ANYONE ELSE NOTICE A DIP IN THEIR SALES SINCE EBAY STARTED THE "PROMOTED" LISTINGS FOR A FEE?

[treasuregirll]

SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT....FOR A FEE, 3% TO 6% YOUR LISTING WILL BE PROMOTED AT THE TOP OF PAGES AND HERE'S THE CATCH.  YOU ALSO GET A SECOND LISTING WITHOUT THE PROMOTED FEE.  SO IF YOUR LISTING SELLS, NO FEE.  IF THE PROMOTED LISTING SELLS, YOU GET CHARGED THE FEE.  

SO YOU HAVE 2 LISTINGS EXACTLY THE SAME, ONE AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE.  SO NOW YOU HAVE MANY, MANY MORE LISTINGS TO SCAN THROUGH BEFORE SEEING YOUR NORMAL LISTING.  I'M EXPERIENCING A REAL DIP IN MY SALES BECAUSE OF THIS.  SO EBAY IS ESSENTIALLY HURTING THE SMALLER SELLERS IN THEIR QUEST FOR MORE PROFITS.....

ANYONE ELSE NOTICE THE SLOW-DOWN IN SALES?  PLEASE CALL AND MAKE COMPLAINTS, AS I AM GOING TO DO ALSO.

[usmediamass]

promoted listings only help ebay's profits. Even if they help you make more sales will it not be enough to off set the extra expense? You can make up for losing money by selling more. If ebay charges more to make a sale on ebay prices must go up. If prices go up buyers will shop someplace else. It is a great short term plan for ebay. Bad for sellers and buyers and ebay in the long run.

[luckeyeagle77]

This Promoted Listing is a joke I have been useing it sence day one and have only sold one item, it is not worth a **bleep**. and e-bay will tell you anything to get you to stay, but it is not getting any better selling here it is getting worse, and e-bay does not care, that is why I have started my store closeing sell and have just added to every item I have listed best offer, and as of October 30 I will not renew my store I have had enough of their lies and **bleep** it is not a sellers site is is a buyers site and when sellers start leaveing and not paying fees and for  a store lets see if they can make their money off buyers, e-bay has went way down hill and seem to keep going the changes they keep makeing are hurting and not helping any, seems to me no one at e-bay has a clue on what they are doing, and are just playing a game and hope we as sellers will just play along but it is tme to let the chips fall were they may with

e-bay and let them fold as a company if that is waht they are working toward,

[treasuregirll]

I'm saying that by crowding the pages with dual listings, buyers are never even seeing my listings. They have to hunt for several pages before even finding it. My visits to my listings are down. And an additional fee for a promoted listing adds a pretty hefty cut into my profit margins. You work for Ebay?

[tastesgood]

Ive listed items on auction(sports Cards) that had a price range from $15-25.00 per card.... Starting the bids at .98 or 1.98. Have not sold anything in over a week. Most of the items have maybe 3 or 4 views. Ebay is not what it use to be. I see they are advertising on TV now to get buyers.  They need to treat the sellers as there source of income. Hey no sellers you sure wont have no buyers. Its a shame.

[glasshouse49]

8.8% IS RIDICULOUS TO PROMOTE A LISTING.

COULDN'T BELIEVE MY EYES.

COME ON EBAY....GET REAL  

MY SALES ARE SUFFERING BECAUSE OF THIS LATEST GIMMICK.

[luthervillelane]

And this is why Ebay has places restrictions on our ability to place items on "sale", previously my primary method of self-promotion.  They choked this ability by saying that sellers were abusing the system, but how does one abuse lowering the price of their own items?  No, by taking this ability (mostly) away from us the only recourse to self-promote is to give Ebay the money through there advertising mechanism "Promoted Listings".

[futuretomorrow]

@treasuregirll

Your caps lock key is stuck. Not being facetious here, psychologically it's a problem to read comments in all caps.

