So sales slowed down past few weeks right, no big deal. Some times it consumer confidence fluxuations, weather, events, seasons, etc... Since I'm full-time business as some of you are or even serious part-time I keep a keen observations on listing performance and competition. It's common for me to search my own products logged in and not logged in. I used the promoted listing feature on most products at a low rate, pay to play I guess. I get a few sales via this system, but not consistent, no big deal.
This is where it gets interesting. So a drop in sales(20%) and a uptick in promoted listing sales, that's odd usually it is linearly correlated (Mathematics background, yes I use stats with my business). I do a search of products that are using the promoted listing system and turns out, only the promoted (Sponsored) listing shows up in the search results. The native listing are nowhere to be found. So I conduct a search of items that are not apart of the promoted listing program. These listings show up as normal and none of which are apart of the rolling blackout. While it's no secret and apart of the user agreement that eBay can control when listings can be shown. Kind of irks you at first, but it's their business and service, I'll give them that part. However, eliminating all my native listings and only showing promoted listings to ensure conversion of the promoted listing program is....a bit sketchy and dabbling a grey area of fleecing your sellers.
Thoughts? Not intended to bash eBay by this post. I never been done wrong by CSR and I have conducting many sales through eBay. I mean, from a business perspective, if this is how it's going work, would it behoove of me to cancel promoted listings?
