Promoted Listings - More Fees as of March 30th
https://www.ebayads.com/2023/02/15/seller-announcement-promoted-listings-standard-fees-are-changing/
What’s changing?
- As we continue working to help make your ads more engaging and helpful for buyers, we will be expanding our definition of a click for Standard and Advanced ads to include interactions with new features and functionality of your ads. In addition to when a buyer clicks through to your listing page, we will now include when a buyer clicks on the heart icon to add an item to their watchlist from a Promoted Listing.
- We will be expanding what we qualify and report as an Attributed Sale for Promoted Listings Standard to include when a buyer clicks on one of your Standard ads and then purchases any of your Promoted Listings Standard items within 30 days.
- In anticipation of upcoming product launches, we have clarified that certain account optimization features (e.g., dynamic bidding) may be managed through your account settings. Please stay tuned for announcements on when these will be available to you.
183 comments
the-hook-and-the-loop
·3 years agoSoon, eBay will restructure the final value fees to what they think the item was worth plus tax plus their inflated shipping rates.
nuclearomen
·3 years agolol, don't give 'em ideas lol
chubbycatcollectibles
·3 years agoEbay more and more is becoming a pay to play site.
sdstoragefinds
·3 years agoAnother way for eBay to take more money from sellers
bostonsgarden
·3 years agoPromoted listings is such a low brow money grab& this change further proves it!
greatstuff80
·3 years agoI talked to my postmaster the other day. She said the amount of ebay packages are literally half of what they were 2 years ago. She said every single ebay seller who comes in complains of the increased fees, constant glitches, scams and lack of true seller protections and many have quit using ebay as a result.
movieman630
·3 years agoSo all I see is that I can no longer promote listings when I list them? You removed the most convenient way for someone to promote an item and you think that's going to make people promote more?
Look, keep it simple. Stop changing things that aren't broken. I'm listing a lot. Now I don't know if they're promoted anymore or not because when I update the listings I can't work on the promotion rate. You want me to do it in batches?
My PL impressions started dropping when you rolled out this "advanced PL beta" on me. How is this making you more money? How is suddenly hurting my performance benefiting you? We had a good thing going when I could work on the promotions within the listings themselves. Now, I don't know what you're doing. I can't keep up. Why bother.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@movieman630 I'm not sure I'm following. Your post has nothing to do with the Announced changes (which take effect March 30th). And your post mentions "advanced PL beta." What is that? Are you talking about Promoted Listings Advanced (The pay per click model), as opposed to Promoted Listings Standard (the pay per sale model)?
movieman630
·3 years agoAll I know is that I can no longer set my promotion level when I list something. That option is gone. They want me to participate in something called "Promoted Listing Advanced BETA"
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@movieman630 There are three types of PL:
Promoted Listing Standard (the one most of us have been using, if we've been using one at all)
Promoted Listings Advanced (which is maybe still called beta, though its been around for a while). This is much more complicated....I doubt you have been using it.
Promoted Listings Express (which only applies to auctions)
ebay has been pushing PLA on some sellers for a while. I sell vintage, single quantity items, and will probably never use it, because it is really designed more for sellers of new, multi quantity items.
So, I am guessing what you are talking about is PLStandard.
ebay trying to get you to use PLA has nothing to do with your use of PLS.
So, just to be clear, when you talk about your promotion "level", that's a number (a percentage, like an FVF, except the number is chosen by you, and must be 2% at a minimum) that ebay applies to your sale if your sale is through Promoted Listings? Is that what you are talking about?
And exactly how have you been setting this that you can't do it now? I usually create a PLS campaign though Seller Hub, but there are a number of ways to do it. Examples: Currently, for any existing, promoted listing, I can go to the listing, edit, and change it within the listing form. Or I can go to Seller Hub, Active Listings, and pick and choose which ones to change by scrolling down my actives (or searching) and clicking "Promote" in the Actions column (the far left column).
movieman630
·3 years agoThe PL setting when you list something where you set the percentage. That option is no longer available to me. I can't set that rate on individual listings anymore.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years agoOK, so you are talking about PLStandard.
I don't use ebay to list items, and I don't generally set the rate individually. But for existing listings, I can edit them (change the rate) as I described above. Can you do a screen shot of the problem?
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@movieman630 Oh, another question: are you talking about doing this on a PC, or within the app?
simply-the-best-for-you
·3 years ago@zamo-zuan Here you go, as promised, my chart a little over 48hrs after I lowered my PL rate by 1%. No signifcant difference & in fact on 3/8, my Organic impressions are actually UP a bit. The dip at the end is just b/c today is only 1/2 over. I only went down the 1%, but there is essentially no difference between the 6th (pre-change) & the 9th (2 days post change). The variances are neglible, plus or minus.
zamo-zuan
·3 years agoThank you for sharing! And to confirm, did you drop all of your listings by that percentage, or just a portion?
The last I recall you had used the feature to allow eBay to set the rates, so is the 1% you reduced the maximum investment on the eBay managed rates?
I just want to make sure I understand correctly! Thanks again for sharing! 🙂
simply-the-best-for-you
·3 years ago@zamo-zuan Sorry for my delayed response. I made the change to ALL my listings & I dropped the Ad Cap Rate by 1%. I use the Automatic version, which eBay changes the percentage daily, you set a % above or below the SAR & a Ad Cap Rate. All I changed was the Cap Rate, so now that I think about it, not sure if that would mimic what you are seeing anyway. If I can test something out, just tag me.
zamo-zuan
·3 years agoGot it! I was just curious and making sure I understood correctly. No need to test anything additional. Thank you! 🙂
simply-the-best-for-you
·3 years ago@zamo-zuan Thank you, that does help. I just lowered my % by 1%, right now, as of the date/time stamp on this post. I'll make a note to check back in 2 days & show my chart.
butterflyacres
·3 years agoMy question is: If I end my item, will I still be charged the promotion fee? And also, what if I end it, and relist it without the promotion, will I still be charged if it sells in 30 days?
nuclearomen
·3 years agoif you end listing then no, if make new listing and don't enter it into campaign then no fee.
wastingtime101
OP3 years agoNo fee if you end the listings @butterflyacres before they sell and relist without promoting them. You'll have to de-select the PL ad rate before you post them because the original listing was promoted so that field will be filled in by default.
simply-the-best-for-you
·3 years ago@nuclearomen To clarify my chart, yes, the big drop is the day I ended the campaign, so it has nothing to do with a change to any algorithm. So I DO expect to see the dip, I see them anytime I end a campaign. I personally have never seen a 'flatline' on PL's. In fact, if you take the dip out of (b/c I ended the campaign), that is pretty typical of what my chart always looks like.
@my-cottage-books-and-antiques I'll have to think about what you said. It's way too early for me to think right now. But to be clear, ALL my listings are in my campaign. I run 1 campaign at a time & it has ALL my listings. I'm not sure if your comment applies, if it's all my listings? But like I said, it's a bit too early for me to think.
nuclearomen
·3 years ago@wastingtime101
picking up where talked about PL fees being on only 1 item in orders containing more then 1 item, here is one from the other day, PL was charged on BOTH items. As said this isn't new either, I get these all the time...but been busy the past few days so haven't had time to show most recent one til now.
Here is every sale that has followed over the past few days, notice the amount of sales sold via PL
simply-the-best-for-you
·3 years ago@my-cottage-books-and-antiques Can't say I disagree with anything you wrote. I know full well that there is ZERO benefit to sellers here (and frankly buyers too), but I too have factored in my fees. Also, I already DO promote everything & I am in one of the most competitive categories on eBay & like I said, I'm already pretty close to 100% PL sales anyway, so for me, I think it makes sense to continue. Doesn' t mean I won't tweak things, doesn't mean I may not choose to stop at some point. But for now, I'll ride it out.
My journey with PLS was a little different than yours. Although I didn't post it above, I actually HATED the idea of PL's when it first came out. Or more accurately, I hated that eBay kept everything black-boxed & you had no idea what you were paying for or what the difference was in paying different rates. I still HATE that. I was intrigued by the idea, but it's very important to me to know what I'm paying for.
A fellow seller who I was friendly with (in my same category) suggested why not try it, cuz it was free. Remember, we got a quarterly credit back then. Each quarter I was earning the full credit. Then my friend talked about what great success she'd had & that she'd spend $100 to make $1000 any day. I got that logic & embarked on many different tests of PL's & how to use it best. Took about 4 months to find my stride, but when I did, my sales TRIPLED! Well worth it IMO. Fast forward 3 years, well in the last 2 weeks, despite having everything promoted, I had a bunch of days with no sales, almost all of the sales I do make are PL, but I'm not selling right & left, like I was. Of course, some of that time also coincided with the pandemic, so it's hard to know how long I road the triple-sales train JUST from PL's.
Now, everyone in my category promotes & so I feel I have to, but of course there's no way of knowing whether an item would have sold anyway (non promoted). Plus, we still don't know what we're getting for our money, other than increased sales, but what's the specific difference between 6% & 10%? Ebay still remains mum about it. Also, I am starting to see what @zamo-zuan has been saying for a year or more...that (at times) my Organic views fall, along with my PL's, which should not be happening if everything is above board. I still have a 6 month old (at least) note from Zamo which I haven't responded to (sorry Zamo) b/c it requires getting deep into the weeds & I haven't had time. To be fair, my charts rarely see the weirdness that his do, which he's posted multiple times & I do not see the same things BUT, just the other day, I ended a campaign for a day, which is all of my listings. Predictably, my PL's nosdived in impressions & everything else, BUT my Organic impressions had the same dip. What? Huh? There should be close to no correlation. I will be watching closely & paying attention.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@simply-the-best-for-you
As to what you are seeing on your graph---try ending your campaign for, say two days. I can tell you what you'll see.....on that graph, you will see BOTH your PL and your organic totally flatline. That is exactly what it SHOULD do. I think it does take ebay a little time to actually get a campaign ended, but it will flatline. Now, for the same two days, go to your TRAFFIC graph, and you'll see your organic has NOT flatlined there.
You must remember, the graph you are showing is showing ONLY items in the campaign. Items in a campaign can be shown as sponsored (promoted) or not (organic), but they are all IN the campaign. If you run with only 50% of your listings in a campaign, the organic shown on this graph will represent only some of your total organic impressions....your traffic graph will show them all.
What you are seeing makes perfect sense....because its a graph, it's showing you that steep decline which, if you don't start up a new campaign quickly enough, will eventually flatline, because, with no campaign, you have no campaign traffic (sponsored OR organic). In other words, there should be...and there is...a correlation between the promoted and organic listings...they are both in the campaign.