Your post would make sense but the challenge is eBay has been so bad for awhile now in terms of sales it's hard to tell if this has simply pushed things passed the breaking point. I tried it on one item a month ago and it made absolutely no difference. I've seen others state the same.

In terms of visibility, I don't think it's doing what it should for sellers. Does a buyer care that it says promoted? Absolutely not. They care if it's the item they're looking for and most these days want super low prices (read, next to nothing garage sale prices). Even for those lucky enough to have niche items customers are willing to pay decent prices for it's almost meaningless.

[311mainstreetantiques]

The sales dropped about 50% since they brought in Seller Hub! The promoted listing is an other catch to make more money for Ebay, but do nothing for the sellers! Be careful what you sign in for! Everything to them is about making more money at your expence!

This commet will be taken off soon, like so many others before. They do not want anyone to see the truth! It hurts their pocket.....

[treasuregirll]

Sorry about the cap locks... I wanted a decent response and feedback.  

It is my opinion that the "promoted" items are not especially special, just that it makes it more work to hunt for the item you are actually looking for by clogging up the pages with dual listings.  Has it affected your sales?  That is my question.  

Yes, niche items appear to be the only salvation in an already over-crowded world.  I do believe that ebay has reached it's "saturation point" quite some time ago.  It has not been a seller's market for years.  So anyone who thinks they can make a decent living on ebay will probably be disappointed.  As a supplement to your income, or a hobby,  it can be fun.  I was just surprised to see a drop in my sales as the promotions came to fruition.  

Thanks for your opinion.

[2tswithadream]

Things were good until middle of September then things went south; I decided to see where some of my listing fell on  page.  This is when I saw the "promoted" listings.  Instead of my listings being on the first page, they seem to be on 2nd page and up.  I figured this was why.  I guess the perks I got for being top seller (listing placement) are a thing of the past.  

[futuretomorrow]

@treasuregirll

"Has it affected your sales? " - No.

No - since promoted listings my sales have been inconsistent and the same. There is a pattern to the sponsored listings returned and if you have a popular item you can best the results. 1st, 4th and 5th results in a search are "sponsored", just did 4 searches and the pattern is the same for all returned results.

On one of my more consistent sellers, it's the 3rd result, beating out the 4th and 5th "sponsored" or "promoted" links. Now, for sellers who don't have items that are popular by however eBay is defining that these days the 1st, 4th and 5th results returned are definitely pushing their listings down the page or to the next.

[rocks-in-my-pockets]

I think Ebay is shooting themselves in the foot.  Whatever they have done, they have throttled our sales.   I too am not getting the sales I was.  Nor any bids anymore.  I do both fixed price and a little in the auction format.  I moved away from the auction format a couple years ago.  I was doing better with fixed price listings, but still got bids on the others.  Somehow they have manage to dump our listings to the bottom of the ocean so no one sees them.  I agree, Ebay needs to turn back the clock on policies and how they are showing listings to buyers.  If our product sells, they make money.  They seem to be high on the Chinese sellers and their listings even though there are SO MANY negative feedbacks against them. 

This is stupid.  Someone needs to start a site similar to Ebay and remember what works and doesn't work.  Sure Ebay has an established name, but SELLERS will go to a new site that values legitamite sellers and deals with bad sellers.  Ebay thinks they are "Too big to fail.".

[voguevintage]

I can tell you this: yesterday was only the third day ever I had zero sales. Today, unless I make a sell, will be the 4th. My sale preformance is now down for the quarter after being slightly up. And this is 4th quarter! This is our bread and butter!

Maybe people are distracted by Halloween and aren't buying but I'll tell you this: last year this time I had less than 200 items and I was selling at least 5 or 6 a day. Now I have almost 1500 and that is a good day. I started running a promotion (15% discount on 45% of my inventory) and still nothing. Before I never considered running promotions during 4th quarter, there was no need. It's just crazy.