Promoted Sales - yea or nea?

[sin-n-dex]

OK, so the collectibles market is drying up as older people die, leave things to their kids who don't want them, then their kids take them to my store, and I've got a glut of things I can't sell to anyone.

I'd like to try the promoted listings, what are your thoughts?

First question, does the promotion fee only apply if sold via a promotion, or is that an increased FVF I'm accruing?

My thoughts are this... say I have a coin worth $100. If I can't sell it, that might become $90. If I do a promoted listing (which may be 5%... for coins it varies from 3% to 11% pending on the item, that's the trending percentage for ads), then I pay about $5 to get someone to give me $100.

Basically I'm trying the promoted listings feature instead of reducing prices or running a sale (I've done lots and lots of sales... none of this stuff works if you don't have interested buyers).

I've sent offers to everyone on the list of items that are available to send an offer... turned out to get 7 sales out of the lot (valued at around $200). I made sure to offer a better deal than my usual sale, three buyers purchased on Friday night, and last night someone put a watch on a bunch of tokens and I sent offers, and they bought four of them.

How long before the item is eligible for this feature again? 15 days? What worries me is I don't want to be spamming my customers with offers to buy my items if they're just looking and not seriously interested. So I feel that even when you're able to do this again to those listings, maybe it's wise not to do them very frequently. Annoying customers doesn't usually result in better sales.

C.

[dippitydoo]

Hello, and I agree it is sad that the desire for the collectibles is dwindling.  But I would say that as long as the "send offers" feature is working for you (you did get some hits!) I would continue to use it, just not being sent to the same customer over and over.  If you have repeat watchers/buyers, I would keep a list and be sure they are only sent an offer once every few months to avoid that annoying repetitiveness.

Congratulations on your sales!

[sin-n-dex]

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@dippitydoo wrote:

Hello, and I agree it is sad that the desire for the collectibles is dwindling.  But I would say that as long as the "send offers" feature is working for you (you did get some hits!) I would continue to use it, just not being sent to the same customer over and over.  If you have repeat watchers/buyers, I would keep a list and be sure they are only sent an offer once every few months to avoid that annoying repetitiveness.

Congratulations on your sales!

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Here's a question... if I send it to one or two watchers... how do I know in 30 days if I have the same 1 or 2 watchers? I don't think they give me a mechanism to track who receives the offer.

I've found it best to do a bunch of different things (and change based on what looks most appealing at the time).

I have a coin set with 12 watchers that's at a pretty good price. I ran a 10% off sale since none of those 12 wanted to receive a direct offer. Still no bites on that coin set. As I understand, if they don't get offers (which means they don't get email communications), then the probably didn't see a notice that the coin set dropped in price.

As for collectible market dying... I'm seeing that a lot at my B&M store. We do well with things like collectible coins (the kind that won't be worth anything when your family inherits them), but stuff that's good to collect, for instance Great Britain 1790's Trade tokens... those are pretty hard to sell. I took them to eBay since that's my best chance at getting a buyer.

Cheers, C.

[tunicaslot]

I do promoted listings at 1% and tho sales have slowed - I'm still getting them - to not offer promoted I think puts sellers at a huge disadvantage. With sales down - Ebay has to make a profit somewhere and that comes from promoted listings.

I run the promotion for 1-2 weeks and then it seems to get stale and you have to start a new one. You will only pay the promoted fee if the buyer buys thru the promoted listing and right now it looks like 70% buy thru a promoted listing.

As far as sending offers - Ebay does not tell us who receives the offers and I haven't had any success with them so I don't bother but I'm glad they work for you!

[points13]

For the promoted listings eBay runs your listing normally as it would had  it not been promoted. When you promote a listing it will additionally show it in search with the sponsored banner. How high in search, how many times, and where I don't have those details but it depends a bit on the rate you select. If the item is bought from the regular listing there are no extra fees. If the item is bought buy the buyer clicking on the sponsored listing you pay the normal FVF plus the promoted rate you selected.