Remember, the graph you are showing is NOT a graph of ALL your traffic. It is ONLY the traffic within your campaign. Completely stop the campaign for long enough for ebay to catch up with the fact that it's stopped, and it will show NO traffic, because there is NO campaign. That doesn't mean you have NO traffic, it just means you have no campaign traffic. Your Traffic report (in the Performance tab) will show you your overall traffic.
nuclearomen
·3 years agothe sharp dip down isn't your campaign, contrary to what people may say, it's ebay and they did something to algorithm to cause the spike down, but it "corrected" itself the following day... happens all the time, the same algorithm dose not continuously run, they are changed all the time. When sudden spikes downward happen that is why, because the algorithm was changed. When it falls to the bottom and does what we call "flatlining" and rides there for a over a day THAT is when you need to end and then start a new campaign... it will not "auto correct"
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@nuclearomen I believe what @simply-the-best-for-you said is that particular sharp dip represents her ending and then restarting a new campaign. Nothing to do with the algo. If I end a campaign and don't start a new one for a couple days, it is very clear that I've ended the campaign....both lines (PL and organic) will flatline, because there is no campaign going on. My Performance>Traffic graph does not flatline during that time, because I still have listings up, just none that are in a PL campaign.
I really do wish ebay would come up with less confusing terminology. For this graph, instead of "Promoted" and "Organic" I prefer to use (in my own mind):
Sponsored (The listing is part of my PLS campaign, and the buyer saw its link with the word "Sponsored" It has been given preferential placement that an organic listing would not get)
Non-Sponsored (The listing is part of my PLS campaign, and the buyer saw its link without the word "Sponsored" It is displayed the same as an organic listing , and with no preferential placement.
The word "Organic" should be reserved for listings that are NOT part of the campaign. If they are part of the campaign, but not shown with the word "Sponsored", then call them "Non-Sponsored".
nuclearomen
·3 years agoyep, that would cause the dip too lol...but otherwise, those sudden dips happen if didn't end campaign, that's usually when you know they changed something in the algo... and they should within a day perform back to "normal" (there is no "normal" cross sellers, just "normal" for your performance of course) if it continues that drop to the bottom, you know something is wrong... about the only way we can know since we can't see or have access to log changes in PL campaigns they make.
zamo-zuan
·3 years agoI just want to clarify that if you ended a campaign, that can be what you are seeing there. Only the traffic for listings in a promotion show up on that page - hence why @my-cottage-books-and-antiques had mentioned it might be normal and the "traffic page" might be showing Organic views still.
The promotions page shows only the traffic for listings contained in a promotion. This means lets say you had 1000/1000 listings promoted, then you ended 500 of those promotions, now only 500/1000 are promoted. The traffic understandably drops in that case, as 500 of those listings will no longer be measured.
With that said, the reason I find our traffic page so alarming when the Organic drops is because we didn't actually end the promos, all we did was lower the rates. So all of our listings are still in a promotion (and still being measured by that page) yet the organic still drops - this is a sign that the investment of our PL also lowers organic.
This happens to some others, but I don't know the exact reason why this doesn't happen to everyone. Might be because of category or overall traffic, or that eBay has "tested" things on our store before others.
I'm in agreement with what you mention about not knowing exactly what you're paying for. In addition to that, you can't accurately estimate how much is going to be spent and have to overshoot it when trying to calculate profit margin. It makes eBay more volatile, and the volatility is already the worst part about selling here.
simply-the-best-for-you
·3 years ago@zamo-zuan OK, but in my case, as I stated earlier, ALL my items are Promoted. I end a campaign, so I get a big dip in my PL bar. That part makes sense to me. But the corresponding smaller dip (but a dip nevertheless) in my Organic bar doesn't make sense to me. The organic views to all my listings that are in the campaign (which is everything), should not change. I don't think anyway. I admit, this is confusing to me & it's still early for me, so maybe I'm just not getting this.
In regards to your comment about decreasing the percentage, just curious approx what percentage it needs to be, in order for you to notice the Organic dip? I frequently change by 1% & haven't noticed anything, but maybe that's not enough to notice or maybe I'm not one who sees it regardless.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@simply-the-best-for-you You put ALL your listings in your campaign. The graph then shows you all of those listings when the campaign is ACTIVE. When your campaign ends, how many listings are still active? NONE. The campaign is over, and so there are NO listings to show----Sponsored or Organic. To prove it, end your campaign and don't start a new one for at least a full day or two.....both lines will flatline.
It would be a lot easier to understand this if ebay did not say Promoted and Organic, because Organic can mean two different things : a listing that is NOT in a campaign, OR a listing that IS in the campaign but not shown as Sponsored. It would be better if the graph said Sponsored and Non-Sponsored, and left the term Organic ONLY for listings that are not in a campaign.
I suspect your problem is, you assume that once you end the campaign, the PLS graph should continue to show organic listings ...but it should NOT. Again, if there is no campaign, there are NO listings to show.
simply-the-best-for-you
·3 years ago@my-cottage-books-and-antiques OK, thank you for the explanation. Yeah, I think the last paragraph nails it, especially since the Graph still shows. I mean, really if there's no campaign, then there s/b no graph LOL. I still need to sit with this in my brain for awhile, but paragraph 2 explains it well. There are a lot of places where eBay's wording could be improved. Like Send Offers - Sent. Why not just call it Sent Offers LOL.
Thanks for taking the time to explain it so well!
zamo-zuan
·3 years agoI didn't notice he already explained it for ya when I made the post. Glad you understand now!
EBay's wording makes it even more confusing when it says "Organic Impression (Promoted)" on the Ad Dashboard, lol.
This weird calculation was also an indicator of something being amiss, as we have always promoted 100% of our listings, and in some periods the traffic page and ad page were significantly different, with the traffic page somehow being lower at times, which just doesn't make sense, lol.
