Regards,
So, a little while ago, I decided to look at eBay's traffic reports, from the time my account was started up until Feb. of this year.
I've tried/experimented with PLS since it was rolled out, 90% of the time keeping it at ~2-3%. As of midway through January of this year, I decided to do a test and cranked up the PLS % to the recommended levels (e.g.12, 13%):
Yes, slow sales for late March and all of April. Granted, I sell mostly Christmas items, but the drop in all my categories has been substantial. I do not use Promoted Listings.
@lakefor94 wrote:
@mr_lincoln wrote:
No, not the last two months but YES to the last two years. A slow steady decline in sales.
Whatever you do DON'T use Promoted Listings unless you are willing to pay between 20%-30% in Fees between your FVFs and eBay's "Suggested" Ad rates.
I am in month 7 of waiting for organic sales to return to my BIN listings because I stopped using Promoted Listings Standard in 4th quarter last year. I checked over the weekend and 61.3% of my listings had (0) Views in the last 30 days and 84.9% of my listings have (2), (1) or (0) views. ... the math is simple, if nobody sees your items what are the chances they are going to sell?
Are you saying it is less than advantageous to promote anything at 2%?
For whatever it is worth, I have been throwing 2% on about half of the sales I make back to eBay.
Quite a few of my listings are in a 9% FVF category and then I get 10% off FVF for TRS+, so I dont mind the 2% if it actually does garner some sales.
Are you saying that PL's at 2% effect the organic search in some way while running at 2% PL's?
You think not using PL's at all increase organic search results over time?
I also do believe most of my listings can be found with organic search easily enough because they all have part and/or models number spewed all over my title, description, and item specifics.
Thoughts?
My experience stems from how I used PLS over several years for my categories and how eBay monitored how I used the campaigns. I am sure my experience is not identical to others with regards to percentages so I will explain as follows:
Prior to 2022:
-I ran one PLS Campaign per quarter for approximately 30 days. (this took advantage of the $ 30 per quarter ad fee credit they offered to launch PLS)
-I put ALL my BIN items on the campaign (often over 250 items)
-I used ad rates between 5%-10% (once at 10%, the others were 5, 6 & 7%). Meaning ONE ad rate for ONE PLS campaign for the 30 days.
-I ignored eBay's Trending rates (later changed to Suggested rates)
-My approach was to move items, drive traffic and sell long tail items
-Averaged 2-3 sales per day over the life of the Campaign ... the Campaigns were fairly consistent with higher sales towards the beginning then tapering a little each week and then a boost in the last week. Typical chart shown here, the peaks were on weekends:
-One trend that emerged was that for about 7-10 days after the Campaigns ended BIN sales would tank before returning to more normal sales levels.
-Ad rates at or above 5% did not seem to make any significant difference.
-The items were my mid to lower range priced items, the higher end things I would sell Auction style
2022 to present:
-Using the same approach as I did prior to 2022 and the changes eBay made (mentioned up thread) here is what happened
-I used 5% & 7% ad rates for my regular quarterly PLS campaigns
-Sales dropped to averaging NO MORE than 1.5 per day and some campaigns were less than that
-The 7-10 day drop on BIN sales after a Campaign would end grew to longer periods of times. Twice I recall that most of may sales were from Auctions with virtually NO BIN sales
-This continued through 2022 and half of 2023. Between my 2Q and 3Q Campaigns (and during the low BIN sales period between Campaigns) I did a 17 day test Campaign jacking my Ad rate up to 12%. Sales shot back up to 2-3 per day average. But the next total FVFs and Ad rate was 12.35% = 12% = 24.35%. (Yes I get the TRS Plus FVF discount too but that's more of a bonus then anything else.)
-My 3Q Campaign I went back to my lower Ad rate and sales dropped back to the 1.5% area.
-I also started to keep track of Views breakdown for (0), (1) & (2) Views. The %s kept climbing as time went on.
-Due to the the emerging longer Seller through rate I had to divert items "elsewhere" to keep them moving more often then during previous years of Selling.
-After the 3Q Campaign I made the decision to abandon PLS so I did not run the 4Q one that was normally about mid-November through Mid-December to cover Black Friday and Cyber Monday around Thanksgiving. It was a short time after that regular 4Q campaign (that didn;t happen that I got the message below ... not once but twice. It starts with "We've miseed you ... "
I got it again in 1Q this year around my normal 1Q Campaign. That is a pretty targeted message and would only be sent to Sellers who used and stopped using PLS.
Now, I "get" the fact that the venue's income is based on fees and I suspect there is nothing off the table with regard to obtaining them. I am sure other venues do similar things if they are fee based. So at present I have converted more of my regular everyday stuff to Auction format. My March 2024 sales were the best I have had since JUNE of last year. I occasionally use the Send offers feature now and here is a breakdown of sales by format near the end of March:
So this has been my experience and through it all I still listed the same way I did prior to 2022.
My sales have been spectacular - everywhere EXCEPT eBay.
Similar to what Mr. Lincoln stated, I can specifically point to eBay's nonsense of May 2022 and April 2023 when sales dropped here and then became a waste of time. I have never used PL, so when I see stuff with 0 views for long periods of time, I'm beginning to wonder if people simply aren't looking for stuff on eBay anymore. eBay search results are awful sometimes, glitches like page not found happen often enough, and when everything actually does work here, I have to put too much effort into finding what I want when 85% of the search results lead back to the same 5 bad sellers.
FBM has generated an incredible amount of sales for me. CL sales are slightly lower than previous years so far in 2024, but I think some of the buyers who would normally be there are on FBM now.
This place has become such a joke, I gave this answer to someone about 15 minutes ago:
