eBay

albany_sellers · ‎09-20-2021

At this stage I have decided to halt ALL promotions. No more promoted listings, period.

When it has sunk so low that we are now being asked to bid on keywords or be buried in the search results, it's time to rethink things and consider other avenues. I called it back when regular promoted listings were rolled out and said that this was just the start until something else came along like "super duper ultra mega major hyper uber promoted listings", and well, here it is.

You see, they knew something all along when promoted listings became a thing, and that is that eventually we would be promoting just to maintain what our sales were prior to promoted listings. eBay enjoys the extra fees and we all end up right where we started at while also "choosing" to promote. Now that everyone is promoted, apparently we need "super promotions" to be promoted over the regular promoted listings, so really, what is the point of bothering to even promote?

Repeat after me. When everyone is promoted, nobody is promoted. Go right ahead and try to compete with Promoted Listings Advanced and see how well that works out. Enjoy paying more and more just to get your listings seen.

I mean honestly, do quality listings even matter when you can just buy the top placement? Is it even worth it to have good photos, good descriptions and relevant keywords when someone else can just buy the spots?

My prediction, the search results are going to be a mess of low quality, irrelevant results that will serve to make eBay look like wish or alibaba. Buyers will get frustrated because what they want to find will be hidden from them in favor of purchased results. Sellers will get frustrated because doing a good job will be secondary to the people who pay to play, and many will leave for other platforms where they believe the playing deck is not as stacked against them.

For me personally, once my sales tank because of this, I will be taking the remainder of my listings elsewhere and double down somewhere else. There are a couple other places I have been watching and thinking about trying out, and this just might be the push I needed to do so.

zamo-zuan · ‎09-30-2021

@coolections wrote:
Promoting your items will not work if you are overpriced compared to other sellers regardless of the placement of your item in search.

Absolutely false. Sellers competing at the top of their categories have to compete at the lowest profit margins, and one of the primary strategies used is increasing prices to compensate for spending on promotions.

It breaks down to simple math. If your getting 10,000 impressions a day and your conversion rate is 4% normally, and then after a price increase by 5% and additional 5% in promoted listings, if you're getting 3k impressions but fall to a 3% conversion rate, you're STILL getting more sales than before. Even at 2% conversion rate you'd still be getting more sales.

The SEO/marketing statistics, impressions/clicks/conversion rate... They're inherently linked and more impressions = more sales.

This is one of the major problems on eBay because it's not "supply and demand" or a "fair market" when the visibility is determined by algorithms and not competition. PL directly conflict with a "supply and demand" market design.

Here's the important question to consider: How often does pricing even come in to play when your competitors get 2/3 more visibility/impressions than you?

zamo-zuan · ‎09-30-2021

@frugality_inc wrote:
That's the main question. Why has eBay gotten away from the focus on the customer experience?

eBay has now tailored their systems to squeeze as much money out of each dollar of revenue, completely casting aside what the customer expects and wants. I'm all for a business making a profit, but why destroy the fundamentals that have built eBay to where it is today? It's frustrating knowing eBay is self destructing itself.

eBay has true potential as many sellers have seen & experienced, but eBay has other plans that only benefit themselves instead of a win-win-win environment for the buyers, sellers & eBay.

Exactly. It seems to be focusing on short term gains, when if you look at the effect it has on the marketplace as a whole, it's causing prices on their own marketplace to raise as a whole.

We used to be 100% focused on eBay as our primary market. As of 2018, it's not really possibly to function that way anymore. EBay is far too volatile to rely on and putting all your eggs in the eBay basket is a sure way to go out of business. It would be in eBay's best interest to attract sellers who would focus exclusively on eBay.

But right now, eBay doesn't have the trust of sellers or buyers. Just look at the responses to their ads on social media and you see how people really feel. Heck, they have that ad promoting the sale of Pokemon cards lately, and that's not even something you can trust eBay with. The ad tries to make it look like it's a great way to make some extra cash with your cards laying around the house... But in reality sellers who try to use that feature are getting hit with VeRO's... As mentioned in the earlier post, following eBay's recommendations is often a quick way to hurt your eBay store rather than help it.

monster-deals · ‎09-30-2021

@zamo-zuan wrote:
@monster-deals wrote:
All this garbage for a broken search engine.

Just pay someone to fix it so we can all get seen please.

How can this company get any more top heavy with bad ideas?
"All getting seen" isn't the goal of any of the forms of PL by their very design. Nor is getting the customers what they want.

As with most things in the corporate world, it's designed to give eBay more control and more faucets to profit.

Which complete refutes ebay's claim they are only a venue.

This is a short term cash grab at the expense of long term stability.

As soon as this sputters and fails we will still have a broken search engine and then Mega Promoted Advanced.

newguysrijan · ‎10-14-2021

hmm..

jaad_6732 · ‎11-30-2021

I know it sucks but I kind of hope ebay keeps doing things to run off sellers. Once its so tight of a number to make money only the sellers who buy huge amounts will be left since there the only ones that can eat 50% fees for breakfast and still triple there money. Its clear that ebay is pushing to get rid of non business sellers. Managed payments requiring business accounts, promoted listings and advanced listing promotions are all steps towards a all corporate & business ran ebay. Im sure soon ebay will require registered trade names and state tax licenses to sell on the platform. But once ebay accomplishes getting rid of the small sellers to keep the retailers they will have to negotiate or go out of business. But with the things ebay has been doing to money grab it appears the platform is already heading towards its end. Its a classic get all the money we can before we shut down tactic. If thats the plan the fees will continue to go up until we log on one day and it says this webpage can't be found. Then thats all she wrote for ebay.

lqualls628 · ‎09-07-2023

It’s not a good place to find what you are looking for anymore. It’s a pain for a small seller like myself to make any money. Half goes to eBay. My first complaint has always been the final fee **bleep**. Shipping is not part of the sale. When I go to search for an item to do price comparison it shows me a whole bunch of things I’m not looking for because of thes people having to push promote. It’s just wrong. If there was a better place to sell sports cards I would be done. But eBay is king

kh-silke · ‎09-07-2023

Hi everyone,

Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread HERE if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.

Thank you for understanding.