Fair Play Or Pay To Play??
I am pretty sure I have the answer to this, But humor me, How many sellers would prefer Fair Play To Pay For Play??, Having a proper cycling of listings so Everyone has a Fair Shot at their listings being seen, Or keep adding to our increasing costs & pay for promoted listings?
36 comments
cardxcraft
·2 years agoI'm definitely a believer in the idea of offering fair market value...I think this method wins the day. As I mentioned in a previous thread: buyers are not dumb, they're you and I,. They've smartened up to the whole jacking up prices antics.
fab_finds4u
·2 years agoI prefer to sell something that there's not pages and pages of the same item. Then you don't have to pay to promote your listing. It will be found.
Promoted listings are bad for buyers. It means higher prices because promoted listings aren't free.
Win win for eBay though.
femmefan1946
·2 years agoPay to Play is Fair Play.
If I think it is worth my while to advertise my product with a neon sign on Times Square, and you put ads in the classified section of your small town newspaper, you don't get to complain if I have more sales than you, even if I sell a poorer product at a much higher price.
That's how entrepreneurism works. (Not capitalism, which is a different thing entirely.)
For the record, I occasionally use PL standard mostly to draw eyes to my Stores, but I don't find it helps sell those specific items. Sales on PL listings are a slightly lower percentage than the percentage of PL listings.
paraquip
·2 years agoEbay has moved to "pay to play"
If you do not pay the higher ad rates..... you may not be "Chosen for a best listings view" in ebay filtered results.
I pay prmoted fees on a very competitve product and still am filtered out.
You need only look at Q2, 2023 Ebay results that tell the story....... Profit up, revenue flat, 1M fewer sellers than in Q2 of 2022.
It's all there in black and white......pay the piper of do not sell!
HK
ebeths_eclectic_collectibles
·2 years agoUnfortunately, just about everyone else has too. Etsy requires it if you sell over 10K. Offer up pushes it. A definite part of the business model
tobaccocardyahoo
·2 years agoSome buyers search for Best Match, I assume that is what you are referring to. I have never known in over 20 years what the criteria for Best Match are, though I know when it displays my listing in the First 20 results it was probably a best match.
Some buyers see the results sorted from low price to high. They care about price and need not promote their listing, the cost will pay off more if they lower the price.
Some sellers are more likely to need to promote because they have too many competitors selling the identical item. A clever buyer will do the price based search. Trying to defeat that is something some sellers do by adding a related item which is low priced to a listing with variations. I hate those sellers and will not buy from them.
There is no right way for Ebay to deal with this. But the way Ebay does today probably is optimal for Ebay profit.
iart
·2 years agoI would rather it be based on merit.
Experienced sellers with high and positive feedback, that offer the things that buyers like (free shipping, free returns, etc) should get a priority.
meme6253
OP2 years agoThat's not a bad idea either, But I do not believe in free shipping & free returns, Especially free shipping, All that does is encourage sellers to ship it as cheap as possible!, 4 out of my last 5 purchases , I have returned because of Extremely poor packaging resulting in damaged products!
retro_entertainment_collectibles
·2 years agoI don't know... Maybe August is way slow but this weekend at camp I sat there for 11 hours over three days preparing a spreadsheet and watching videos for "That other big place" who has sent me email messages for near two years now wanting me get on their platform. I don't like it there, I don't shop there but whatever is going on be that here direct or in general across the Internet or retail when in a week I cant make enough to pay the basic store subscription I guess its time cave in?
meme6253
OP2 years agoIt has been very tough lately!
luckythewinner
·2 years agoEven before promoted listings, eBay did not give everyone a fair shot at their listings being seen.
Best match has always had an algorithm with criteria that favored some listings over others. Top Rated status, free shipping, free returns, price, condition, sales history, etc. have always been considered by Best Match.
I think the sellers who feel they benefit from promoted listings would favor Pay For Play, and sellers who feel they would benefit from getting rid of Promoted Listings would want to get rid of Promoted Listings.
