I turned off my store subscription last month since I've been having around $100 in revenue and the $25/month is killing me. (one month had 40% of my sales be fees, ouch!). Last Black Friday weekend I had around 15 sales. This year, not one.
So first question: Does having a store bump you in the algorithm?
I used the markdown manager successfully in October. It showed my items reduced in the searches and in my "items" list. But this Black Friday weekend I did the same settings for a sale and the items never appeared on sale.
Second question: Do you need a paid store subscription to enable the markdown manager/promotion tools?
I can still access it and setup markdown/sales. But they won't work.
