What is your opinion of the new fee structure for Promoting Listings?

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

Prior to July 1 I had a good proportion of my listings  with promoted attached. Due to the new fee structure I ended running promotions June 30th as a test. At that time I had an abrupt fall off the cliff end of sales. Previous experience with sales of items that were promoted was entirely random.  For July I've had a total of 2 sales. Lat 1 July 5. On/Off switch? Unable to confirm. Only a personal observation.

What is your opinion of the new structure? Should it include shipping/taxes? Should it be a distinct transaction as far as how it relates to the fees being processed or rolled together?  Have you changed your phylosophy to promoting your listings? Can you affort to promote? Can you afford to not promote? Have you switched and seen a drop off in sales or still going forward and using the 2% it is so written in the eBay Commandments? Comments/observations? (Please consider....Best offer and promotion fees can be a double whammy for a seller. Increasing prices may not be an option for many sellers.)

-Lotz

[kurtiseskorner]

My opinion is that it's disgusting. But so is pretty much everything ebay does at this point. It's another way to rip off sellers. 

[kurtiseskorner]

Yes, Canada has been forced to do the 2% thing. Of course. 

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@kawartha-ephemera wrote:

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@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote: So if something with 1% sold and ummm I guess got viewed would it still be charged at 1%? I have been seeing the same thing. Why I would be so nervous with the "pay to play" click model and trusting it.

-Lotz

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My thinking is that the recent changes to traffic reporting may have been made in an effort to improve transparency. Now that bot traffic has been eliminated from traffic reporting I think seller trust in the data being reported has to have improved.

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In just doing a quick check on traffic for Jan 1 to Mar 31, 2022 seeing the following.

Because of the removal of the bots parts of access to  historical data is long gone.

-Lotz

[lady.stark]

I ended all of my PL. EBay is becoming more and more gready... it's disgusting and sad too.

[reallynicestamps]

Not exactly on purpose, but I have actually extended the number of PL listings I have active at the new 2%.

If I try to justify it, so many sellers are proclaiming that they will no longer use PL that possibly the field has thinned and there may be fewere PL competitors.

And of course, at 2 % or 20%, we only pay if it works and someone buys. Until then the boost is free.

[flipistics]

There was someone on YouTube recently who tried a 100% PL and found that the ads were STILL only showing a small fraction of the time, with other identical items often showing before his. There's lots of factors that go into the rankings. The conclusion they drew was that it was probably wise to just go with what eBay recommends if you want the best results.

On the other hand, I've read from other people that saw little to no difference between like 2% and 5%, so they recommended the minimum. I have no idea who is right, but thought people might find it interesting.

[kawartha-ephemera · Accepted solution]

@flipistics
So many questions around the pros and cons of running a PL Standard campaign. Some may find having a close look at their listing quality report a worthwhile exercise, I'm speaking of the downloadable spreadsheet that is absolutely overflowing with of all sorts of listing data, including PL recommendations. Once opened in Xcel, Google Sheets or Apple Numbers etc the data can be viewed right down to the individual listing level. As always I'm under no illusions that the data is necessarily always accurate but nonetheless I felt I may have gained some insight into what listing attributes ebay likes to emphasize. The report is downloadable from the Traffic page in the Performance section in Seller Hub.