But I don't think a survey on this board would give an accurate indication of what sellers want, because this board is primarily used by unhappy sellers. The ones who are happy with promoted lists are not posting here - they are listing and shipping and making money.
collectfest
·2 years agoOk, I've been selling since 1999, 90+% of items I listed sold, so slice it up, complicate the subject not needed. It isn't even an argument of the 100's of vintage sellers that no longer sell here that for whatever the reason. eBay present system is a failure. There was no algorithm and if there was it didnt matter.
My latest example search for item by highest 5000 items, Switch to lowest price only 120 showed up.
The present system is nothing short of a technological game as I see it.
So, my vote of the superb survey is even playing field.
coolections
·2 years agoYou have to always use the links Ebay provides. When they only show 120 it is because those are the top items that have the best chance of getting sales. It is due to the sellers have best prices, best sell-through rating, no defects, top rated, free shipping etc. Ebay allows ALL buyers to click the link that reads "see more items" if they want to see more items. Most buyers would never in a million years want to go through 5,000 items. It frustrates them and they may not come back.
luckythewinner
·2 years agoOk, I've been selling since 1999, 90+% of items I listed sold, so slice it up, complicate the subject not needed.
"Complicate the subject"? I simply pointed out that the sellers who benefit from promoted listings generally do not post here complaining about promoted listings, so taking a popularity poll here might not be accurate.
The present system is nothing short of a technological game as I see it.
I never suggested that it wasn't.
So, my vote of the superb survey is even playing field.
Your inability to see my point does not invalidate it. In fact, it kinda validates it. 🤣
meme6253
OP2 years agoGood Point!
joliztoyco
·2 years ago"But I don't think a survey on this board would give an accurate indication of what sellers want, because this board is primarily used by unhappy sellers. The ones who are happy with promoted lists are not posting here - they are listing and shipping and making money."
That's hilarious.
Because the "unhappy sellers" would state that this board is nothing but a slew of eBay cheerleaders. Funny how that works.
Oh...and "The ones who are UNHAPPY with promoted listings are not posting here."
They've quit selling and left Ebay.
We have OVER 2 years of data showing declining sales and the number of active users.
The proof is there.
Watching the cheerleaders trying to spin that as a positive is quite entertaining.
heckofagame
·2 years agoPromoting listings is an optional feature and no one has to use it. But like any business with competition, if you advertise, your odds of being seen above your competition are increased. If you just throw stuff out there and hope for the best, you might as well be standing on a street corner hoping that an interested buyer drives by and sees you.
redlinear
·2 years agoIMO: I think fair play is what's going on now. Most are getting a proper cycling of listings.
I used to sell a few Gizmo's a week. But now my Gizmo's sit there for months with no sales. Yet I can check sold items and see that others Gizmo's are selling every week. Then last week, I sold three Gizmo's to three unrelated buyers.
My inventory locations are dates (dates listed). It's obvious for me. I know when I'm getting my "fair cycling" by where I'm pulling my items to ship each week.
I see about the same in search results.
The problem is......I cannot Pay to Play and change this by any significant amount. I cannot price my way any higher in the search results. I cannot tediously spend way too much time in item specifics and increase my placement in search results.
The only thing that for sure gets my items seen at the top....is time.
dhbookds
·2 years agoWhat's proper cycling of listings?...........considering there are over a billion on the site? Is being shown at 5 a.m. as fair as at 7p.m.? top spot/s on Wed as fair as Sun? I don't know how it could be done.
meme6253
OP2 years agoI don't know exactly how it would be done, I am not a computer wiz to say the least, But to cycle through much faster so no one gets buried for long periods of time!
redlinear
·2 years agoList everyday.
I seem to sell about a week after 1st listed (new stuff).
Then just random between two weeks and 3 months.
At 90ish days though? It's really obvious something is going on for the better.
