 18
latest reply

Re: Nothing Sells Unless It's Promoted... Fees Are Getting Ridiculous!


@flipistics wrote:

There's probably something silly going on like eBooks having the same ISBN as the physical copies or something. I suspect a lot of the new product catalogue listings are generated with AI and probably don't distinguish between them. I've run into it as well. You can contact the product catalogue team to ask them to fix individual ones that you run into if you find things miscategorized when you list.


@flipistics 

You can pass that info on but no guarantees it will get fixed. Timely or accurately. If you find 1 how many more are there floating about?  Seeing and finding the many newly created listings that used AI makes me very nervous.  It takes little work to spot them. I've started to just hit the back button when I do because of the faith in accuracy to those listings.

 

You guess/hope that everything you list makes it to the correct category. During the process little tidbits of bad AI are VERY easy to miss. Makes me wonder how many times NADs happen because of it. I catch incorrect item specifics routinely that eBay plopped into firelds inaccurately. Gets more difficult when eBay updates(adds/modifies) fields after a number of listings have been created and running for ages. Might be helpful IF eBay is going to modify fields they highlight in a different colour so sellers know these are eBay made changes. Hey, just throwing stuff at the wall and hoping something sticks.

 

Message 18 of 18
latest reply

Type a product name