Best regards,
Started looking at year's performance, and noticed something kind of interesting.
I'm probably telling on myself, because it's not a "bad" thing, but-
To preface, I promote basically all my listings, at a very low % have them all under one continuous campaign, and have not touched/edited the campaign itself (just added more listings to it) since I started it, but one would think the whole eBay 'halo listing' aspect of Promoted Listings would factor in to this somewhat.
About halfway through the year I'm noticing my Promoted sales just drop off a cliff, since like May I have not been charged for basically any Promoted sales.
So while I am personally not complaining, it just struck me as odd that almost no sales have been via PL, even though as I said I promote literally every single listing I have.
Is this just a me thing or is PL broken or do others have this as well?
@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:@iamcara I'm one of those who usually advise against pay per click for sellers of single quantity , long tail items. (I can see more value in PPC for sellers of multi quantity items, especially non-long tail items)
But I'm always happy to learn new things, and I'm wondering why and how exactly you use PPC, since a quick glance at your inventory suggests you sell mostly single quantity, long tail items?
In short it's quite difficult to advertise any other way, such as on social media like Instagram and other potential sources as a result of having media presence or, as a result of being able to create online commercials (which requires a lot of budget and is very risky).
I am not entirely in control of what items I sell, as they are all sought after and selected by my mother. The paintings are all hers too. I can't just go about buying and reselling popular antiques or anything like that, my budget doesn't allow it, and I do not believe that I have enough experience to take those risks right now.
As for a dollar amount taken out of my account each day, I found PPC to be generally reasonable due to the fact that it tends to eat up a very small percentage of your selected daily budget, and even with a very high cost per click setting like one or two dollars, you still end up only using about 35% of that budget each day. My budgets for PPC all added up is 35 dollars, but really it only takes about 10 dollars a day total on average even at a CPC of 1-2 dollars. I used to have it at 5 cents or 10 cents, which is quite efficient (about twice as much efficient as a CPC of 1 dollar), but I think it's just better for me to use a high CPC due to a variety of factors that someone outlined for me.
Business requires investment, risk, and a letting go of some level of ego. So that's kind of what I see this as. In college I used to spend maybe 20-40 dollars on food delivery per day. Compared to that in terms of dollar amount and usefulness, this is nothing.
And like I said before, I believe that many people misinterpret the usefulness of PPC due to the fact that it has potential to generate a sale months after a potential buyer finds your listing through these ads.
You are more than welcome. I was very systematic when I used PLS and benefited from consistency in its use. Here is a typical PLS chart for a campaign, the trend was repeatable each PLS campaign, a big spike the first weekend then spikes each preceding weekend but a slowdown in Impressions until near the end of the campaign then a spike just before they ended.
This next chart shows spikes on Sundays.
Those charts are from two different 30 day campaigns, you can see their similarities.
I have kept track of sales for every month since I started selling. I am now in year 10, keeping track of the number of sales each month and the total item dollar sales makes it easy to see trends.
After sales declined for over a year I started to also keep track of monthly Auction and BIN sales in addition to my other data. I used the Send offers eligible feature until April of this year. There were some periods where mainly Auctions sold but not BIN listings.
I have not set a new monthly sales dollar amount record since June of last year. March this year was my best sales month in 2024 but BIN sales were horrible, being suppressed of course.
The info above shows clearly that organic BIN sales are just not happening very much. The numbers speak for themselves.
@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:@iamcara Thanks. So basically you stick with a limit you believe is affordable for your business, and you believe you are getting a sufficient return on your ad dollar investment to make it worthwhile. While I suppose I could set a limit that I'd be comfortable with, I guess I just don't think I would get a good enough return for the money I'd be spending. But if it's working for you, great! I find that sellers have different business models, and no one model is right for everyone. Glad you have found something that is working for you.
Well to be honest it isn't really working haha. So far I've generated 0 sales from PPC ads, offsite or on-site.
I've been at it for a few weeks, tweaking things here and there.
But I'm holding out a little while longer before giving in! Especially for the paintings.
Btw this is today's views (the day after I made this post):
😂