Listing everyday seems to keep something up top all the time.,
yuzuha
·2 years agoAnd then that would be unfair because people would get cycled through too quickly and wouldn't have much time to be higher on the search list.
coolections
·2 years agoInstead of adding 15% t the pay to play scheme I lower my prices 15% and end up being lowest cost. People love it and usually buy fairly quickly. Most searchers use ending soonest and lowest price anyway. People get too hooked up on best match.
inhawaii
·2 years agoYou, my friend, are a genius!
inhawaii
·2 years agoWait!
What if ebay's search is broken?
Then what?
coolections
·2 years agoThen I would come here at least once a week and say no one sees my stuff and that is why no one ever buys anything. I think because I rarely complain about Ebay they give me priority and always show my stuff. Being a cheerleader helps a lot getting sales. 😀
redlinear
·2 years agoI once worked for a guy that sold $20k a month and by him, and other accounts...that was awesome!
I left there to make it on my own doing the same thing. Month six my average was $40k/month.
I thought that was AWESOME!!
Then I met another guy doing the same thing. He was selling well over $100k a month... AND he was complaining that sales had dropped, and was blaming a few industry changes as to the reason.
I was not an industry cheerleader.
Rather, I was wondering how to get to where I have the same problem.
If you've never had good, you don't know what good is.
If you have had good, and now you don't....you explore options, ask questions, and try to figure out why.
redlinear
·2 years agoDropping my prices across the board gets me zilch. I mean...NOTHING.
Raising them seems to help, but....I can't raise them across the board. SO, it's not easy to compare and come to much of anything certain on price increase.
But, I do know that the cheap stuff is hidden behind another click and not many buyers see that link.
So, pricing in a certain mid range seems to get my items seen more-so that discounting.
My best thing going now is to send offers to watchers once a week.
chpgts
·2 years agoI agree using search lowest price with shipping is the best search to get the best price. However most buyers use best match and all the inflated promoted listings show first. I believe the buyer sometimes walks away because alot of prices are not competive prices. The buyer may not see the items that are not promoted and a lower price.
Also I believe that people are aware the promoted listings are going to be more expensive due to higher selling fees. I think the higher pricing for promoted listings is making the the buyer wonder if buying on Ebay is actually a great price and may look elsewhere.
Once they fall down that hole you will not see them again.
I believe that Ebay is losing more revenue than the additional revenue they are making with promoted listings.
Ebay GMV decreased to $18.2 billion. That’s down 2% year over year from $18.55 billion. Revenue was up due to promoted listings. But taking account high inflation and just about everything costing 10% more to buy, year to year sales are actually down over 10%.
If a company is unable to have yearly sales growth, they may suffer the fate of other business that failed due to years of declining sales.
Ebay is still a very succesful company but they are losing buyers and sellers because of how the company operates.
slippinjimmy
·2 years agoMore important in my opinion is how SELLERS operate, there are quite a lot of really bad sellers and for many buyers it only takes one bad transaction and they are gone.
retro_entertainment_collectibles
·2 years agoOne the things got me thinkin' week before last at camp. Camp cookout and they slap like six sets of picnic tables together, and three sets of those sets. Welp, at our's conversation and Temu came up from a fella who bought a bunch of very cool golf cart "bling" there. Perhaps four of us ever even heard of the place but someone said is it "like eBay" and I said no explaining it a bit only to find perhaps a handful and a half saying they didn't like eBay. So seemed time for a poll, there were twenty nine people around in our area, I asked how many shopped at Etsy, there were six total. I asked how many at eBay, eight total, I asked Amazon and the hands just sprung up short of three who are elderly and dont do much anything internet.
I asked why Amazon over eBay as eBay tends to have better values and boy howdy did the voices clang. Shipping costs, reliability, confusion when trying to use the site and just what you mentioned, bad experiences along with some lesser issues including some that argued pricing. Virtually every single one of those folks who raised their hands about shopping at Amazon use to shop here as well. That's what got me thinking when I arrived back home.
