eBay

ten_o_nine · ‎01-05-2023

It seems that 90% of my items sell thru PL, what happened to organic search, I used to sell 5 times as much without any promotions, or is this a way to milk sellers to death? What's next> Promoted Pro, Promoted Deluxe, King and queen of promotions, just getting ridiculous by the day.

How come there's no verifiable indicator that shows the seller how the item was purchased?

We can all trust that they sold thru promoted and actually that is possible.

But, as Reagan said "Trust but verify"

biggymoe · ‎01-05-2023

Please don't give them any ideas.

mega-ma-roo · ‎01-05-2023

I've never used promoted listings, so mine is blank and I don't know what it would show, but it seems this might be what you are looking for:

https://www.ebay.com/sh/performance/sales

ALWAYS be honest and exceedingly FAIR!

The Volunteer eBay Community Mentor formerly known as juanmogamer

wastingtime101 · ‎01-05-2023

@ten_o_nine wrote:
How come there's no verifiable indicator that shows the seller how the item was purchased?
We can all trust that they sold thru promoted and actually that is possible.

The only indicator is when eBay tells you that's how it sold so basically, yeah, you have to go with the info they give you and cannot verify it in any way.

Not just on eBay, but anywhere companies use promoted marketing, pay per click ads, etc, you basically get what you get - accurate or not. It's been proven on other sites and with other platforms that what you get is not always accurate (especially with a pay per click model). I have zero evidence to show how eBay ranks among others in terms of accuracy.

When one uses promoted listings, they should assume they will pay the ad rate for every sale when they determine which listings and which rates to choose.

For my own account - I have a solid mix of PL sales and non-PL sales. At times the promoted sales rank heavier and at times the organic sales rank heavier.

GLORIOUS!

valueaddedresource · ‎01-05-2023

@ten_o_nine wrote:
It seems that 90% of my items sell thru PL, what happened to organic search, I used to sell 5 times as much without any promotions, or is this a way to milk sellers to death? What's next> Promoted Pro, Promoted Deluxe, King and queen of promotions, just getting ridiculous by the day.

@ten_o_nine - you're not far off sadly. eBay ad execs have said they are testing new ad types that will presumably be "coming soon" sometime this year.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/New-Promoted-Listings-Ad-Types-Coming-Soon/td-p/33000051

They floated Offsite Google Shopping Cost Per Click ads back in July.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/We-had-to-start-testing-Promoted-Listing-Advanced-Now-eBay-wan...

And most recently they appear to be testing some kind of ads that promote competing stores in "high visibility above the fold placement" on listing pages.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Ebay-WHAT-Are-You-Thinking/m-p/33374738

Unfortunately, the answer to your question is yes, we do just have to trust and there really isn't any way to verify.

@wastingtime101 gave the best advice you're going to get on this issue.

If you're going to use PL, evaluate the pros and cons for your specific business carefully, look at the big picture/general average costs vs benefits, don't be afraid to test and iterate on strategies, and accept that there will likely be some amount of unknown margin of error.

stephenmorgan · ‎01-05-2023

I did a 15% Promotion for these first 4 items during November. They are basically along the lines of the same type items. There were no Watchers but you can see the one that was promoted received way more views. Nothing sold.

The second picture shows the Promotion Results for that one listing.

The third picture I did not use a promotion and I received way more views and watchers and two items did sell.

My conclusion is that you must have something desirable to sell that people want and with promotions or not, your item will sell.