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BEING CHARGED AD FEES ON 100% ORGANIC SALES - NEW CASH GRAB

 
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BEING CHARGED AD FEES ON 100% ORGANIC SALES - NEW CASH GRAB


@the-hook-and-the-loop wrote:

I guess people just read and understand things the way that suits them. 

 

LET ME JUST SAY THAT PROMOTED LISTINGS USED TO BE A SMALL INVESTMENT TO GET MORE TRAFFIC AND SALES.

NOW, IT'S A WAY FOR EBAY TO GET MOST OF THE PROFIT MARGIN. IF I TURN OFF PROMOTED LISTINGS, NO SALES.


Let me make this clear for you.... If you use promoted listings, you have NO way to actually see IF an item sells promoted or not. You are depending on eBay to TELL you if it was or not. You are depending on eBay being honest, if it was or not. I've advertised with Google AdWords, I know this shell game. You can't argue it with them, because they are the ones that hold all the proof. They are the ones with all the evidence and you have NO access to that information.

 

If you are willing to pay to promote, you have to accept this is going to happen. Period. If you are not willing to pay the fee on EVERY sale, then don't promote. Let me say it again, IF you promote, EXPECT to pay the fee on EVERY sale. Like it or not, this is how it works. You should be pricing your items to include all the fees. Customers are the ones that pay the fees, it's your job to price accordingly not to lose money or lose margins. 

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Message 23 of 30
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BEING CHARGED AD FEES ON 100% ORGANIC SALES - NEW CASH GRAB

nice headline....

 

clickbait? 🙄

Message 2 of 30
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BEING CHARGED AD FEES ON 100% ORGANIC SALES - NEW CASH GRAB

I have repeat customers who come back to my store to buy the same item and I am now seeing "sold via promoted listings".  When they purchased it 3 weeks ago, it did not have the ad fee standard on the sale.

 

The item was promoted on the same campaign. The buyer went into her purchase history and bought the item again and now I get "sold via promoted listings". I am 110% certain this was an organic sale. eBay credits me and tells me they will look for errors.

 

If I don't promote-no sales. If I do promote- eBay makes every sale a promoted sale. So it now costs 25% in fees.

Message 3 of 30
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BEING CHARGED AD FEES ON 100% ORGANIC SALES - NEW CASH GRAB

  • "You will only be charged when a buyer clicks on one of your ads and then buys that item within 30 days"

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/listings/listing-tips/promoted-listings?id=4164

 

They recently  doubled the Min PL fee takeaway from 1% to 2%,

They will probably extend the take time on buyer click fee for PL's sooner then later to 45-60 days, maybe even 90.

 

Why not?

 

 

 

Message 4 of 30
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BEING CHARGED AD FEES ON 100% ORGANIC SALES - NEW CASH GRAB


@the-hook-and-the-loop wrote:

I have repeat customers who come back to my store to buy the same item and I am now seeing "sold via promoted listings".  When they purchased it 3 weeks ago, it did not have the ad fee standard on the sale.

 

The item was promoted on the same campaign. The buyer went into her purchase history and bought the item again and now I get "sold via promoted listings". I am 110% certain this was an organic sale. eBay credits me and tells me they will look for errors.

 

If I don't promote-no sales. If I do promote- eBay makes every sale a promoted sale. So it now costs 25% in fees.


I assume you have the customers messages as evidence to prove this?

If so, this is why eBay's transparency (or lack of) is alarming.

 

I've been reporting the issues with organic counts having obvious issues, easily reproduceable, and eBay hasn't given a single response to it. 

 

In addition, as I reported elsewhere, if you go to the search page and Cntl + F, and search for "sponsored" you'll see every listing has hidden "Sponsored" text. This wasn't the case in the past (and I have screenshots as evidence from late last year). Some may say hiding or showing it might just be how they display this text, but they don't do that with ANY of the other text in a search. Either way, it's clear they changed SOMETHING about how sponsored text appears in search.

 


I've had issues where NOTHING appears as Sponsored on the page, but everything has that hidden sponsored text. Does this mean clicking those will or will not trigger a PL sale? It seems likely there's glitches in that system as well.

