Since I live on .COM, I've been using the seller hub etc for some time.
I've also been using the "promoted listings" (under Advertising) for almost a year now. Aside from the fact that the automagic rebates don't work properly yet (but they are manually crediting me for them) I am selling stuff because of the promotions. Also because the promotions increase the visibility, and views and sales, it also makes the regular version more visible etc too which also increases regular sales too.
Now my bottom line hasn't gone up 20% because of them or anything, but I am acquiring new regular customers because of it (over half my sales are to repeat customers) and so far it has been "free" because I've not yet sold more than the allotment's worth. I've adopted an approach where instead of putting them on sale, I divert the same % to the advertising. This seems to be an effective approach so far and would be even if I did not have the allotment.
Hopefully they'll bring the promoted items stuff to .CA ASAP for you regular folks!
My category FVF goes up 0.15% so that's no so bad.
The drop of TRS from 20% to 10% is unfortunate, however it now means that losing the TRS discount becomes less dramatic (I outlined what losing the TRS means to me in a different thread, losing it totally costs me about 1.5% of sales, now it would be .75% more because I've already lost the .75%). So this costs me about .75% of sales, and makes the "fear" of losing the other .75% becomes less now.
It looks like they've finally outlined what happens when one falls to the 5% late shipping level (AKA below standard), FVFs go up 4%. I'm surprised it is that little. Personally for me the thing I'd be more worried about is what happens to one's item visibility. The likely loss of visibility would be much more problematic for me than the 4% increase I expect.
I'm not going to count the anchor store coupon going from $75 to $150 as great yet, because I'm still working to find stuff that I can physically use. That is getting better and I suspect over time they'll add more stuff that is of use to me. Time will tell on that.
It will be interesting to see if anything changes for us legacy Canadian folks that live on .COM in terms of changes to what we qualify for or not (I've been wondering if that's why my promoted listings rebates don't work).
Anyway so far it looks like when all is said and done, my cost of sales is going to go up 1%
I'm sure there will be nay-sayers to this, but I sell on several sites and in my wee world and how I do things, even with this increase, my total cost of sales on eBay is still lower than it is on the other places I sell (including non-online).
So I'm not jumping for joy that I'm losing another 1%, but I'm also not going to freak out about it either.