I've been solicited in email by them for about two years or more to join up but I don't like Amazon. I dont shop there, I don't visit there, I just don't like their monopolization characteristics in literally every area from hard goods sales to dominating video game point of sale, dominating enterprise information technology and much of the web... Did you know about 40% of ALL internet traffic passes through Amazon Web Services at some point? That's simply mind blowing and clearly displays some areas of direction.
Same with The Safe Shopping Act formerly proposed legislation, Amazon never spoke out a word about it whilst news media and legal beagles sounded off the end of third party commerce and they be the "Dominating" point of sale across the entire internet.
People here say eBay doesn't care about the sellers and I don't believe that but I know Amazon sure doesn't. They could suck them in like flies to a trap easy peasy as needed and have, do... Like I said, been emailing me for ages now!
I don't know how eBay competes with them or the likes of Walmart which also wants dominate sales online but I can tell you it sure isn't paid promotions. I think they'd be far better off using a "one listing" and "multiple offer" formula like Amazon has, that works, proof is there, less searching, competition for sales and far more controllable in respect to potential buyer/seller bad experiences. Just as is the case I can't believe anyone pay attention to feedback at Amazon, its an old school of thought formula of he said/she said versus credible statistical data displayed so buyers and sellers can make informed transactional choices and up's the ante for good performance.
tobaccocardyahoo
·2 years agoYou have hit most of the Ebay vs Amazon contrasts but there is a little more to consider.
In 2008, during the recession, I was faced with selling stocks at a loss to meet some cash flow needs or adding Amazon to my venues, which included Ebay and my own website.
I added Amazon and discovered that I could get higher prices and more sales.
Within a few months, I stopped selling on Ebay and shut down my website. In spite of higher fees, I was making more money. Selling on Amazon meant tailoring my offerings to those which were close to hassle free, and creating listings which could generate sales from less knowledgeable customers.
Fast forward to the pandemic. I shut down my Amazon sales due to decreased returns and issues that sellers of collectibles faced selling on Amazon with conflicts with the IP protection and counterfeit products which as a mass market retailer Amazon was unable to deal with.
When I started selling again, I tested Ebay. The higher prices on Amazon for what I had in inventory were just as high on Ebay. And with 25% of the number of items listed on Ebay, I was generating the same level of sales. And I did not have to interact with the same enforcement actions on Ebay.
Since you appear to sell Entertainment Collectibles, you can understand how frustrating it would be when Amazon took down an original movie poster which featured Richard Pryor for violating the trademark rights of Richard Pryor, or a Barry Manilow song book for his rights. Obviously, this was **bleep** but Amazon did not reinstate the listings on appeal.
Early advertising collectibles were taken down because of trademark rights issues since the company which owns the trademark today is not the company which owned it 90 years ago,
There are whole classes of items which fit niches Amazon knows nothing about which have become impossible to sell there.
These items are an important part of Ebay's sales and a trivial part of Amazon's sales. Buyers who want to buy them online can no longer find them on Amazon, and have to consider Ebay.
Amazon is not at this time worth my effort as a seller. It could change someday, but I'll probably not be selling when it does.
retro_entertainment_collectibles
·2 years agoVery interesting and thank you for you're insights.
Many many moons ago sold there when PC Software was the rage and I can't say I was too fond of them even back then... Even given the fact my ex lady was integral in changes that happened there, in fact we rode free basically. For example, I coded up a re-pricing tool that was set it and forget it... It was smart, it manipulated the Microsoft Browser Control direct thus just like changing prices manually. It was EXTREMELY effective, far better than anything else out there by just huge measure as it was all in real-time.
Well, Amazon nixed it saying it was too aggressive and would, "Devalue the platform." What? LOL. We were still allowed use it but in as far as marketing it they basically hinted, "No way!"
