Do Promoted Listings Actually Help Make Sales?

[mpssupershop]

I've tried using promoted listings a lot in the past to try and help speed up the process of selling my items, and have found that most of the time, it barely seems to actually help your items even get any extra views, let alone sold, and that whatever assistance it does provide in selling your items faster is usually not worth the extra money it takes from your profits. What's your experience with promoted listings?

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@ajs_coins_and_alchemy   Sorry, I didn't mean you were saying anything more than you tried it and it works for you. I was agreeing with you that it can work, and the goal is to find the right balance, as you have done.

[aldelbertmatthew]

Right now I'm promoting at 12% across the board for all my items.  This is above the eBay recommended promotion rate for many of these items.

I've gone DAYS without a sale after the 17th of July when it was previously 2-4 a day. I don't even think it matters if your items are promoted anymore because the site is extremely broken and doesn't work right. Poshmark and Amazon are working normally.

[ajs_coins_and_alchemy]

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@ajs_coins_and_alchemy wrote:

BIG FAT YES!!!!!!! ... sorry this is a long post but I feel extremely strongly about this

Now this is somewhat empirical and somewhat anectdotal as I can not draw a line for cause-effect.

Did I not list much during the time in question and thus no new listings meant the algorithms frowned upon me? Did some other factor play in? I've been using promoted listings consistently for over a year. I promote across the board at 3%, no more no less. Maybe a handful of items are not promoted or promoted at 5%. But thats a drop in the bucket, everything is 3%.

In May my sales were down to begin with (~$6k for the month). I decided my sales were already down and I wasn't on a hot streak so it was the perfect time to experiment, so I turned off Promoted Listings and un-promoted EVERYTHING... HAH! My sales found a nearby cliff and jumped off it head first. I think my sales went down to 1/4 of what they were. They were already slow and I literally dropped 75%. That was rough.

I went back to doing promotions after 2-3 wks, and my sales jumped back up at least 5x. Now I'm doing even more than that but I have more new listings and other factors.

Moral of the story here, for me, in the coin market... I already have a significant discount on EBay FVF because I pay for a store subscription (13.25% gets cut down to 9% for Coins and 7.35% for Bullion), I have plenty of room for 3% and honestly 3% promotion is fully baked into my cost of doing business. I don't "lose" because promotions, I just make more money if my item sells w/o buyer clicking an ad.

My Listing Impressions from Promotions are like ridiculously high, I have no clue maybe 10-20x impressions? It's almost all non-search impressions so it's showing up on buyers home pages and on other people's listings. More than half of my page views come from promoted ad clicks.

Again, I have no clue if anything else was at play, so I may not be able to attribute 100% of the change to promotions, but a 75% drop and a 5x spike, thats a LOT so a significant amount is attributed to promotions. If a 3% ad fee which I already have baked into my cost of doing business allows me to maintain a significant increase in sales, that allows me to turn over inventory faster and make more money faster. It may "lower my margin" nominally, but I make up for that EXPONENTIALLY, a million times over, in the volume it allows me to do and can make me a lot more money long term. (3% ad fee is a truly insignificant portion of my margin anyways to begin with, I don't believe I would notice the difference anyway).

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Agreed with everyone, but in the conversation regarding PL, I often see conversation about placement in search results, and don't see much about non-search placements.

Disclaimer: I have no experience with PLA (Advanced) only PLS (Standard)

My experience w/ PLS is that the VAST majority of my Promoted Impressions are non-search as I mentioned in the previous post. That may very well be a downside to some, to me, I think it may be a huge upside. My thoughts on my market, being coins (collectibles), so much more focus is on pics and catching someone's eye. You don't need to be the cheapest, you need to be the best looking, with a reasonable fair price. Also, there are so many years & varieties, categories & sub categories, etc... how often does someone search for the very specific item I have, vs how often does someone show interest in that general "area" get shown my item in a non-search setting and it catches their eye and they decide they want it.

To further simplify the point: There are some items I have, that with the range of condition they are in, I may be one of a few or the only one with that item in that condition, so I'd be front and center in a search but thats an extremely specific search to do. So I need to get my ads in front of people who aren't searching for my item, so I can market to them too.

[southern*sweet*tea]

I've tried promoted listings twice since I'm lazy and I hoped that by doing that my sales would by some miracle increase.  (My store has been inactive for the better part of a year lol)

Both times my puny sales actually decreased to zero.

