Promoted Experiment Results In Worst Sales In Years

[new_spin_boutique]

Hi fellow eBayers. 

Due to the increasingly crippling site issues and erratic behavior of our platform, I decided to cross list my entire store. Then, I decided, let's just try promoting the 2/3 of my store that is not promoted, at 3%, just to see. If eBay is demanding I pay a little more in addition to the standard fees(which is charged on shipping & tax) + store subscription, then maybe it's worth playing their game so that I can avoid having to worry about managing two platforms. 

After two days, here is the data that I have from my performance tab. While the data indicates that my impressions more than doubled, my views barely increased, my sales plummeted(including ZERO promoted sales), and I picked up a significantly less amount of watchers than I typically do in the same time period.

What I can deduce from this, is the site is broken. I don't sell junk. I sell, mostly, sought after necessities. In this economic time, as it has been shown in history, consumers seek out cost-saving opportunities for said necessities when the cost of living increases or the ability to meet the monetary needs of the cost of living decreases. eBay, in the categories of necessities, SHOULD be thriving. There SHOULD be an uptick. Parents still need to clothe and feed their children. People still need to dress appropriately for the jobs they have that barely pay their bills. 

eBay has created a situation where it has become difficult, if not impossible, for the buyer to find the item they're seeking, difficult for the seller to connect with the appropriate buyer, and is, instead, relying on extorting sellers for meaningless traffic that exacerbates the problems on this site. 

I'm happy to pay fees to conduct business on this platform. I'm happy to look past eBay charging fees on shipping & TAX collected. I'm happy to pay the store subscription costs.  I'm happy to work with eBay to help improve the platform. I'm happy to cater to my customers, because, they're OUR customers. I'm happy to take lower offers for those in a bad financial situation. I'm happy to go far above and beyond to provide positive experiences for buyers, to my own financial detriment. I'm happy to provide free returns for customers who are less than satisfied and eat the costs. I'm happy to take more photos than necessary, and painstakingly detail anything that could be perceived as an imperfection. I'm happy to forget about the fact that I can't find a customer service rep that can provide customer service, or can even express themselves clearly, or has basic knowledge of the platform.

I can go on, and on, and on about all of the problems. We didn't even dive into policy issues that are exploited, daily, and the lack of recourse that we have.

eBay has become a real 'you know what' show. It's unhealthy for the buyers and the sellers. This effort to strongarm the difference between what eBay was and what it is, out of the sellers, only serves to further accelerate the decline of the site. 

I don't want to cross list and build on another platform. Though very easy to do with today's tools, I have been an ambassador for the platform for so long, participating in every way that I could to help improve the site - sending in videos when asked to, participating in eBay Council, etc. However, at this point, it has become apparent it was all for not. This new system is literally destroying the platform as without the sellers and the buyers, eBay is just a bunch of (broken) code. The sellers are eBay's customers and the buyers are OUR customers. Without the sellers, you have no buyers. Without the buyers, eBay has assets to liquidate to pay off its debt. 

vvvIMPRESSIONSvvv

[new_spin_boutique]

In the images above - Impressions on the top. Views in the middle. Sales on the bottom.

[pereirahawk]

The one thing I learned is this: promoting long tail items is a recipe for disaster, as it leads to a depressed sales conversion rate (scr).  In my view, having a low sales conversion rate is telling Cassini you can't sell...my scr is in the dumps for the last month or so.   

[new_spin_boutique]

@pereirahawk That's a really good point as that's the way I always understood Cassini to work, as well. However, I believe, based on what I have witnessed over the past few months, much of what we understood about the algorithm & the search engine, as it relates to placement, no longer applies. But I'm with you, totally. You're probably correct in thinking along these lines. 

I am going to give this experiment another few days, but I'm not wasting any time. Operation cross list begins tomorrow. I have bags full of outstanding merchandise waiting to go up, so we'll see how this plays out. I am betting I outsell eBay on these other platforms and I'll update this thread with the results. 

I'm sooooo over this tihs. We've busted our collective butt to build this platform, for far too long, to just sit down and take it on the chin. Uh, uh. Not happening. 

[new_spin_boutique]

@pereirahawk Thanks for the comment, by the way. You just got me thinking about something. That 1/3 of my store that I had been promoting is old stuff. I took 2022 off, and what didn't sell during that year is what I began to promote after returning this year. 

If Cassini is still weighting conversion, it would mean that old stuff, which is priced at 65% off, plus being promoted, is really damaging my conversion. If Cassini still weights conversion, I may be able to pull those items from the store, drop the promotions, and experience sales improvement as a result. 

