Simply-the-best-for-you Volunteer Community Mentor
@simply-the-best-for-you wrote:@my-cottage-books-and-antiques Can't say I disagree with anything you wrote. I know full well that there is ZERO benefit to sellers here (and frankly buyers too), but I too have factored in my fees. Also, I already DO promote everything & I am in one of the most competitive categories on eBay & like I said, I'm already pretty close to 100% PL sales anyway, so for me, I think it makes sense to continue. Doesn' t mean I won't tweak things, doesn't mean I may not choose to stop at some point. But for now, I'll ride it out.
My journey with PLS was a little different than yours. Although I didn't post it above, I actually HATED the idea of PL's when it first came out. Or more accurately, I hated that eBay kept everything black-boxed & you had no idea what you were paying for or what the difference was in paying different rates. I still HATE that. I was intrigued by the idea, but it's very important to me to know what I'm paying for.
A fellow seller who I was friendly with (in my same category) suggested why not try it, cuz it was free. Remember, we got a quarterly credit back then. Each quarter I was earning the full credit. Then my friend talked about what great success she'd had & that she'd spend $100 to make $1000 any day. I got that logic & embarked on many different tests of PL's & how to use it best. Took about 4 months to find my stride, but when I did, my sales TRIPLED! Well worth it IMO. Fast forward 3 years, well in the last 2 weeks, despite having everything promoted, I had a bunch of days with no sales, almost all of the sales I do make are PL, but I'm not selling right & left, like I was. Of course, some of that time also coincided with the pandemic, so it's hard to know how long I road the triple-sales train JUST from PL's.
Now, everyone in my category promotes & so I feel I have to, but of course there's no way of knowing whether an item would have sold anyway (non promoted). Plus, we still don't know what we're getting for our money, other than increased sales, but what's the specific difference between 6% & 10%? Ebay still remains mum about it. Also, I am starting to see what @zamo-zuan has been saying for a year or more...that (at times) my Organic views fall, along with my PL's, which should not be happening if everything is above board. I still have a 6 month old (at least) note from Zamo which I haven't responded to (sorry Zamo) b/c it requires getting deep into the weeds & I haven't had time. To be fair, my charts rarely see the weirdness that his do, which he's posted multiple times & I do not see the same things BUT, just the other day, I ended a campaign for a day, which is all of my listings. Predictably, my PL's nosdived in impressions & everything else, BUT my Organic impressions had the same dip. What? Huh? There should be close to no correlation. I will be watching closely & paying attention.
the sharp dip down isn't your campaign, contrary to what people may say, it's ebay and they did something to algorithm to cause the spike down, but it "corrected" itself the following day... happens all the time, the same algorithm dose not continuously run, they are changed all the time. When sudden spikes downward happen that is why, because the algorithm was changed. When it falls to the bottom and does what we call "flatlining" and rides there for a over a day THAT is when you need to end and then start a new campaign... it will not "auto correct"
@nuclearomen To clarify my chart, yes, the big drop is the day I ended the campaign, so it has nothing to do with a change to any algorithm. So I DO expect to see the dip, I see them anytime I end a campaign. I personally have never seen a 'flatline' on PL's. In fact, if you take the dip out of (b/c I ended the campaign), that is pretty typical of what my chart always looks like.
@my-cottage-books-and-antiques I'll have to think about what you said. It's way too early for me to think right now. But to be clear, ALL my listings are in my campaign. I run 1 campaign at a time & it has ALL my listings. I'm not sure if your comment applies, if it's all my listings? But like I said, it's a bit too early for me to think.
@zamo-zuan wrote:I just want to clarify that if you ended a campaign, that can be what you are seeing there. Only the traffic for listings in a promotion show up on that page - hence why @my-cottage-books-and-antiques had mentioned it might be normal and the "traffic page" might be showing Organic views still.
The promotions page shows only the traffic for listings contained in a promotion. This means lets say you had 1000/1000 listings promoted, then you ended 500 of those promotions, now only 500/1000 are promoted. The traffic understandably drops in that case, as 500 of those listings will no longer be measured.
With that said, the reason I find our traffic page so alarming when the Organic drops is because we didn't actually end the promos, all we did was lower the rates. So all of our listings are still in a promotion (and still being measured by that page) yet the organic still drops - this is a sign that the investment of our PL also lowers organic.
This happens to some others, but I don't know the exact reason why this doesn't happen to everyone. Might be because of category or overall traffic, or that eBay has "tested" things on our store before others.
I'm in agreement with what you mention about not knowing exactly what you're paying for. In addition to that, you can't accurately estimate how much is going to be spent and have to overshoot it when trying to calculate profit margin. It makes eBay more volatile, and the volatility is already the worst part about selling here.
@zamo-zuan OK, but in my case, as I stated earlier, ALL my items are Promoted. I end a campaign, so I get a big dip in my PL bar. That part makes sense to me. But the corresponding smaller dip (but a dip nevertheless) in my Organic bar doesn't make sense to me. The organic views to all my listings that are in the campaign (which is everything), should not change. I don't think anyway. I admit, this is confusing to me & it's still early for me, so maybe I'm just not getting this.
In regards to your comment about decreasing the percentage, just curious approx what percentage it needs to be, in order for you to notice the Organic dip? I frequently change by 1% & haven't noticed anything, but maybe that's not enough to notice or maybe I'm not one who sees it regardless.