This also makes the behavior observed then Promoted Impressions were not showing up be really suspicious. The traffic page & ad page weren't seeing the Promoted Impressions, but all the Promoted Views somehow turned in to Organic Views, and if the traffic is truly being counted on the traffic page, this shouldn't be possible.
zamo-zuan
·3 years agoSo for example, let's say 1000 listings all get 2 promoted and 1 organic impression a day. Which would be 2000 promoted 1000 organic.
If 500 of those listings are ended, now the promoted traffic for those 500 listings would be 1000 promoted 500 organic.
You might be getting organic impressions for items that are NOT currently promoted (for the ones that were ended) but those won't show up on the promo page and would only show on the traffic page.
Regarding the percentage, in the graphs we took items from 3-4% and dropped them to 2% (our entire inventory 2%) and we saw the drop. Prior to that, when 1% was allowed, we saw the same thing happen when dropping to 1%.
It seems for us, there's a requirement to have a substantial percentage of our items to be 3-4% or else we see a drop. It's almost like a switch as well - meaning if we find that sweet spot our switch is "on" and our impressions we normal. If we invest MORE than 4% it does nothing - the switch is already "on" and can't be "more on". And if we incrementally decrease, it'll be the same as it is now, or else a huge drop when the switch turns "off".
Hope that makes sense and please let me know if any other questions!
simply-the-best-for-you
·3 years agoLate to this party that no one wants an invitation to. I am not happy about these changes 😒 That said, they really aren't going to affect me much, since I already pay PL fees on close to 100% of my sales. Many days it is 100%. Over 90 days, it tends to be 70-80%.
PL's tripled my sales originally, so I really liked them, but now, not so much. Haven't decided if I will do anything. I'll probably see what the effect is. It's so close to what I'm already paying, that IDK that I'll even notice the difference.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@simply-the-best-for-you (Sorry this is so long)
When PLS rolled out, I was in favor of PLS, and I sell used/vintage single quantity items with less competition than many sellers of new commodity items face. Still, I saw real value in it, and said so, often, on this Board.
This new change , especially coming on the heels of the two other recent changes---doubling the minimum and changing how the fee is calculated (total price versus item price)---reduces its value proposition for me, and this change in particular suggests to me that ebay has NOT been achieving the sales velocity increases promised by PLS. I think adoption of the other two PL tools---PLA and PLE---remains low, and ebay has acknowledged that PLS is the real workhouse of the Ads Team.
And, apparently, it isn't working all that well.
The Ads Team is putting sponsored listings in more places, and has crowded the typical listing page with an average of 100 sponsored listings, they are constantly refining their algorithm...and yet? Well, if its working so well, why are they now doing this?
There is NO benefit to the seller in this change. The only benefit is to ebay's bottom line. The term is thrown around a lot here, and I don't use it often, but this is a money grab, nothing more. Instead of a change designed to increase the effectiveness of PLS by increasing the sales derived from sponsored listings, ebay is simply waving a magic wand and redefining when it is entitled to collect the PLS fee.
The value proposition had been: ebay only collects a PLS fee if my item was sold to the buyer as an actively sponsored listing. Yes, there was a 30 day look back, but it was for the same item. In other words, ebay did its job---the item was seen as a sponsored listing---and so I paid the fee.
Once this change goes into effect, ebay will be able to collect a fee just because my item was in a PL campaign, even though the item was NEVER shown to the buyer as a sponsored listing. ebay is simply "attributing" (ebay's word) the sale (and the fee) to the fact that, sometime within the last 30 days, the buyer viewed one of my other, quite possibly totally different, sponsored listings. ebay doesn't need to demonstrate that that view actually led the buyer to the item he eventually bought from me, ebay simply "attributes" the sale to a click made sometime within the last 30 days on a completely different item.
To me, ebay earns its fee when it shows my item as a sponsored listing and that results in a sale. But with this new change, ebay "earns" its fee without doing that, and without showing any actual connection between the earlier view of a different item that ebay says now entitles ebay to its fee.
As a seller, I don't like this, for obvious reasons.
But...
As a seller, I recognize reality. Every time I put an item into a PLS campaign, I do so knowing that it might sell via a sponsored listing, and so my price reflects that possibility, factoring in the possible PLS fee. So, I accept that my profit might be trimmed by the PLS fee. The net result of this change is: I now will need to accept the fact that, if my item is in a PLS campaign, there is an even better chance that I will be paying a PLS fee, if not for a "Direct" sale (ebay did its job and showed the buyer my item as a sponsored listing, which is why it's in the campaign) , then for a "Halo" sale (ebay will take the fee even though they did not show my listing as a sponsored listing). To its credit, ebay will show me which sales are Direct and which are Halo. I will keep an eye on that, and frankly, if I see a hefty percentage of Halo sales, I will reconsider my use of PLS....
But, as I say, my prices already reflect the possibility that I'll be paying a PLS fee, and so I'll just see how this actually works out.
And I agree with your point: If you already have a very high percentage of sales with FVFs, it might not matter too much....and you've obviously factored the fee into your sales price, as have I.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years agoOh, and just want to add...this would be a more tolerable change if ebay not only showed us "Direct" sales and "Halo" sales, but charged us, say, 25% of our chosen fee for the Halo Sale, in view of the fact that the connection between the earlier view and the ultimate sale is so tenuous and unproven, and exists just through ebay's Magical "attribution"
oldwestcoins
·3 years agoThis business model reminds me of the Post Office. I worked for the PO for decades and I could not keep up with the rate changes, etc. 50% of the people that came through the front door to mail something, also were in a daze trying to figure out how to mail just one package. After 50 years of mind-boggling fee and rate changes, I believe they finally figured out they must simplify everything to survive. They have done away with many previous services from corporate Express Accts to mail classifications. My point - It seems like Deja Vu and flashbacks for me to see what eBay brains are implementing. A more complex fee structure is NOT the answer to better anything for eBay. They continue to shoot themselves in the foot. It's very sad that we as sellers have so much time, money, and effort invested into our businesses, that eBay continues to destroy what we have worked so hard for. I have been here for over 23 years. Enough is enough. At least for me I can box everything up and mail it to a large auction house and wash my hands of eBay at any second. I probably would make more money doing so in either event. Good luck all.
lakefor94
·3 years agoI am at 3% PL on most everything. I am hitting at 50% of sales being charged for PL. Just recently had 5 in a row with no PL.
