eBay

cashvaluerecovery2011 · ‎02-11-2019

If promoted listings are SO DARN GREAT for us sellers by making our listings actually get seen.............and ebay needs more Final Value Fees via purchases.......then why doesnt ebay make ALL listings promoted and get seen? I mean which is it? We know how to get your items viewed and sold so well that we are offering this extra special extortion-like way of making it happen..................yet not enough stuff is getting sold to just let ebay continue as is. So why not just use this awesome new toy to create tons of new sales without the upsale?

I mean close your eyes a moment and imagine a world where an online platform allowed your listing to be viewed or found in a search engine without paying extra money. Oh wait nevermind that is happening already just not here. I will try again. Imagine an ebay where if you pay for a store subscription or pay to list items without a subscription with the intent for your items to be seen and searchable and purchased and your items actually get seen or are able to be found in a search engine. Wait wait........put on the brakes again! I dont have to imagine this.......it was happening my first 17 or 18 years here. Last try, everyone with me now. Close your eyes, inhale deeply and imagine............spring seller update saying " We have heard you loud and clear and are going to get your items viewed and searchable and sold without trying to upcharge you every step of the way."

I know, I know. Im living in a fantasy world. Dreaming of things that are likely long lost and forgotten. In todays world these people fall in quicksand and thrash around and grab anyone offering a hand and pull them down with them instead of just using the dang ladder with bright flashing lights and sirens saying "try this."

<Sarcasm off> Promoted listings is ebay ROBBING you of a bigger cut for doing what was readily available for free to everyone just a couple years ago. It may look different how its promoted.........but your listings were once searchable and got tons of views without promoted listings. Now its almost required. What am I paying a store subscription for? Because I get 500 free listings a month which is worth nothing without paying a jacked up promoted listing fee to have them seen?

20 years ebay. I cant carry another single straw on my back. Just looking for another reason.

tunicaslot · ‎02-11-2019

I don't think you actually know what promoted listings are. When you promote an item - even at 1% - a promoted listing is made as well as your regular listing - so you have twice the chance of your item being seen by a buyer. You will not pay a promoted fee unless the buyer purchases your item thru the promoted listing.

Ebay is a venue to advertise your items - nothing more. There are promoted practices in place on many of the venues today and you pay a lot more for that option. Many are charged by the click thru even if your item doesn't sell. You don't have to use promotions if you don't want to and you wouldn't need to if you're selling high demand items at a good price. Your buyers will easily find you.

cashvaluerecovery2011 · ‎02-11-2019

Tunics I know exactly what promoted listings are and you only strengthened my point...though as always I appreciate your view.

Point-----Why is my item more likely to be seen just because it has another promoted listing? Doesnt this in fact make it even less likely to find my original listing now that there is 100% listings to go through to find it? Assuming it was already hard to get views.

Point 2--- Ebay sure talked about how much money they are making on their promoted listings. Do you not smell the unbelievable conflict of interest that this opens up for ebay when they are the ones fiddling with the software that caused the "self admitted glitches" that they have yet to fix? Think it about tunics. Billion dollar company. Losing market share badly. Stock holders not happy. Need to inject new way to produce revenue on weaker sales. Ooooo how about we offer promoted listings where we get many % higher FVF on top of the fvf we get already? And then we can funnel views and sales to those promoted listings.

My friend in my eyes and lots of others all this has been from the get go is a way to funnel sales into listings where ebay is going to get paid a much higher percentage. This also helps to explain why so many of us sellers are not getting the views / watchers/ sales that we are use to. On my wifes account, which is the only one we use promoted listings........as a test lol. We took 3 shirts that had no views in an entire week. Used promoted listings. Sold 2 of the shirts in 4 days and have 18 views on the other. This completely proves to me that your point in having the extra listing is why we get views is incorrect or at least isnt the entire reason. Those promoted listings are showing up in search engines or finding viewers when regular listings are not. That is bogus but its a fact and its a conflict of interest. To me its flat out robbery but its their platform and their rules and I am free to go when I choose.........so not real robbery lol.

Btw where are you finding 1% promoted? All of my stuff they want 5% to 10% extra?

castlemagicmemories · ‎02-11-2019

If promoted listings are SO DARN GREAT for us sellers by making our listings actually get seen.............and ebay needs more Final Value Fees via purchases.......then why doesnt ebay make ALL listings promoted and get seen

I see your point. But if they did that, they would lose their new revenue stream.

And if everyone was promoted, no one would be. So I think what you want is to go back to everyone gets visibility equally, the way it used to be.

southern*sweet*tea · ‎02-11-2019

@cashvaluerecovery2011 wrote:

Btw where are you finding 1% promoted? All of my stuff they want 5% to 10% extra?