I have been promoting all my listings at little above the trending. over 75% of my sales have come from promoted listings. Go figure. When I went this route I stopped dropping prices to encourage sales and actually raised them a bit to cover the extra fee. Does it work?  I would say yes? Would I have got those sales without the promotion? IDK. Am I giving away profit? Probably. But its the current way to play the game. I can't see the program working forever though as more get in and the trends go higher.

[3eyedfishcatcher]

It should not work but ebay has bogged down the search features so much that due to the lack of traffic which normally should be constant in my main category I decided to try it. I have had good success compare to a year and a half ago before they made all of their changes. Now it is accounting for about 1/3 to 1/2 of my sells. You only have to pay the add fee when a buyer clicks on a add then makes a purchase. After the buyer clicks on your items add there is a 30 day period that that click can become a charge if the buyer buys. This could be changed in the future. I would suggest raising your price 5 percent to cover the add fee. Then after the current campaign ends if you do not start a new one wait 30 days before a price drop. This way you will be covered for the add rate. My self I started with a larger increase then staged it down 8 percent mid month then 6 percent at the end of the month. Each time I did this I got a small rush of sales from buyers who had been watching my items. However even with the price increase the sales through promoted listing have been fairly constant no matter what price. From what I have gathered these are through large gallery pages on social media sites. The items are kind of random and price comparison seams to be hard so even though you may have slightly higher prices than other sellers on ebay your item may still sell at the higher price. Most of my buyers have been tenured ebay users and very few have been new to ebay. Another benefit is with the GTC change the older a listing is the harder it can become to locate on ebay. This is due to the search results only returning 10,000 hits at a time. Then when sorted by best match or newest listed the priority is given to promoted listings  and listings less than 30 days old. Then the older GTC listings are displayed. If a potential buyer is just doing a generic search or just looking at a whole category your older items may not be visible unless they do a specific search. Ebays big selling point for GTC is the keeping of buyers watching your item each month. However after a week or 2 it is unlikely that that buyer would make a purchase so you are not gaining anything other than ensuring fewer people over time will be able to find your item. So with promoted listings it does bring a new chance of visibility for older items with buyers watching but not making a purchase. I have also had good success with about a even amount of older and newer listed items selling. So it does clear out items that have not sold for a while. The sad thing is its doing about the same as before they started making all of these changes. Really I would preferred them to not change the site and just raise their final value fees a little and be more upfront with how much they need from sellers as far as fees. It looks like if you want to sell some items make a little money each month then you will pay a 9 percent final value and then listing or store subscription fees. However if you want to list a large amount of items and make a good amount of sells each month you will have to pay a additional add fee. For me as it has been bringing in a good boost in revenue almost to the levels it used to be I am fine with it even though I used to be quite critical of it.

[points13]

I forget to add if you are TRS there is a $30 quarterly credit for promoted listings. So far being a low volume seller I have got all my promoted fee's back with this credit. May not be much help for  higher volume sellers but I'll take it long as they offer it.

The credit would allow a seller to try it out even if only on some of their listings.

[darrellschweitzer_pa]

My sales have fallen off dramatically in the past month. 1300 listings. Sales are almost at zero. I tried promoted listings at 1%. This either caused a spike in sales or it happened coincidentally. Things improved for a little while, then dropped down close to zero again. Ironically, none of the items I actually promoted sold.

[femmefan1946]

@points13 

I forget to add if you are TRS there is a $30 quarterly credit for promoted listings.

That's useful to know. I'm TRS on three of my four active selling accounts so I should look into that.

@darrellschweitzer_pa 

Ironically, none of the items I actually promoted sold.

It might be that the Promoted Listings brought the boys to your yard and they bought the sundae instead of the milkshake.

Promotion worked for you- you got A sale- but not for eBay- no fee on the bypassed Promoted Item.

No one will ever know.

Same with GTC.