That tells me most buyer's are finding my items via search, specifically by mfg part number. Lot of sales coming from other search engines.
Item specifics are well filled out so the items are not that hard to find. I don't have that many items with more than 25 competitive listings, maybe 15% as a guess. Lot of long tail items that are and have been cached by Google and on the 1st page there as well. Thinking I really don't have to have PL ..... We shall see. EBay will more than likely lose me on the PL deal at the end of the month.
I can report back on one of the future threads in the coming months.
yoonix1
·3 years agoNo, Thanks! I pay enough fees and subscription charges, and at this crumbling economy can't take more....
soulmaster
·3 years agoits break rules of selling , we need stop ebay to do this
sapphire_studio
·3 years ago I've been able to bring my promoted percentage down in February while my total sales went slightly up (by picking and choosing what I promote and promoting higher on what I need to and taking it off on those I don't)
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@sapphire_studio That's pretty much what I've been doing and will now continue to do. Selective promoting, no more "promote everything in the store". And definitely none of my newly listed items will be promoted until after they've been up a while. This will take more time to set up a campaign, but I think it will be worth it. I'm also going to do more with social media, in an effort to drive traffic (Primarily to my non-promoted listings.)
2010byandsel100
·3 years agoHow do you decide what needs promoting?
how long it has been listed without selling?
if so, where is that number?
nuclearomen
·3 years agotoday I had 100% of sales on PL - 1 order was 2x items, both on PL.
toomuchstuffagain35
·3 years agoWho was it that said "The only way to win is to not play"?
nuclearomen
·3 years agoidk... who? I have all my prices covered for the PL fees, but as said earlier in the thread, the difference will 100% of sales on PL now rather then 75-80%
rivendellbooks
·3 years agoSo essentially this is simply another eBay money grab! Without doing a thing more (or actually even doing less than before) eBay can take more out of the seller's pocket and put it into their own!
Let us say you promote all of your listings as I have been doing. If a customer clicks on a promotion ad for just one of your listings, and then browses your store or listings, - for any and every item they buy from you over the next 30 days you will be charged a Promoted Listing Fee. Furthermore, if a person clicks on the heart icon of just one of your listings to add it to their watchlist, whether they ever go to that listing or not, any and every other item they buy from you over the next 30 days will incur a Promoted Listing Fee.
This means that eBay could actually promote fewer of your listings, and still rake in the Promoted Listing Fees for every one of your items sold to a buyer who makes multiple purchases over a period of 30 days after clicking on just 1 promotion ad, or clicking on 1 heart icon, just as though every one of your items was being promoted by eBay, even if the items they purchased were not being promoted by eBay at all.
I have been a big fan of promoted listings, but will definitely no longer promote all my items and am seriously considering dropping promoted listings altogether.
cardsforless1
·3 years agoThe way I understand ebays vision is similar to purchasing a billboard. You purchase it with the goal of bringing people to the store but doesn't guarantee a sale. If the shopper buys a dozen items they feel like the billboard brought them in to browse and the additional items purchased happened because the advertisement brought them in.
IMO, a billboard/advertisement is more of a need for a brick and mortar store as opposed to a want for online shopping. Ebay uses their ability to bury your items in search results if you don't adopt/pay for their advertising to put sellers in a situation to make the want more of a need.
Thats how I understood their wording on the new fee structure. Do I agree with it? No, but in my experience here thats always the case when ebay introduces change.
nuclearomen
·3 years agothe real kicker is that their "billboards" aren't very good or effective, one thing that this company has lacked at a great deal the past couple of years is advertisement - effective advertisement - which is ironic for a company who places in top 10 of advertisement companies in the world - they make more on that part of the biz then the selling. They launched social media campaigns to what real effect they had idk but they poured all focus there. Holiday season came and went and by the time they did kick off a campaign (social media again) it was far too little and too late when every single competitor of the site had campaigns going for months all of which invested heavily in tv ads - did ebay? NO, the same commercial for ebay motors ran for nearly 2 years (started at covid), that also turned a radio commercial - nothing for the rest of ebay. They use to send coupons to buyers to draw them to make repeat purchases...I haven't gotten any such coupon from ebay in almost 3 years!
In any case, in most cases it's the sellers who are drawing buyers to the site for purchases, not ebay, I have people buy from who have told me they only started using this site because of me (word of mouth - friend purchases from me and they decided to also). A lot of sellers have social accounts and promote their store or listings themselves on their social accounts and draw buyers that way.
valueaddedresource
·3 years agoI was just reminded that this change is similar to how Etsy's offsite ad program works and it occurred to me that with the recent FVF increase as well it's not dissimilar to offsite ads and a fee increase being two of the major motivators in the Etsy Seller Strike last year.
While it may be arguable what kind of long term impact that effort truly had, eBay CEO Jamie Iannone might have been smart to check in with his pal Josh Silverman over at Etsy about how fun the media scrutiny and resulting earnings call questions were before heading down the same path. 🤔
evelyb30
·3 years agoSmart????? Scratch that idea.