You can set whatever rate you want, as low as 1%. You have to do that in the promoted listings area, not on the quick promote thingy at the bottom of the listing page. https://pls.ebay.com/plsweb/dashboard

The easier you are to offend the easier you are to control.

We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did. - Thomas Sowell

castlemagicmemories · ‎02-11-2019

20 years ebay. I cant carry another single straw on my back. Just looking for another reason.

You have a great history here~twenty years! I'm just sorry that you are in this place. Those straws can accumulate and become very heavy.

cashvaluerecovery2011 · ‎02-11-2019

Yes, Im sorry I didnt explain that question well. I was familiar with you choosing the rate. I thought Tunics was saying some items "trending average" was 1%. I just thought to far ahead there. Fact of the matter is 1% promoted listings dont get any extra help as far as I can tell. Its not until you use trending or even go above it do I immediately see my views go through the roof.

cashvaluerecovery2011 · ‎02-11-2019

BINGO! We have a winner.

Back when I kept 1500 listings going a month (multiple ids) I would sell $10k to $20k a month. I got my views and sales based on good listings and better customer service. Always handling within 24 hours of payment. Personal thank you messages to buyers etc. I really really loved this place and its community. I got my sales by setting myself apart. Those shoppers who followed my store would literally just spend an hour going through my store and filling a cart with items from A-Z.

Now the only way to get someone to see your stuff is by offering to pay ebay a much higher percent of the sale. This changes NOTHING for the better of the market place or the community. Promoted listings doesnt create new or more buyers. It doesnt bring in people off google who dont usually shop here. All it does is funnel the limited number of people to listings where ebay makes more money.

What would be awesome is if we put our efforts into fixing issues other than ebays immediate revenue needs. Buyers lost that community feel when they were treated like common shopping dregs. Buyers lost that treasure hunting feel when ebay allowed chinese fakes to swamp the site. Buyers of new goods who want it fast went where that was happening and those treasure hunters are now going to other platforms that still have that treasure hunting feel. Its insane to me how I can get 400 views on a pair of used shoes on FB in 2 weeks and only 12 views here. This place has become exactly what its masters molded it into. Flea market/ yardsale type mentalities where no matter that its cheaper here than anywhere else.........its not a good deal unless they can get it for even less. Scam returns with ebay assisting makes those higher priced items disappear.........taking with them the better buyers.

Do I want to go back to what it was? HECK YES. Do you? Do you think ebay would go back to how it was working 5 years ago? I believe they would have considerably better market share had they maintained and would have something to build upon. Now a lot of those building blocks are just gone.

ekmadonna · ‎02-11-2019

"MANY ARE CHARGED BY THE CLICK THRU EVEN IF THE ITEM DOES NOT SELL" That is a feature in my opinion that only a sucker would use. I have heard more than once on the circuit how competitors click your listing intentionally hundreds of times to drive up the fees on sellers intentionally. Who would ever buy into that scam? The other "E" site is a welcome mat for that because anytime you see a listing with AD" on it you know they are paying for clicks. I would never pay for promotions thru ad clicks. Just plain dumb in my opinion.

mypostingid15 · ‎02-11-2019

Just remember what they did prior to this move

You will gain great visibility if you

offer free shipping

offer 60 day return

offer free returns

guaranteed delivery

remove this from description

add that to listing

take better pictures

item specifics

And after all that, pay an additional 40% to get that item seen please.

tunicaslot · ‎02-11-2019

ek - I agree - I don't involve myself with that. I get sales just fine without having to promote them there.

OP - what I had met and others explained - I never set the trending % but use 1%. You initial listing will stay in que but you've got a second chance at buyers seeing the listing when you promote it. Is it a money grab - sure is - but sometimes you have to play the game and for the few extra cents it costs me to get that 2nd promoted listing - I go for it.

There is just too much competition these days and far less buyers here as they have so many options so I do what I can within reason to make sales.

It could be worse - we could be paying click thrus or have to compete with a venue that stocks it's own products like Amazon.

castlemagicmemories · ‎02-11-2019

@cashvaluerecovery2011 wrote:
BINGO! We have a winner.

Back when I kept 1500 listings going a month (multiple ids) I would sell $10k to $20k a month. I got my views and sales based on good listings and better customer service. Always handling within 24 hours of payment. Personal thank you messages to buyers etc. I really really loved this place and its community. I got my sales by setting myself apart. Those shoppers who followed my store would literally just spend an hour going through my store and filling a cart with items from A-Z.

Now the only way to get someone to see your stuff is by offering to pay ebay a much higher percent of the sale. This changes NOTHING for the better of the market place or the community. Promoted listings doesnt create new or more buyers. It doesnt bring in people off google who dont usually shop here. All it does is funnel the limited number of people to listings where ebay makes more money.

