Promote or Not to Promote?

[ten_o_nine]

My thought is if no one wants your item, no one will buy it. Stop the madness and eBay will do the same.

[natoman777]

@reallynicestamps 

I am wondering if that would be due to the category/item.  I sell mainly books, clothes, hats.  Not really a ton of collectible items.  Selling in one specific items (stamps) might help to use promoted listings. 

[reallynicestamps]

I agree. Category is always important.

Which is why with posts about sales in particular,it helps to use the selling account and not a posting account.

Although I would put books under collectibles, and maybe hats.

[meme6253]

GREAT IDEA!!, If EVERYONE would do it, But EVERYONE will not do it, Hence ebay wins!

[kensgiftshop]

I tried PL's years ago and didn't really notice any difference.

Had as many sales without PL's as I did with them, so I quit using them.

It doesn't matter if you promote your items, if no one is interested in the item, they are not going to buy it.

When I'm looking to buy, I skip over all the promoted listings and look for sellers that don't use them.

[toomuchstuffagain35]

Same here.

I once got an offer like the current one but for PLS. It wouldn't cost me anything so I used it. I even promoted some items at ridiculous rates because I could.

The results were abysmal and I never even came close to using up the offered credit.

Never used them since.

[postcardcountry]

I do standard promotion with a 2%.  I promote all my items that way.

Last Wednesday I shipped 7 orders, none were promoted

Friday I shipped four orders, all were promoted.

Monday, I will ship 4 orders (as it stands right now).   1 item has a promotion fee, 3 do not.

Could not tell you if it helps or not, it's so scattered I could not form a pattern.

[trainup027]

I can only speak for myself.  When I qualified for promoted listings, I tested it out.  It helped me sell more things.  I've definitely gone back and forth on it, including times when it seemed to make everything sell worse, but overall I use it regularly but at a fairly low percentage.  I still calculate profit or loss on every item I sell, and for me, the cost of a few extra cents to help the item sell is justified.  I am definitely keeping track of this, though, and I don't promote at high percentages.  I don't sell super high end stuff, I sell a lot of lower cost items with a few high cost ones here and there.  I also have a lot of long tail items.  So it's a numbers game.  I'm not expecting things to fly off the shelves and I couldn't afford to promote at rates that might make that happen.  A church cookbook isn't worth promoting at the rate that would make it sell fast.  But if someone wants it someday, and I have it, that's a nice sale for me.  Especially if I'm the only one who has that item.  More buyers seeing it increases my odds, but it's probably not make or break.