And they wonder why I quit selling on the platform. I still read the boards but unless something changes for the better, I'm out. Permanent, in other words, barring a miracle.
nuclearomen
·3 years agofact is ebay didn't invent PLs, they rather copied what was already existent initially to "get it off the ground" yet in the short 2-3 yrs of them doing PLs we have seen them make changes and additions to the whole of it basically every quarter since they implemented it on the site...learning as they go how to suck more money and where best to do. It could be an exact mirror now to what Esty modeled for theirs but we'll never really know regardless. In today's world the negatives that turn media attention are made to look opposite by so many "news" outlets that any media coverage could be reflected good for the company if it's bad or not...and there are gazillion people out there who will swallow it hook line and sinker. It didn't but Esty out of business, it won't Ebay either... the only thing that resulted from the Esty is sellers more or less lost and suffered lack of sales in the process. And yeah, I know they got some seller "cooperation" and they managed to get some media and attention from their out cry but in the long term, the platform remains and so does their fees etc... Not saying do nothing, but anything resulting as to "strike" will resolve not much to nothing. The sad part of it all is it's the consumers who really loose in the end, having to pay a lot more for things that reasonably can be kept to lower prices off such sites. Having own website can literally offer everything (EVERYTHING) i have on here 10-30% less then what have to charge here. The kick is also have to drive traffic to that site and that doesn't happen over night or in a week, or a month, or several months...takes a longtime for a website to develop the necessary traffic to outs their platform selling activities. But benefit is huge savings and offering normal prices. All of which these marketplaces are fully aware of and make bank on every single second of every single day.
michigancolor
·3 years agoI'm not saying anything others haven't, but I definitely want to add my complaints to others that this seems like a completely **bleep** way to increase total fees. Like others, it's making me think about removing promoted listings on a lot of items (I currently promote all listings.) My store isn't the kind where people are going to browser for other items to purchase. They're going to find me by looking for specific items. If they view a listing and later in the month find another but don't click through the promoted link on the second one, there's NO correlation to the first promoted ad getting me a click on the second.
kims_finishing_touches
·3 years agoThis is a new level of shameful money grabbing for ebay
clown_car_driver
·3 years agoCosts are going up for everyone.
Even eBay.
Delivery (postage) is going up.
The cost of supplies (boxes, envelopes, tape, labels) is going up.
Don't you pass those costs on to your customers?
If you haven't raised prices at least 10% in since this time last year - you're the only one.
And, if you don't do like the people who sell stuff to us and raise prices, you'll be out of business soon.
I know of at least two B&M businesses in my small town that went out of business because their suppliers raised their prices ... and they did not.
Was talking to a friend who owns a bar/restaurant and she said, "I can go out of business because I gave it all away to my customers and suppliers -- or I can go out of business because customers don't come here any more."
She went on to explain that the end user is the one that takes the hit. If they don't want to buy her sandwiches for a profit - then she doesn't want to sell them. She prices according to cost PLUS profit.
nuclearomen
·3 years agoyes, yes, you are right for you and sellers in any enviroment, BUT ebay SELLS NOTHING, they aren't paying for the merchandise, they aren't paying for the shipping, or shipping supplies etc... what they are doing is charging you a portion of fees on shipping as you know and tax etc...so what does ebay need to raise costs on their sellers for if they are facing zero inflation from selling nothing??? To feed their greed and ego? Seems the only logical reason. They already cover 10000% of their tech costs to run the site, the lawyers, the employees salaries, etc. are far taken care of in the fees they collect from sellers now... so for ebay there is no inflation argument they can present that would justify any inflation to their fees. The impact of this reflects on the sellers who have to raise prices to sell and make any profit, that impact comes in the sense of less sales due to inflated prices. This situation the company has fabricated it, not the sellers, who are paying more for their inventory, more for their supplies, more in fees etc...
wastingtime101
OP3 years agoI've had to raise prices, but it sucks when some of your competitors don't raise theirs. Maybe they will be out of business soon as a result. Who knows?
joliztoyco
·3 years agoAnd yet, eBay Germany announces today that they are ELIMINATING FVF's for small sellers.
So costs HAVEN'T gone up there?
I assure you they have.
Are you telling us eBay is not making profits? That they're about to shutter the "eBay B&M" building if they don't gouge more profits out of their sellers?
Because I've glanced at last year's profit/loss statement and I didn't notice any "losses".
Here's the conundrum. eBay's own statistics state that SELLERS on eBay are also twice as likely to BUY merchandise on eBay. So the more sellers you drive off eBay, the more buyers you also lose.
And the fiction that millions of new sellers and buyers are joining is debunked by eBays own statement that their numbers of active buyers has plummeted to 2017 levels.
That's BAD!
I really don't care if eBay's profits aren't as lofty as the "good old pandemic days".
And skimming more profits from sellers ain't gonna fix it.
But your concern for eBay was touching.
an-57470
·3 years agoYou'll also have to stock up Drano for all the extra money you are flushing down the toilet.
francesfindsak
·3 years agosellers unite! stop promoting listings!
wastingtime101
OP3 years ago... then watch as your FVF skyrocket!
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years agoI agree with @wastingtime101 . If ebay doesn't get the money from PL, it will get it somewhere else, most likely by increasing everyone's FVFs. Since using PLS is still optional (even if some consider it necessary for their business, I think most sellers would prefer somewhat avoidable PLS fees to unavoidable FVFs.