I don't want to prematurely end this promoted experiment, but I'm tempted as my conversion has dropped from 2.5% to 2.3% in just the past couple days. 

I'll ride this experiment out, and I'll clear out that old inventory which isn't even really profitable at the current prices. 

Thanks for the comment because I wasn't really considering this until you said something. 

[pereirahawk]

Exactly, if you feel a large amount of items are dragging down your scr, it may be a good idea to get rid of those items...promoting these items kill scr.   I'm making the same mistakes; I sell postal history, airmail covers, some postcards, etc, but, my overpriced, cheap covers are killing my scr.  Definitely don't promote items if you feel they're long tail or poor items...unless you're having a fire sale and you think you can move them. 

Btw, good luck with with cross listing...

[ajs_coins_and_alchemy]

---

@new_spin_boutique wrote:

Hi fellow eBayers. 

Due to the increasingly crippling site issues and erratic behavior of our platform, I decided to cross list my entire store. Then, I decided, let's just try promoting the 2/3 of my store that is not promoted, at 3%, just to see. If eBay is demanding I pay a little more in addition to the standard fees(which is charged on shipping & tax) + store subscription, then maybe it's worth playing their game so that I can avoid having to worry about managing two platforms. 

After two days, here is the data that I have from my performance tab. While the data indicates that my impressions more than doubled, my views barely increased, my sales plummeted(including ZERO promoted sales), and I picked up a significantly less amount of watchers than I typically do in the same time period.

What I can deduce from this, is the site is broken. I don't sell junk. I sell, mostly, sought after necessities. In this economic time, as it has been shown in history, consumers seek out cost-saving opportunities for said necessities when the cost of living increases or the ability to meet the monetary needs of the cost of living decreases. eBay, in the categories of necessities, SHOULD be thriving. There SHOULD be an uptick. Parents still need to clothe and feed their children. People still need to dress appropriately for the jobs they have that barely pay their bills. 

eBay has created a situation where it has become difficult, if not impossible, for the buyer to find the item they're seeking, difficult for the seller to connect with the appropriate buyer, and is, instead, relying on extorting sellers for meaningless traffic that exacerbates the problems on this site. 

I'm happy to pay fees to conduct business on this platform. I'm happy to look past eBay charging fees on shipping & TAX collected. I'm happy to pay the store subscription costs.  I'm happy to work with eBay to help improve the platform. I'm happy to cater to my customers, because, they're OUR customers. I'm happy to take lower offers for those in a bad financial situation. I'm happy to go far above and beyond to provide positive experiences for buyers, to my own financial detriment. I'm happy to provide free returns for customers who are less than satisfied and eat the costs. I'm happy to take more photos than necessary, and painstakingly detail anything that could be perceived as an imperfection. I'm happy to forget about the fact that I can't find a customer service rep that can provide customer service, or can even express themselves clearly, or has basic knowledge of the platform.

I can go on, and on, and on about all of the problems. We didn't even dive into policy issues that are exploited, daily, and the lack of recourse that we have.

eBay has become a real 'you know what' show. It's unhealthy for the buyers and the sellers. This effort to strongarm the difference between what eBay was and what it is, out of the sellers, only serves to further accelerate the decline of the site. 

I don't want to cross list and build on another platform. Though very easy to do with today's tools, I have been an ambassador for the platform for so long, participating in every way that I could to help improve the site - sending in videos when asked to, participating in eBay Council, etc. However, at this point, it has become apparent it was all for not. This new system is literally destroying the platform as without the sellers and the buyers, eBay is just a bunch of (broken) code. The sellers are eBay's customers and the buyers are OUR customers. Without the sellers, you have no buyers. Without the buyers, eBay has assets to liquidate to pay off its debt. 

vvvIMPRESSIONSvvv

---

I stopped reading after the 2nd or 3rd paragraph because sorry, it's far too long for me to read at 4am

I promote my entire store at 3%. Out of over 2000 items sold, I may have promoted a few (literally maybe 5-7 items at most) at as much as 5%. A few times EBay's suggested ad rate was 3.3 or 3.6% and I took it. Sometimes EBay suggested 2.6% and I took it. Point is, 3% is what I do 99.9% of the time. 

My result? I have something like 5-8x impressions, and 2x views. I did some experimenting with 0 promotions, and my sales absolutely halted... like dropped to 20% of what they were, and immediately upon re-promoting my sales spiked 5x or more.

YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY (Obviously). Everyone's experience is different, everyone's market is different, you gotta find what works for you. I just felt I needed to share because I literally do 3% as well, but my experience is SOO different.

