Curious, anyone having good sales that have NEVER used promoted listings?

[natoman777]

I have never used promoted listings.  I have thought about it, but our sales stay pretty consistently good with the exceptions of typical seasonal slowdowns.  Anyone else have the same experience?  I have just always thought if my sales slow down I might try it, but why give eBay more money if I don't need to?

[brightlightbookseller]

Categories definitely play a role, but also the types of items within the category.  Books could go either way, for instance.  We mostly list the less common books on eBay, hence the benefits of not using promoted listings, but if you were listing one of hundreds of copies, it might be necessary to pay for promoted listings.  We did speculate that perhaps some people were not clicking on our listings simply because they were noted as promoted, where they might have if we didn't promote them, hence the rise in views after stopping promotions.  It's only a guess, though.

[tarotfindsandmore]

Looking at your results, I think I'm going to try going no promotions for a bit.  I'm not sure if I've just been drinking the promotions Kool-aid, and after this week's unexpected hit, I think I'll commit to a week of no promotions and see how it goes.  I'll keep on listing, making offers, and leave regular (unpromoted) coupons on to see if my results are similar (and recover a bit from the self-induced loss).  My store is about a tenth the size of yours so it will be interesting to see if we pipsqueaks can still make a living without being virtually shoved to the front of the line.

[femmefan1946]

I use PL Standard on about 10% of my listings, at the 2% minimum, and find it leads to less than 10% of my sales.

It definitely does increase the number of Views  to my Store.

Which is great because it costs nothing, unless it works in which case, I made a sale with a 2% discount on my price.

But so do new listings.

It will be interesting in a week or so when the Canada Post strike is over.

Because of the Strike, I first pulled down all my PL listings on the basis that they draw customers. Then I stopped listing, because new listings draw Views and customers. Now I a closing all my "about to close" listings, since that is a popular Search.

I closed one of my Stores completely and am considering closing another.

I have also apologetically been turning down the few Best Offers I have received, since I cannot ship profitably.

Of all the options available, I have found that Best Offer brings in customers.

And that sending Best Offers to Viewers and Watches (at a lower percentage than I would accept if the customer approached me) is also fairly successful.

One thing about Sellers who will NOT use PL but do use discount coupons, Best Offer, and sales.

Have you considered that you are giving part of your profit to the customer? Which is fine.

But you are refusing to give a similar part of your profit to eBay. Which is also fine, but an interesting decision.

[12345jamesstamps]

2-5% promoted.

I have a few rather high from way back and slowly turning them back to 2-5% promoted.

It seems my highly promoted old old listings are selling as I slowly reduce the promoted rate as if eBay is pushing them.

2% promoted is 2 cents on a dollar...worth it to get on someone else's page...LOL.

eBay raised the standard from 2 to 5% to get better notice of items.

'Make an offer'...I don't have time for emails back and forth.

Coupons...I never bought anything on eBay myself that was related to a coupon.

My mission statement is to have 50% 'repeat buyers'...less trouble with 'drama' buyers.

[mr_lincoln]

Hi @natoman777 

For myself the short answer is this ... I used to use Promoted Listing Standard (PLS) but abandoned it when the "suggested" ad rates doubled and tripled almost overnight in early 2022.  The total fees they wanted for FVFs and Ad rates was in the 25% range which is not sustainable.   By not using those higher rates sales fell of on my PLS campaigns and sales steadily declined over a 2 year period.  I would not recommend that feature. 

[fbusoni]

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@femmefan1946 wrote:

Of all the options available, I have found that Best Offer brings in customers.

And that sending Best Offers to Viewers and Watches (at a lower percentage than I would accept if the customer approached me) is also fairly successful.

One thing about Sellers who will NOT use PL but do use discount coupons, Best Offer, and sales.

Have you considered that you are giving part of your profit to the customer? Which is fine.

But you are refusing to give a similar part of your profit to eBay. Which is also fine, but an interesting decision.

---

@femmefan1946 

Thank you for these observations.

1.  I send offers regularly -- I typically do not enable counteroffers but may start doing so in the new year to see what happens -- and I get a positive response about half the time.   

• I know nothing about consumer psychology, but I suspect that people like to be told, "you and you alone can have this for 15% off."   (That precise number may or may not be important -- people like getting a bargain, and the size of the bargain may often be less important than the bargain itself).
  
  
• That, as opposed to embedding "make an offer" in a listing per se.   Will a buyer think to himself, "the seller doesn't really know what his item is worth, so I'll just watch this for the next 10 years" or "well, I bet that if I offer X dollars, it will be rejected, so why bother"?    

I'd enjoy hearing what others have to say about this dynamic, if it even exists.

2.  As for giving part of the profit to customers versus to eBay... for me there's no real decision.   I see PLs as a software package offered by eBay to ensure revenue for eBay -- no different from any other cloud service.   

• I may be wrong, but I suspect that if / if PLs actually end up increasings one's sales, they succeed at doing so under very specific conditions -- some esoteric combination probably of price, availability, location, seller reputation, demand, and buyer demographics among many others.  
  
  
• I do not pretend to understand anything about the software, other than the dozens of accounts I have read here on these forums of it not producing the desired results.
  
  
• In my experience, it makes more sense for me make all my listings TR-plus and periodically use offers and sales -- the parameters of which I can set.

[femmefan1946]

'Make an offer'...I don't have time for emails back and forth.

We can set Accept/Reject parameters on our Best Offers.

And those parameters can be a penny apart.

No  labour involved.

EBay even handles refused Offers with what must be a very encouraging message, since I often see buyers who have made two or three Offers before hitting the sweet spot.

2. As for giving part of the profit to customers versus to eBay... for me there's no real decision.

I agree that PL is a way for eBay to make money, just as Stores are a way to have a regular income stream unrelated to actual sales.

I suspect that for a lot of sellers who are adamant about never using PL that there is a lot of emotional baggage about evil capitalists/greedy landlords/daddy issues going on, since they cannot allow even a 2% fee to go to eBay but will happily make 10%-25% off Offers to potential customers.

• Off topic, but when we had a shop, we issued trade dollars to customers who purchased over $100 at a time. They could then spend the trade dollars with us on their next visit. We didn't do cash discounts and those customers tended to return and return.