Promoted Listings

[gottasellemall69]

Experimenting, ~2 weeks ago I stopped promoting my listings, did a quick glance at numbers comparing the two weeks I haven't been promoting vs. the prior period when I had been.
It may just be me being ignorant, so I apologize, but isn't a talking point of promoted listings the fact that you're supposed to get more front page placements? Seems that these numbers are telling me as soon as I stopped promoting I jumped way up on front page placements.
(I realize "stats" don't matter and I should just focus on my sales, but I have gotten more sales and views since I stopped promoting so I'm not even complaining, just curious!)

[iart]

I don't know.

But when we were promoting at small percentages, our sales tanked. When we began getting closer to the  rates that other sellers were using, our sales increased but, more importantly, our PRICES increased. The number of sales is only one factor. We'd rather get 1 sale for $100 than 4 sales for $25.

[shar_27]

PLS, PLA has very small portion on eBay site itself, to attract external buyers is the main focus.
eBay only shares 3.5% of ecommerce market in US.
eBay is now heavily relying on Google, FB ... and other external channels to bring in buyers.
When only 3.5% of buyers recognize eBay, you don't expect many buyers search their items using eBay site, not to mention eBay search engine is crappy.
Whoever still searching on eBay to get cheap deals are those to harm you because they know how to game the system, and they know you're weak and desperate to get a sale.

Raise your price to cover those extra promotion fees so you get reasonable profit.
This is the way to go!
I won't sell cheap to attract those low ballers, cheap scammmers, looters, abusers who are all over eBay.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@gottasellemall69 

I'm not sure those numbers---alone---make for a very useful comparison, because it's not really apples to apples.

As you note, those numbers reflect IMPRESSIONS, not views or sales. 

But, more importantly, there are two things to consider when focusing on impressions. One: If you were comparing NUMBERS, not percentages, the PLS campaign would almost certainly provide far MORE impressions, because there are far more pages where your PL listings can show. Two (and related to #1) : because there are more places where PLS listings are likely to show (beyond just the search results page), that fact alone almost guarantees that you will have not only more impressions (numbers wise), but also a heavier concentration of those impressions will be "non search impressions."

So---just making up numbers here, to illustrate the math---if you have 10,000 total impressions with the PLS campaign, and 1,000 total with the non PLS campaign, well, 23.1% of 1000 would be 231 impressions in the top 20 on the search page, and 3% of 10,000 would be 300 in the top 20 on the search page. So, the 3% percentage COULD actually represent MORE impressions than the 23.1%

My point isn't that the PLS campaign would actually be higher in terms of the number, but that it MIGHT be or it MIGHT not be...there's no way to know without knowing the actual impression NUMBERS, not just the percentages.

I sell a variety of single quantity long tail items, many very long tail, and the real value ---for me---with PLS is that it increases the chances of my items showing on NON search pages....because a lot of what I sell is less likely to be something someone is specifically searching for...I suspect many of my sales are actually the result of buyers seeing my items---and choosing to buy it--- even though they aren't specifically searching for it.  I tend to think of it as similar to the difference between searching and finding, and browsing and discovering.

Glancing at your listings, it looks like you sell a lot of trading cards or game cards? I don't know much about them, but I'd guess many buyers are searching for something specific, either a specific card or a specific group of cards.....so placement on the search page might be more valuable to you than it is for me. 

But, just as I don't use PLA because it is really most helpful for sellers of multi quantity , in demand (or at least, less long tail) listings, if I sold certain collectibles, I might or might not use PLS depending on how buyers generally find what they want to buy. 

[slippinjimmy]

This is the key difference between PL and no PL

When you promote you get a lot more non-search impressions, more than 3 times as many in your case. Your Top 20 impressions go down because more than 3/4 of your total impressions have nothing to do with search.

Many people seem to think that PL is all about getting on page one of search but the real value of PL is non-search impressions.

[stainlessenginecovers]

There are over 350,000 listings for Yugioh Cards Alone. Your cards are not a high enough $ amount for whatever percentage you are doing to even put a DENT in that amount of competition. 

Imagine the card that is listed at $1,000,000 or the one at $50,000 or $2500- even if they do the minimum 2%, they will be giving eBay much more than your whatever percent of a $3 card. 

Too much competition in what you sell to have any belief in 'promotions'. 

[gottasellemall69]

Thank you for the reply/breakdown, and yes you are 100% correct in having more impressions, which, like you said, is to be expected.  My fault for leaving the numbers out (even if they are terrible 🤣😞

The items I have up are by no means "in-demand" items, and I would venture to guess one may come across what I have by search moreso by browsing as a result.
Regardless, thanks for the input!

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@gottasellemall69  Thanks for the additional numbers. It does appear that you had more top 20 placements with organic than with PLS (3,039 versus 2417) although you had more non top 20 with PLS), and of course, as expected, far more non search placements. 

I'm not sure the difference between 4 sales and 5 sales proves a whole lot....however, as I said before, IF most of your sales are the result of search page placement rather than non search page placement, it is very possible that PLS---at least, at whatever rate you were using---might not be much of a help for your kind of stuff.