 

And assuming you have evidence of what is claimed in the OP, this seems to be further evidence.

 

EBay makes it hard to trust eBay. Not just because of issues like this. But because they refuse to ADMIT to these problems, and claim there's no problem. It would mean much more if they admit to a problem and actually FIX it. 

Message 5 of 30
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BEING CHARGED AD FEES ON 100% ORGANIC SALES - NEW CASH GRAB

Customers are often clueless about remembering whether they purchased (or saw it) via a PL or not.  I learned this very early on, when I wanted to only send offers when it wasn't a PL.  I asked a bunch of would-be customers & they all swore they just saw it "the normal way" & sure enough, most of them had actually gone in via a PL & didn't realize it. 

This one goes to Eleven - Nigel Tufnel
eBay Community Mentor
Message 6 of 30
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BEING CHARGED AD FEES ON 100% ORGANIC SALES - NEW CASH GRAB

If it was originally bought as a promoted listing. It must be if they buy it again within 30 days it will be no different if they clicked on the promoted listing and bought it a few weeks later.

 

Didn't realize that, but good to know.

Message 7 of 30
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BEING CHARGED AD FEES ON 100% ORGANIC SALES - NEW CASH GRAB

Define "100% organic sales."

"It is an intelligent man that is aware of his own ignorance."
Message 8 of 30
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BEING CHARGED AD FEES ON 100% ORGANIC SALES - NEW CASH GRAB


@lepke1979 wrote:

If it was originally bought as a promoted listing. It must be if they buy it again within 30 days it will be no different if they clicked on the promoted listing and bought it a few weeks later.

 

Didn't realize that, but good to know.


The OP had mentioned the original was NOT bought as a PL. And then using their own product history to purchase again, it was declared a PL.

Message 9 of 30
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BEING CHARGED AD FEES ON 100% ORGANIC SALES - NEW CASH GRAB


@the-hook-and-the-loop wrote:

The buyer went into her purchase history and bought the item again and now I get "sold via promoted listings". I am 110% certain this was an organic sale. eBay credits me and tells me they will look for errors.


But unfortunately, you are basing that 100% certainty on your buyer's word that she did had never clicked on a promoted listing it in the last 30 days.

 

It would not be impossible for her to have done some some searching of prices and clicked on a promoted listing. I have had buyers tell me things that turned out not to be correct.  

 

 

Message 10 of 30
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BEING CHARGED AD FEES ON 100% ORGANIC SALES - NEW CASH GRAB

Well we have a *little* more than the buyers word.

 

Look up any of the items in your inventory by eBay ID right now.

 

Every single search is coming up Promoted every single time.

Message 11 of 30
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BEING CHARGED AD FEES ON 100% ORGANIC SALES - NEW CASH GRAB

I've been suspicious of this for a while because for quite some time now 100% of my sales have been through promoted listings. I find that hard to believe considering my sales saw only a marginal increase once I started using promoted listing. Looks like a massive civil lawsuit in the making.

Message 12 of 30
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BEING CHARGED AD FEES ON 100% ORGANIC SALES - NEW CASH GRAB

I have been full time selling since Covid hit in early 2020. I always promoted and my sales have been consistent. Before this year, it would be 50/50 or 60/40 organic to promoted sales. Now, it's more like 80/20 or 90/10 in favor of promoted. They have it set up in such a way that you don't get to see what you are paying for. If you turn off PL's, they turn you off. So they are basically saying, we want 25% now for the same traffic. (without saying it)

Message 13 of 30
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BEING CHARGED AD FEES ON 100% ORGANIC SALES - NEW CASH GRAB

Huh?

Message 14 of 30
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BEING CHARGED AD FEES ON 100% ORGANIC SALES - NEW CASH GRAB

I'm not an HTML expert, but in the source code for an eBay page, there is a "switch" for "sponsored listing" that is either "yes" or "no" or "1" or "0" or whatever.  I'm not defending eBay, but HTML has a s**tload of functions that are binary and included in sourcecode.  I've only ever used sponsored listings once, for a GoPro camera when I first started selling, which was completely superfluous at the time.  I figure that if I list desirable items, paying eBay more should be unnecessary. That assumption, of course, is subject to review.

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