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Random thoughts:
First and foremost, I DISLIKE that we apparently still aren't able to access Promotions Manager through Seller Hub despite my being told by no fewer than three different ebay folks that it was coming with Seller Hub. Canadian sellers have played second fiddle too long. Having only Markdown Manager with Promoted Listings puts me against a steep disadvantage in trying to sell competitively to my Canadian buyers when my American competitors can do BOGOs and offer coupon codes. I call it discrimination. It needs to stop. We deserve Promotions Manager and I'm not going to shut-up about it until we get what we deserve.
Also, I dislike that's it's glitchy in that it will show or not show data in the different modules on my page at random. Luckily, it's not the very important data that seems to intermittently disappear only to be replaced by the 'uh-oh' text.
I dislike that you cannot 'hide' this nonsense like you could with Seller Manager as part of the Customization features.
I like that it's easy to dump the Hub if I decide I don't want to be bothered with it.
I like that there's a summary of important stuff along the top that also includes the balance owing in ebay fees.
I also really like that you can customize (add) shortcuts to this module, and it almost compensates for the fact that the link to ebay Community can no longer be found at the top OR bottom of any Hub-navigated page.
I REALLY LIKE that there's finally an indicator of how fast I have to ship my item according to the handling time that I have set.
Finally, I'd like this more if I understood what these metrics meant. I 'get' the part in green but what's the comparative data supposed to mean? No one else was selling this stuff or that buyers aren't looking for it, or what?
@momcqueen wrote:Random thoughts:
First and foremost, I DISLIKE that we apparently still aren't able to access Promotions Manager through Seller Hub despite my being told by no fewer than three different ebay folks that it was coming with Seller Hub. Canadian sellers have played second fiddle too long. Having only Markdown Manager with Promoted Listings puts me against a steep disadvantage in trying to sell competitively to my Canadian buyers when my American competitors can do BOGOs and offer coupon codes. I call it discrimination. It needs to stop. We deserve Promotions Manager and I'm not going to shut-up about it until we get what we deserve.
Also, I dislike that's it's glitchy in that it will show or not show data in the different modules on my page at random. Luckily, it's not the very important data that seems to intermittently disappear only to be replaced by the 'uh-oh' text.
I dislike that you cannot 'hide' this nonsense like you could with Seller Manager as part of the Customization features.
I like that it's easy to dump the Hub if I decide I don't want to be bothered with it.
I like that there's a summary of important stuff along the top that also includes the balance owing in ebay fees.
I also really like that you can customize (add) shortcuts to this module, and it almost compensates for the fact that the link to ebay Community can no longer be found at the top OR bottom of any Hub-navigated page.
I REALLY LIKE that there's finally an indicator of how fast I have to ship my item according to the handling time that I have set.
Finally, I'd like this more if I understood what these metrics meant. I 'get' the part in green but what's the comparative data supposed to mean? No one else was selling this stuff or that buyers aren't looking for it, or what?
As you told me, you choose to live and sell from Canada you have to put up with the headaches, shortcomings, and problems, or don't sell here.
Complaining about it isn't going to change anything.
@momcqueen wrote:
Finally, I'd like this more if I understood what these metrics meant. I 'get' the part in green but what's the comparative data supposed to mean? No one else was selling this stuff or that buyers aren't looking for it, or what?
This chart tells you how your own sales are doing compared to the previous 31 and 1-year periods, and then that data is compared to what the eBay market as a whole has done in your category(ies) over the same periods. So here, for example, your sales are up 113% compared to 31 days ago, whereas during the same period the market in your category(ies) is 6.7% lower than this. In other words, you're doing 6.7% better than the rest of the market in your category(ies) for the past 31 days.
By contrast, compared to a year ago, your sales are up 164.3%, but the comparable market is up greater than 10% of this over the same period. In other words, you're not doing quite as well as the rest of the market over the 1-year period in question.
Why this information can be helpful for planning purposes is that you'll be able to determine how well or poorly your selling strategies and pricing are doing when measured in general, overall terms against your comparable competitors. For example, this current chart tells me that whatever you've been doing in the past 31 days has been 6.7% more effective overall in generating sales than the rest of the market in your category(ies) for that same period, but over the year whatever strategies you were using, while still increasing your sales over the same point last year, weren't quite keeping up with the rest of the market.