I will continue to use PLS, but I will also continue to use PLS much more selectively than I had in the past. And I will make other marketing efforts not tied to PLS.
francesfindsak
·3 years agoWhy don't all ebay seller just stop promoting their listings.
stainlessenginecovers
·3 years agoI have always done the minimum for all items and just figure my cost is 14% (rounded with a store and 2% promos) for every item sold. Some items go PL, some not. Not much would change, but I get the concept that 'if a customer clicks/saves your item, and then buys more items- all due to a PL, then the PL will be charged' Makes sense if that's how it's going to work going forward.
tagalag78
·3 years agoMEGA Make Ebay Great Again
Stick to auctions
movieman630
·3 years agoThe trend seems to be "Welcome to our Spring/Fall Update, let us tell you what you're going to do for us now!" When it should be "Here's what we're doing for you now!"
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years agoebay encourages us to use social media.
If I send a buyer to my storefront via Instagram, for example, even if all my items are part of a PLS campaign, he will be clicking on them as organic (within the store). So, for now, if that happens, and he buys, say, three items---- no PLS fee. Yes, they were part of the PLS campaign, but since they were shown as organic, no fee.
Once this change goes into effect, if the buyer looked at one of my PLS items in the 30 day period before clicking on my Instagram link, I WILL be charged the PLS fee for the items he looked at---and bought--- in my store, even though they were shown to him as organic, and even though he actually got there because of my social media efforts, not the PLS item he clicked on with the last 30 days. The "Halo" effect will ensure I have to pay ebay the PLS fee.
Obviously, I will be making further adjustments to my ebay marketing efforts.
ittybitnot
·3 years agohe will be clicking on them as organic (within the store).
@my-cottage-books-and-antiques
Are you sure they will be counted as "organic"? Are items in your store list considered PLs or organic for sure?
If you have an "ebay store" you can engage Google Analytics which will give you some interesting insight. There is an extra step involved since you cannot claim an eBay URL, but there is a way to do that. Since I use social media (non-paid) to promote most of my listings I am no longer sure of the exact steps anymore since I have my own URL, but I know it is possible. This will also allow you (if you are in the US) to send your items on your own to Google shopping for no charge.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@ittybitnot My understanding is, if the buyer looks at it and it doesn't say "sponsored" its organic. And that is true whether the item is part of a PLS campaign or not. I think----not 100% sure---that ebay had glitched one time and shown items on the store page as Sponsored, but I believe that was a glitch. It is one place where I think ebay doesn't show sponsored listings (my own or anyone else's).
the-hook-and-the-loop
·3 years agoI really see this backfiring on eBay as every seller who promotes will be lowering their rates or ending PL's all together. Enough is enough of this childish game.
wastingtime101
OP3 years agoThat's what people said when eBay raised the min from 1% to 2%.
That's what people said when eBay started charging the ad rate on shipping and sales tax.
Time will tell.
As of right now it's still a pay to play system in many categories.
greatstuff80
·3 years agoTime has told. My postmaster says she see less than half the ebay packages she did just a couple of years ago. So does eBay's income and stocks.
sapphire_studio
·3 years agoFor those that promote everything in their store at a somewhat low percentage (like less than 6%) this will really hurt. I used to do that (just select 100% of my items to promote at 5.3%). My reasoning was that sure it may not be high enough to actually make me win the promoted spot, but then I will be found organicially instead and not have to pay the fee. If I do happen to win that promoted spot with that low of percentage then great, I am keeping my fees relatively low.
Later I slowly started changing my method to analyzing each listing individually, taking promoted completely off items that I was one of only a few people selling it, and raising my percentage up to closer to 10% (0.1%-0.2% above the recommended rate) on items that I had a lot of competition on (to guarentee the top spot). I am really glad I started going through most of my listings one by one to do this. It's going to be nice that so many of my items aren't promoted at all now.
It's really easy to do a blanket lower percentage and I think a lot of people do it because it's not very much work. They may not realize how often they're just selling those items organically now (with no promoted fee) because the percentage isn't really competitive. But now it's pretty much going to be a guarantee that whatever percentage they choose they're going to end up paying that as a fee. So I would suggest people start doing what I do and look for any items that you don't have a lot of competition on and just take the promoted fee completely off of those.
nuclearomen
·3 years agothe reverse effect is what your doing, now paying too much to promote items that would likely sell on a lesser percentage election. Being "the top" spot in search is meaningless as no one really buys like they google, meaning the top slots get the sale and by now, even buyers know the top slots aren't usually the best deal without toggling "price + shipping: lowest first" in the results....and then where are you in slots? Not the top! Also doesn't mean that items you have no or few competition with don't need PL election, ebay can at any given time, just not show that item in search results at all... which they already do ("not all results are shown"). The philosophy of simply not promoting due to no or low competition will more typically result to no sale, especially in categories highly over saturated with same item and gazillion sellers competition. Just as raising the election rate of such items doesn't ensure top slots on search with those categories either... 80,000 sellers in a category, 40K of those have the same item, search returns 60 items per page as default... so how many sellers will be getting the top slots? the first page? the second page? - enter PLA and now your into a whole different universe.
movieman630
·3 years agoYou have a point there. When I search on google I rarely pay attention to top results for anything as I know they're mostly just ads. I look for the first REAL search result and start there.
albany_sellers
·3 years agoYou would think that they would work on making the site more attractive for buyers to generate more money, but again we as sellers are nickel and dimed.
If eBay is losing money, it's because the buying experience is awful half the time. I used to buy a lot on eBay but completely gave up and just sell instead. About a week ago I decided to give it another chance, and as predicted, I now have a case open and am wasting my time with an item that the seller uploaded two different fake tracking numbers for.