What would be awesome is if we put our efforts into fixing issues other than ebays immediate revenue needs. Buyers lost that community feel when they were treated like common shopping dregs. Buyers lost that treasure hunting feel when ebay allowed chinese fakes to swamp the site. Buyers of new goods who want it fast went where that was happening and those treasure hunters are now going to other platforms that still have that treasure hunting feel. Its insane to me how I can get 400 views on a pair of used shoes on FB in 2 weeks and only 12 views here. This place has become exactly what its masters molded it into. Flea market/ yardsale type mentalities where no matter that its cheaper here than anywhere else.........its not a good deal unless they can get it for even less. Scam returns with ebay assisting makes those higher priced items disappear.........taking with them the better buyers.

Do I want to go back to what it was? HECK YES. Do you? Do you think ebay would go back to how it was working 5 years ago? I believe they would have considerably better market share had they maintained and would have something to build upon. Now a lot of those building blocks are just gone.

Well, thank you!

Good buyers and good sellers alike are frustrated.

You are a GREAT seller! Great post, BTW.

cashvaluerecovery2011 · ‎02-11-2019

I agree on most of this except the amazon part. It has its draw backs as well certainly but more than makes up for it when I send a half a truck load of product in, and they do all the shipping and customer service, and im getting so much more for it there than here that the extra fees are more than covered.

So I moved all my new product out of this platform entirely to that one. What did/does sell here is used odds and ends. This WAS the coin and jewelry place for me. I mean wow was it awesome. Out of 1000 coin listings I would wake up and have to package 25 to 30 coins a morning at retail. Jewelry was simply amazing. Now I dont even bother listing it. All I get when I do is renters who return it 25 days later or people wanting to offer me 25% -75% less than what the material can be melted for. Its hard to compete when your 2 carat columbian emerald ring with certification that retails for $4k, and you are selling it for $1400, and 15 folks from thailand and 17 from china have the EXACT same solid gold 2 carat natural emerald ring for $40. Of course the solid gold is plated on top of something else and the 2carat natural emerald is naturally created in a lab........but that doesnt stop that title from competing with me. It certainly doesnt make the lovely lady who wants my ring feel comfortable buying with so many obvious fakes being for sale.

Tunics do you see any real difference in your "impressions" using 1% promoted? I see nothing even recordable until I match the trending request. Almost like its ebays set fee for visibility.

cashvaluerecovery2011 · ‎02-11-2019

My absolutely favorite was after telling us we had to jump through those hoops to keep our top rated seller discounts we all got a lovely exuberant message in our box saying EBAY--Seller! We are excited to announce that we are cutting the top rated discounted fees by 50% to help make this an even better market place! Yay.

I really dont understand why they dont just go ahead and use our personal data to attack paypal and bank accounts real fast and run.

honeybeez-15 · ‎02-12-2019

You are right on the money! I'm guessing with their new improved listing platform and catalog, or whatever, they really won't miss the revenue from us store owners when we make a mass exodus through the door. There's really no incentive to continue with an e Bay store when the big highlight of my day is relisting unsold items that are not getting exposure.

@cashvaluerecovery2011 wrote:
If promoted listings are SO DARN GREAT for us sellers by making our listings actually get seen.............and ebay needs more Final Value Fees via purchases.......then why doesnt ebay make ALL listings promoted and get seen? I mean which is it? We know how to get your items viewed and sold so well that we are offering this extra special extortion-like way of making it happen..................yet not enough stuff is getting sold to just let ebay continue as is. So why not just use this awesome new toy to create tons of new sales without the upsale?

I mean close your eyes a moment and imagine a world where an online platform allowed your listing to be viewed or found in a search engine without paying extra money. Oh wait nevermind that is happening already just not here. I will try again. Imagine an ebay where if you pay for a store subscription or pay to list items without a subscription with the intent for your items to be seen and searchable and purchased and your items actually get seen or are able to be found in a search engine. Wait wait........put on the brakes again! I dont have to imagine this.......it was happening my first 17 or 18 years here. Last try, everyone with me now. Close your eyes, inhale deeply and imagine............spring seller update saying " We have heard you loud and clear and are going to get your items viewed and searchable and sold without trying to upcharge you every step of the way."

I know, I know. Im living in a fantasy world. Dreaming of things that are likely long lost and forgotten. In todays world these people fall in quicksand and thrash around and grab anyone offering a hand and pull them down with them instead of just using the dang ladder with bright flashing lights and sirens saying "try this."

<Sarcasm off> Promoted listings is ebay ROBBING you of a bigger cut for doing what was readily available for free to everyone just a couple years ago. It may look different how its promoted.........but your listings were once searchable and got tons of views without promoted listings. Now its almost required. What am I paying a store subscription for? Because I get 500 free listings a month which is worth nothing without paying a jacked up promoted listing fee to have them seen?

20 years ebay. I cant carry another single straw on my back. Just looking for another reason.