So basically what you want to see in this chart is your own figures continuing to stay green, and the market in your field staying below those figures. How accurate eBay's data collection is, and how well it actually reflects activity in your category(ies), being so agglomerated, is another question, mainly because there can be factors other than seller decision-making that affect sales performance.
For example, in one of my categories (sewing patterns), even though my sales are down 43.2% from last year, this figure is actually lower than the rest of the market. So, in a nutshell, sewing pattern sellers aren't doing very well on eBay. Which is exactly what I would have expected, given a number of eBay's recent policy changes, and my belief that a lot of "vintage" and "traditional" buyers have gone elsewhere to shop. In my case, these figures simply confirm what I already know.
At any rate, I wouldn't get too tied up in knots over this chart, but taken together with other metrics eBay provides in Seller Hub, it can be a useful snapshot guide.
By the way, I can never remember whether the ">" symbol (for example >10.0%) is "less than" or "greater than".
I've had a mental block on this point for decades -- maybe someone who doesn't have this problem can finally help me break it. Does anyone have a mnemonic to always get ">" and "<" right? 
@rose-dee wrote:
@momcqueen wrote:
Finally, I'd like this more if I understood what these metrics meant. I 'get' the part in green but what's the comparative data supposed to mean? No one else was selling this stuff or that buyers aren't looking for it, or what?
This chart tells you how your own sales are doing compared to the previous 31 and 1-year periods, and then that data is compared to what the eBay market as a whole has done in your category(ies) over the same periods. So here, for example, your sales are up 113% compared to 31 days ago, whereas during the same period the market in your category(ies) is 6.7% lower than this. In other words, you're doing 6.7% better than the rest of the market in your category(ies) for the past 31 days.
...
By contrast, compared to a year ago, your sales are up 164.3%, but the comparable market is up greater than 10% of this over the same period. In other words, you're not doing quite as well as the rest of the market over the 1-year period in question.
I'd say the opposite. The market results are not compared to the seller, but how the general market for the category is doing. So if the market is up 10% and the seller is up 164% -- the seller is doing much better than her competition.
...
The two bars are an easy visual comparison for how the seller and market are both doing.
-..-
@rose-dee wrote:By the way, I can never remember whether the ">" symbol (for example >10.0%) is "less than" or "greater than".
I've had a mental block on this point for decades -- maybe someone who doesn't have this problem can finally help me break it. Does anyone have a mnemonic to always get ">" and "<" right?
I don't have a problem remembering this although I definitely have had mind blocks on other things but here's a suggestion...
< The smaller point is pointing towards you so that is smaller than
> The larger or greater part is closer to you so that is greater than
Or...it might just confuse someone lol
@rose-dee wrote:By the way, I can never remember whether the ">" symbol (for example >10.0%) is "less than" or "greater than".
I've had a mental block on this point for decades -- maybe someone who doesn't have this problem can finally help me break it. Does anyone have a mnemonic to always get ">" and "<" right?
Exactly my problem too ... every time I come across these I have to backup a minute and search my memory for their meaning, the light does come on but it's not automatic that's for sure. Then you inserted "mnemonic" ... that one about did me in, had to go look that one up!
Perhaps the "Hub" designers are just using ">" as a visual prompt to indicate "up", I don't know, but to me the way in which the ">" is being used seems nonsensical.
I notice there is no such use of "<" or ">" applied to the "You" sales stats, this seems a better choice and less confusing to the reader.
Market > 10.0% doesn't tell us much of anything does it?
Does not ">" in this example mean Market is greater than 10.0%? The possibilities are endless, could mean 10.1, 100 or 1000%.
I spent a few minutes looking around....
After getting the lay of the land I went back to the main page, added or removed sections and placed the ones I want to see most often at the top of the page.
Next task, finding every section that offers customization options, check what is offered and select/deselect the things that matter to me.
A few minutes of fiddling with that and I'm all set, probably won't have to change anything in the future.
Since I use SixBit my use of My eBay has always been limited and I never used Selling Manager, The Hub will be just fine for me and the only "complaint" is that only one of my id's had been given the Hub at this point the others have not yet converted (but no doubt will soon).
Now that I've seen what is on offer I'm wondering why so many complained about it, seems perfectly fine to me.
And then there's this.
I'll say it again, if ebay wants us this to be a value-added service to us, we have to be able to use it. I'm not entirely stupid, but I lack the context with which to understand this data. Beginning with, what is the reason this is the default Benchmark date?