The idea is that GTC items by hanging around longer with the same listing number will be picked up by Google and other search engines.

Will it work?  Maybe. Unless a single quasi-unique item sells after being GTC for three months when it did not sell after three years of 10 to 30 day listings and relistings... who knows?

Even then.... who knows?

Actually, I think there is something on the Seller Hub that tells us where our customer came from. I think I saw it once, but I don't look at that stuff often.

[coolections]

Personally I do not think promoted listing help one bit. It is no more than the "best match" buyers must deal with. Buyers change best match to lowest first, ending first etc. because it is a worthless feature. With promoted listings the buy has to scroll down past the first few promoted listings then get to what they want to see. I doubt a coin that won't sell for $100 will magically sell for $100 just because it shows up first.

[turquoisetulips]

As far as sending offers - Ebay does not tell us who receives the offers and I haven't had any success with them so I don't bother but I'm glad they work for you! Tunics 

Nope they don't work . It's a mystery to me why  they work for other sellers  . I found social networking  helps to boost my views   though . Tulips 

[3eyedfishcatcher]

It is really easy to tell if the item that sold was through the promoted listings or just through a normal ebay search. When the item sells go to the seller hub and hover your mouse over marketing and select promoted listings from the drop down. When the dashboard loads it breaks things down by three categories: Impressions ( this is the number of times your listings pictures appeared on some kind of add page or gallery of items for sale on social media), Clicks ( this is a actual viewing of your item ), and Sold ( this is items sold through promoted listings.

To see the items that have sold through promoted listings click on the sold tab and scroll down and click on view sales report. This will pull up the last 30 days of sold items. If the item that just sold is not on the top of the list then you will not be getting a add fee for that sale. 

You also should be careful about lowering prices for items currently being promoted or for item in campaigns that recently ended. From the time the buyer clicks on the add there is a 30 day window that if they complete the purchase you will be charged a add fee. So even if you end a campaign or the campaign expires and stopes there is a additional 30 day that you can get a add fee for those items that were part of the campaign if a buyer that clicked on 1 of your adds then completes the purchase as the 30 day window still applies even for campaigns that have been paused or ended.

You the seller who tried a 1 percent add rate since that rate was so low you probably did not get much add placement and even if you did the add rate was so low you probably got really low placement and little visibility. You really should try at least 4 to 6 percent. Other wise you probably got little additional visibility which is the real reason for using the promoted listings. You should look at your sales report to see if any of your items actually sold through the promoted listings. IF there were none or only a few the low add rate was probably the reason.

[3eyedfishcatcher]

[sin-n-dex]

I have an update...

So I went ahead and added almost all items to promotions. I did not add things like computer parts and anything really specialized that doesn't exist in more than a few listings on here (because I'll be page one anyway).

For the amount I pleged, I did 0.5% higher than trend on most world coins (unless the rate was really high), for banknotes, stamps and tokens, the rates are quite high, so I did a standard 5% because that's what I am willing to part with on those items.

This afternoon there were two promo sales... the first was for a USA token (valued at $6), and he went and bought a second item from my store (I assume directly since there was no promo fees). The other was the sale of an Austrian silver coin for $15.

I guess I'll decide if this keeps up for a while as to whether or not these are working, there is a chance if they searched they would just see my item and click on it anyway, but in some categories like USA coins, I really need the promo to be higher in the search because it's much more difficult to sell things that are relatively common.

C.

[points13]

Sounds like a good start. Yep another positive is getting them in your store to buy other items. Which often as in your case do not sell with the promoted fee. I  offer a discount  on multiple items also to encourage this.

You make a good point about already being high in search and not needing to promote. I have checked some of my items on fairly specific searches and found both on the first page. But on less specific searches my regular listings are much farther down.

The other thing I wonder if a buyer would select a sponsored listing over other regular listings viewing it as a listing that has more credibility and likely a better, safer outcome. We know any seller can do this but how many buyers do.

Hope it keeps working for you.