[ajs_coins_and_alchemy]

I guess I'll share illustration too.

[laststopgeneralstore]

2 Days is not nearly enough time for an "experiment". That's barley giving enough time for the listings you promoted to fully index. I've noticed that when I start promoting, it can take 2-3 days before everything starts rolling.

Try doing 30 days next time you do an experiment and you'll see a much bigger difference.

With that being said & as a clothing seller myself, You have some good brands listed but a lot of brands(fluff) that just isn't going to sell or is priced to high & have very low sell thru rates. You have almost a 2k active item store, have you gone thru and really researched some of the stuff your listings to see if it's still worth your time?

Michael kors, Old navy, musingwear, banana republic(very few unless vintage), denim & flower(fast fashion and low sell thru/price), Tommy hilfiger, Jones NY, Southern Tide etc... are all very very low sell thru/low ASP items. Consider moving those out of your store then using that money to get better, quicker selling higher ASP brands.

I had the same issue last year with these same types of brands and built a massive store that could barley break 10 sales/day. Now my store is less than 1k and I'm averaging 12/day.

If your crosslisting the same slow moving brands at the same prices your just doing double the work for maybe a few extra sales here and their. The root cause if you need to source better items.

Good Luck.

[new_spin_boutique]

@ajs_coins_and_alchemy 

Sorry, I stopped reading after the first sentence. Too childish for me to read. 

[new_spin_boutique]

@laststopgeneralstore 

Regarding your first point - if we are to believe the data on the performance tab is correct (which it's not), then to have three times the impressions and 1/8th the sales, which also happen to be the lowest sales total in the last 5 years or so, it's enough of a test. 

To your second point - yes, I do have around 1/3 of my store that is old stuff. The other 2/3 is not the types of items you described. I took 2022 entire off from eBay and listed nothing, only shipped. That 'fluff' all predates that period of 2022. It's being cleared out, but the 1200 other items are not fluff and were listed within the past 4 months. 

My sell through is around 60%, right now, even as I get my store back into shape. That's pretty **bleep** good by most people's opinions. 

The issue I'm having is not because of bad items.... 

[siamjane8]

@new_spin_boutiqueis totally correct- the issue is NOT their items- its that the platform search is overmanipulated and designed to force PL sales in front of buyers regardless of relevancy.  They have tacked on algorithm after algorithm change to the point that ebay just does not work anymore.

@laststopgeneralstore 

    Many people have the same results.... promote out of desperation and their sales drop further while their impressions double.  It just proves that impressions are only a small part of the whole story.    What is really happening is ebay now stops showing those listings in organic search and now shoves them into carousels and "find similar tabs" that share very little relevancy with what the buyer originally searched for! So you get far more impressions but they are to people who searched for a lawn mower part and your item is a bbq grilling kit.

     Ebay has failed to see what is obvious to everyone else- relevancy is the key to conversion- NOT just throwing pictures in front of people and seeing if it sells.   They have put all their eggs in one basket-PROMOTED LISTINGS- and they are riding it to the bottom and taking everyone else with them

[lonebuck-books]

---

@siamjane8 wrote:

@new_spin_boutiqueis totally correct- the issue is NOT their items- its that the platform search is overmanipulated and designed to force PL sales in front of buyers regardless of relevancy.  They have tacked on algorithm after algorithm change to the point that ebay just does not work anymore.

---

I completely agree.  I remember when Amazon was going through the search engine algorithm growing pains.  You literally couldn't find anything on the site for several years because they kept "improving" the search engine.  They finally stopped improving it, scrapped what they had and fixed it so now it actually works.  eBay has not learned that by adding manipulation on top of manipulation, all you end up with is a search engine that can't find it's own backside with two hands, a flashlight and a mirror.  That is where we are now.  You know it is a mess when the best way to find something on eBay is by googling it with the word 'eBay' added.  That is how it was on Amazon back then.  eBay needs to take a giant step back, get some programmers that actually know how to do a search engine correctly and get back to their original business model, make your money by letting your sellers sell.

[jeff-second-chance-silver]

100% correct Until there is a change in leadership sales will continue to fall. Ebay is a very inefficiently run company.  

[coolections]

Impression and views actually will never guarantee sales. I would stop worrying so much about all that stuff and get buyers to purchase the items instead of just looking at them. IMO you are wasting much of your valuable time on a non issue. Also there is no erratic behavior or crippling site issues that I am aware of, at least I have never seen any and been on Ebay for 24 years.