[siamjane8]

There is no doubt that PL can help in some saturated categories but for the vast majority of sellers, it has just mucked up the site and driven buyers away. Nobody wants non relevant stuff named down their throat when just trying to shop.  CEO all but admitted it in recent quarterly result speech... eBay is going to focus on relevancy going forward he said..... (As well as magical experienced lol.)

   All ebay has to do is show us the listings that we search for and not clutter up the pages to the point that buyers get confused and annoyed, and sales will come back... When sales come back buyers will list more and the process of rebuilding eBay can start.

     SEARCH should be 100% of ebay's focus- all the other little goofy things they are changing mean little to nothing. 

   It's not all bad- they just added bulk "send offers"- that is a nice and norteworthy  touch. A practical and useful feature. Thanks

[o-kushon]

Four or so years ago, I had a seller in Eastern Europe, who was poaching some of my sales.  I made a list of the items he had listed that were overlapping my listings, and promoted them for over a year, increasing the percentage every month or so.

I did not get a sale of a single promoted item.

They started their war, and banned all the sellers on the other side of the front.  I stopped promoting items, because the competition was gone.  At that time, international shipping was shut down.  But I should have picked up all the customers that seller was shipping to in the US.  I did not see any increase in sales.

In the time since, they appear to have shifted the program from "For a few more percent, we will make your item more visible" to "If you don't give us more money, we will keep you invisible".

Try promoting some items.  Don't make any plans to spend any extra money.  You may never pay that extra percentage.  Or they might be the only things that sell for you.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@siamjane8 

Years ago, in the very early days of ebay, I could sit down every day in the morning with a cup of coffee and BROWSE each category I was interested in, sorting by newly listed...back then, there were few enough items on the site that, by the time I was finished with my coffee, I had seen literally everything new in a number of different categories....

I wasn't the only one who preferred "browsing" to "searching". It was one of the attractions of ebay---like wandering around a flea market (or, say, a Costco), maybe searching for something, but being open to finding something great you didn't even know existed.

As ebay grew, "category browsing" became harder and harder to do in a limited time frame....and ebay began focusing on search, with occasional attempts to figure out how to bring back more browsing. 

For my stuff, the value of browsing can't be underestimated. I strongly suspect MOST of my stuff......certainly most of my PLS sales...come from what amounts to browsing a view item page and seeing---and buying----one of those items the buyer was NOT searching for. (and we know ebay has said the large majority of PLS sales come from the view item page, not the search page)

Yes, ebay needs to improve search...but I don't see PLS as the biggest issue with search, ebay could get rid of PLS tomorrow and search would still need to be improved.

So, it's all well and good to say everything would be solved if ebay showed exactly what the buyer is searching for, but this site also needs more, not less browsing. And, right now, one of the most effective "browsing" spots, like it or not, is the cluttered view item page. The recent "test", in which ebay reduced the clutter....also reduced sales for many sellers. I'd like to see ebay find a balance that works better, and it might be they are trying to do that with these tests.

Having a really good search is important, especially for commodity items. But for things like antiques, vintage, etc, browsing (some businesses call it "discovery") is as important or more important.

[laststopgeneralstore]

No, promoting your listings/using promoting listings standard or advanced will NOT help make sales... technically in my opinion. It may speed up the process in which said specific buyer see's your item which then will trigger a sale but that same buyer could've also stumbled across that item without promoting the item albeit it may have taken longer. All that promoting your items does is get you more impressions and that's it.

What they will do however is give your item(s) more eyeballs than they already are getting and if one of those eyeballs are part of the percentage you're promoting and they decide to follow thru and purchase your item then you pay the fee.

You'll get more sales by focusing on what your sourcing/listing/trying to sell. Focusing on sourcing strong sell thru rate items that are really desirable that you can purchase at a good price and sell at a good price is much more important than worrying about promoting your listings.

Good luck.

[sumsum70]

The more people promote (pay ransom), the more incentive eBay has to tamper with search results.

I don't and won't promote. If things don't sell here without paying extortion, then they sell somewhere else. I'm not participating in a game designed to make me lose. 15% fees is already too high.

I had a server last week that would have sold on eBay for about $1200. It was a tower server, so the shipping box would have been a 36x24x12 with a weight of 58lbs. If I sold it here, eBay would have taken $180, and shipping could have been as little as $40 or as much as $100. So, my net would be in the range of 920-980. I listed it on CL for $1000. It sold the next day. That is $1000 cash in my pocket. Transaction is final. There will be no shipping, no returns, none of the garbage that comes with selling on eBay. The buyer got a better deal than he could have got here and paid no tax.