My previous purchase on eBay resulted in the seller using stolen credit cards to drop ship packing tape from another company. The list goes on.
Work on the buyers, and work on weeding out the sellers so that when people order things, it's not a coin flip. When buyers have faith that their orders will ship, and be as described, then more sales will be the result. Nobody wants to spend a week and a half dealing with a scamming seller when they could just buy on a different platform and get it right the first time.
There is only so much blood eBay can squeeze from a stone, the stone being it's sellers.
movieman630
·3 years agoWell I will say this. They're a lot more lax on holding sellers to a standard then they used to be. I bought something off a guy who said it was an original old 11x7 promo photo from 1972. When I got it it was in fact a current 5x7 copy print on regular non glossy printer photo paper. They are in Australia. When I went back and looked at their feedback they got well over 100 negatives in one month! IN ONE MONTH!! Most people complaining about the same thing. Which is in fact illegal because what they were doing is copying copyrighted photos belonging to MGM.
Yet they remain, selling as usual with no repercussions from ebay. That is a bad buying experience and a seller that should be banned.
tianna74
·3 years agoI came here to see if I read new updates in a too negative way. Unfortunately, I wasn’t mistaken. It seems like many see it this way.
How should we price now to make this somewhat profitable?!
nuclearomen
·3 years agounfortunately, this discussion can't decide sellers price points, that is something needing much more look at, such as category(ies) selling in, prices your paying to obtain stock, prices you must sell that stock at to make profit, pricing of said items in current market and then all fees required to sell those items on this platform, PL included. The short answer is to raise prices to cover the PL fees, but then again, that will depend on the amount of percentage you elect to promote those items...inflation maybe everywhere, and it's especially created by this platform with PLs and they will tell you "just raise your price 2% to cover the PL election"...but then your not selling anything on 2% election either in most cases, won't even get views.
101dolphns
·3 years agoNo promotions. Never have, never will. Now they are weaseling their way into taking more of your hard earned money.
jimmyjoebob
·3 years agoWell, I just exercised my prerogative an un-promoted everything. Most items are unique so I only promoted those with larger competition. Never once did a promoted item sell without a fee. Always seemed a little dubious. This is a hobby for me not a business so if my sales slow down as a result, so be it. I feel mostly for those whose livelihood comes from here. As I read it, there are no enhancements that result in driving more business to you assuming you promote at the same rate. You'll just pay more. It's not a bug, it's a feature...
That said, I think it comes down to who can afford it. The more sellers that drop promotion, the more prominent the promoted listings are for those that do it. So basically, it is a push-out of anyone other than the corporate sellers. Frankly, if I like something in a promoted listing, I won't click the promoted link. I will page down until I find the organic listing and click on that. As a seller, I'll continue to support sellers any way I can.
lonebuck-books
·3 years agoThat is exactly what I do. I NEVER click on promoted listings. Anything I can do to help a fellow seller make a few cents/dollars on their sale is what I do. Scrolling down to find their organic listing is one way to do that.
luxgoods
·3 years agoand you know what that means...mo money, mo money
heckofagame
·3 years agoYay! More expenses to offset the annoying profit.
goombaymama
·3 years agoSame ol, same ol. Screw the seller.
I've detested this since it first appeared:
"Your listings are full of selling potential. Use Promoted Listings $tandard and get them in front of interested buyers in just a few clicks." ... and if you don't, your items will never be seen.
seconhandrosie
·3 years agoJust another money grab from Feebay. I stopped using the the promoted listings scam long ago.
movieman630
·3 years agoUS: "Wouldn't it just be fair to only charge a fee when someone actually clicks on an ad and buys that item?"
Ebay... "Ha ha... Yeah if the world was fair and simple that would be the case but since we are smarter and bigger than you basically we're going to use technology and algorithms to calculate fees on promoted listings, because we can. You can't write code, but we can."
rodneywhite5
·3 years agoJust to confirm, if I have one promoted listing "A" and the buyer clicks on my other listings after having started at Listing "A", then while looking through other inventory, selects item "B" which is *NOT* promoted, there is no additional fee associated with that, is that correct? It's only if both products happen to be promoted, is that correct?
Secondly, if Promoted item "A" is at 8% promoted, then wind up buying Promoted item "C" which was at 3% promotion, is eBay collecting 8% or 3%?
wastingtime101
OP3 years agoThat's my understanding.
8% on widget A and 3% on widget C.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@rodneywhite5 "Just to confirm, if I have one promoted listing "A" and the buyer clicks on my other listings after having started at Listing "A", then while looking through other inventory, selects item "B" which is *NOT* promoted, there is no additional fee associated with that, is that correct? It's only if both products happen to be promoted, is that correct?"
Yes, and no. You are charged the fee if Product A was clicked on as a PL, and Product B is part of a current PLS campaign, even if it is shown to your buyer as an organic listing. The fee will NOT apply if Product B is shown as organic AND is NOT part of a current PLS campaign.
Think about it. If a buyer clicks on Product B as a PLS and buys it, it doesn't matter whether he clicked on Product A before that or not. Just as today: If a buyer clicks on a PLS and buys it, the PLS fee applies.
What is different with this is: An item can be in a PLS campaign but it can be shown to a particular buyer as an organic listing. Today, if it is shown as organic, even though it is part of your campaign, there is no PLS fee. After this change, if it is shown as organic AND is part of an active PLS campaign, you will pay the PLS fee IF the buyer had clicked on one of your promoted listings within the previous 30 days.