Then there is that "Buy Box" dilemma... Get the buy box, the sales come in like a Tsunami. Happened to us twice by mistake and literally we were having sales every 1.5 minutes. All fulfilled, no problems but nope, we cant have the buy box. Even after displaying to them back in the day we'd supply chain of literally thousands and thousands of delisted software titles, all legit, all coming from publisher direct or publisher supply chain... Nope, too bad so sad... Be happy with you're 20-30 orders a day .vs. literally more than that in a single hour!
Being in information tech I also realize what AWS has accomplished and yes, its quite impressive. I also know they sucked in some of the best engineering minds out there to do so and IN doing so was strategic about it. Aka: It's not just what you know in skill set but WHAT YOU KNOW in respect to former employers.
I don't like the place, I don't shop at the place, I don't want sell there or I already would be. eBay is unlike any other venue in so many ways not just as a point of sale whereby folks can feel what "freedom" means but also has been the literal leader in maintaining that for said folks. I am fully convinced if it were not for eBay third party points of sale be long since gone. Instead probably be online consignors which is what places like uBid, Onsale, iDeal Networks and such basically were and talk about control? Oh my gosh.
Now of course PC Software is at best vertical market, niche and there exists all forms of clutter due to digital downloads of people selling key codes not to mention other matters. But seems to me eBay needs to sort of evolve. Some say "go backwards" when things seemed fine, Hmmm... Maybe, but I don't think so.
To me and statistically if one can believe statisticians mobile is how most folks shop, smart phones. That means WAY limited screen real-estate whether by App or phone web browser. That means heaps of listings become an instant issue versus one listing with many offers partitioned proper by condition and EASILY controlled step filters THEN comes IMAGING when what one is looking for gets drilled down via the step filters.
"Trust" is problematic and always has been but perhaps now more-so for many reasons up to and including other venues as options. This is where feedback no longer is IMHO suitable and should IMHO be more statistical preferably on both the sellers and buyers side.
There are heaps of marketing misses both in site implementation and actual corporate opportunity IMHO but attempting explain such things to say customer service is zero based. Need real people in the real corporation who care talk one on one and review idea seeds that are sensible.
If you ask yourself what do promoted listing target people don't get it. Think mobile. On you're computer, perhaps large tablet, laptop there is real-estate on a smartphone not so much. On you're PC, Tab, Laptop, Mac scrolling is natural, on a smartphone its WAY more cumbersome albeit easier. Easy to scroll, much more difficult to "Range" products. In other words I can look at 25 listings on my PC no sweat and sorta make a mental note of the handful of interest to perspectivly buy. On a smartphone, nope, its just a different display dynamic at hand! I dont get to see so many listings at ONCE, instead I'm in thumb hockey mode. Now more so than ever, the TIME and EFFORT to locate what a consumer wants buy ONLINE has to be least frustrating as possible from start to finish. One could argue EASE of purchase and TRUST in purchase is more important to them than price especially when speaking perhaps of mere dollars here and there. People put a price on their time I guess you might say and if frustration/trust enters into that mix they'd rather ENJOY a speedy buy with trust than a frustrating one with questions.
femmefan1946
·2 years agoAs a bookseller, I found that I did more removing of titles from AZ because they had sold on eBay than I did selling there.
And listing is a nightmare for used books.
On the other hand, we found a hobby site which is giving us steady sales on items we also list on eBay, which has both lower fees and higher selling prices. So every seller has to look around and be aware of the differences.
frugalmarketplace
·2 years agoI think everyone would likely agree with you. I remember when that is the way it "worked". Did an experiment for at least a week. I promoted everything at 9%............Had lots more views, but actually fewer sales. Today I went back to the 3% which I do not like, but I normally do get equal or better sales at that rate.
oldwestcoins
·2 years agoUnfortunately, in retail, there is no fair play. It would be nice, but it doesn't exist. It's all about capturing the dollar. So the best man(or woman) wins in the end. The world is a marketing mecca. Like if I started up a company to compete with Amazon I should receive fair play. Not going to happen.