If everyone does what eBay hopes they will do and pay extra for visibility extortion, it becomes a cycle of sellers raising prices to compensate, or making less profit. Only eBay wins this game - temporarily. Buyers will find the best prices aren't on eBay anymore - like $1000 servers that would cost at least 1200 here, plus tax.

Just say no to PL.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@laststopgeneralstore  Exactly.

This is a point ebay's Griff makes repeatedly: PLS gets you an increase in impressions---at that point, whether you get views or sales from any of those impressions is dependent on your listing. Which is why ebay's advice is always: make sure your listing is a strong listing before you add it to the PLS campaign. PLS isn't a magic wand----it isn't going to take a poor listing and magically sell it for you. Your point takes it a step further: make sure the item itself has sufficient demand at the price you are aiming for.

[laststopgeneralstore]

What?

Ransom is forced and/or demanded.

Promoted listings is optional.

Extortion? I'm sorry but I've never had the "Men In Black(eBay)" come to my house and threaten me unless I promote my items. I sell more items organically than I do via promoted.

So let me get this straight, you sold a server on Craigslist for $200 less and it sold and you made a $1000. Please explain in detail why eBay is the bad guy in that particular situation? You could have just charged for shipping and waited for the right buyer to come a long but it sounds like you were inpatient which is fine but don't blame eBay for that.

Some things are not meant to sell online, for some things locally is much better.

For example, I sell mens pre-owned clothing. If I tried to sell my clothing at the same price all on Craigslist, I wouldn't make any sales or not even close to what I do on eBay. Everything is relative and sitting here saying that eBay is a crime family trying to extort people that can freely do as they please is a little ridiculous.

[nuclearomen]

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@mpssupershop wrote:

I've tried using promoted listings a lot in the past to try and help speed up the process of selling my items, and have found that most of the time, it barely seems to actually help your items even get any extra views, let alone sold, and that whatever assistance it does provide in selling your items faster is usually not worth the extra money it takes from your profits. What's your experience with promoted listings?

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They do but depends on what category your selling in and how many items in that category you are promoting, the more items you have in category pool the more PL's can help get those sponsored ads seen. But, that said, PLs are not delivering sales as they use to, especially when ebay keeps inflating their suggested rates.

[siamjane8]

@inhawaii 

Promoted listings MAY increase sales, but it certainly wont hurt sales.

While logically this should make sense.... Many sellers have reported sales actually going down after starting promoted listing campaigns.    This may be in past because eBay chooses to show your listing as organic OR promoted.... So if it shows up buried in a carousel instead of the natural search results.... There is a high probability that your item is seen less often by a relevant search than if the item was not promoted. 

[inhawaii]

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@siamjane8 wrote:

@inhawaii 

Promoted listings MAY increase sales, but it certainly wont hurt sales.

While logically this should make sense.... Many sellers have reported sales actually going down after starting promoted listing campaigns.    This may be in past because eBay chooses to show your listing as organic OR promoted.... So if it shows up buried in a carousel instead of the natural search results.... There is a high probability that your item is seen less often by a relevant search than if the item was not promoted. 

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You should know me by now.

I think "many sellers" are wrong, that it's just coincidence that their sales may have dropped after promoted listings.  Sales can dip with promoted listings. Sales can dip without promoted listings,  It's normal.  Too many sellers experience a drop in sales "last month" or "last week"  or "July 9th" or "when ebay changed this" and immediately need to blame something.  I'm sure you've head my "pot roast" theory before. I have 0 sales when ever my mom makes pot roast.

But hey, I understand everyone has their own theories.

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@nuclearomen wrote:

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@mpssupershop wrote:

I've tried using promoted listings a lot in the past to try and help speed up the process of selling my items, and have found that most of the time, it barely seems to actually help your items even get any extra views, let alone sold, and that whatever assistance it does provide in selling your items faster is usually not worth the extra money it takes from your profits. What's your experience with promoted listings?

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They do but depends on what category your selling in and how many items in that category you are promoting, the more items you have in category pool the more PL's can help get those sponsored ads seen. But, that said, PLs are not delivering sales as they use to, especially when ebay keeps inflating their suggested rates.

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Yup.  For a long time, they TRIPLED my sales, so they absolutely CAN & DO lead to more sales if you have good listings, desirable items & are just in a saturated market.  But that has fallen by the way side more recently.  Still, a good 80% of my sales are from PL's, but no way of knowing how many of those would sell anyway.   I'm doing some tests right now to try & determine that for me.