Promoted Listings vs Nonpromoted Listings for Auctions?

[zoomyzack]

Would you guys recommend for a Auction, Promoted or nonpromoted?

Thanks.

[mr_lincoln]

Hi @zoomyzack 

-No to promoting Auctions

-Start Auctions at a price you are willing to sell the item for on ONE Bid

-Offer Free 30 Day returns

My experience with using Promoted listings for many years and especially the last 2 is that once your account starts to use them eBay will hide - bury your listings in hopes you will panic and either run more promotions or use a higher Ad Rate to gain visibility and hopefully sales. 

Their "Suggested rates" have doubled and tripled for no reason other than to increase the Fees per transaction.

At the end of the day the choice is yours.

[12345jamesstamps]

You don't have a lot of items listed yet. Promote the highest priced one.

It might only take one cool item to get notice that is promoted...and thus the buyer looks at all your items.

That's one I have done. I promoted the most expensive.

I got hit with a high end promoted item this week that sold. eBay gets their "promoted listing" immediately from any "available funds" from past sales. I have been in the negative of "available funds" for a few days. LOL

[diecastorbust]

After reading that it all makes sense. My first month almost two years ago I made over 6 k and had zero clue what I was doing never promoted. Then may 14th happened and items getting hundreds of views suddenly reset and took weeks to gain one. eBay suggested using promoted listings and sure enough I have had to use them ever since to be seen. But never once went over 3k again. As of now I don’t even care I saw my yearly statement fees went wayyy up and I’m just not in making. Half of what eBay is after it’s all said and done.

[mr_lincoln]

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@diecastorbust wrote:

After reading that it all makes sense. My first month almost two years ago I made over 6 k and had zero clue what I was doing never promoted. Then may 14th happened and items getting hundreds of views suddenly reset and took weeks to gain one. eBay suggested using promoted listings and sure enough I have had to use them ever since to be seen. But never once went over 3k again. As of now I don’t even care I saw my yearly statement fees went wayyy up and I’m just not in making. Half of what eBay is after it’s all said and done.

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@diecastorbust 

Their AI programming I firmly believe charts the selling habits of each member.  Since early 2022 between 30-35% of my items have (0) Views (and remember, that's in the last 30 days).  When I project out and count items with 0, 1 and 2 Views I consistently have 50-60% of my items included in that so in basic terms only half my items are seen.

I ran a Promoted listing Campaign once a quarter for about 30 days. I watched a slow steady decline in sales since early 2022.  Then in 4th quarter I decided NOT to run my regular campaign and guess what I got from eBay???  Yep, this message TWICE about promoted Listings starting with "We've missed you!"

                                       

So I am done with Promoted listings, already proved through my own testing by jacking up my Ad Rates to at or above their suggested rates that sales would return to pre-2022 levels.  However, what that meant was eBay would be earning around 25% fees total between my FVFs and the PLS Ad rates.  And that would mean I would be losing a large chunk of my profit.

Sell through rates have doubled and tripled ... new listings that did not sell in 2-3 weeks just got buried.  I have over 450 Followers which equates to a certain amount of repeat business.  But to get to pre-2022 sales levels I would need three times that many Followers and their repeat business.  Sales are no longer sustainable unless once significantly increases the amount of stuff they have for sale ... sad really.