Promoting items

[shopping.with.moana.lali]

Can someone tell me if promoting listings is showing a huge return? I have been promoting for over a year, with very little return. Now I find out ebay charges the fee on the entire sale, including shipping and tax. This doesn't seem ethical to charge sellers a percentage for a sale on anything other than the sale itself, before tax & shipping. Any thoughts ? Comments? I would love to hear what others think. 

[stainlessenginecovers]

First; assuming you are talking 'Promotions Standard' which ONLY charges you when an item is sold.. then who cares? If you are not selling; your are NOT paying. 

Or...you need to 'pay more' for Promotions' so that your items are shown BEFORE (1st page for example) than your 'competition. 

How many 'others items like yours' are available??

2nd: The fees are fair because they are 'clearly stated' what they use. 

Stores have paid the 'fee' to 'processors' for the TOTAL at the Cash Register since the advent of credit cards in the 1940's. 

To also include shipping? Well, yes- the customer has paid $15 to get that pack of $10 socks shipped, paying an additional $5 to ship them to him. Therefore, you sold those socks for $15 shipped to their door.

After all- those sellers that offer 'FREE' shipping should have to pay MORE than you because they sell those same socks for $15 shipped?? 

[tthodgepodge · Accepted solution]

I hate to say it.  But I really think "it depends".  If they're nice items I move them pretty easy.  Even in saturated categories with 2-3% promotion.  I do this with certain household appliances, jeans, shirts etc.  I honestly think they'd likely still move without the extra.  I.e. I put 2% on a nice food processor recently.  Likely didn't need too because there were only a handful listed and I made sure I had the best price.

  If there's demand for whatever you're selling you likely don't need to or minimally promote.  But on the other end I can't imagine trying to sell for example plain t-shirts without 15%+promotions.  

[chariot_badges]

I guess I have a slanted view of things.

But, I don't care what they charge me -- I add all expenses (shipping, advertising, fixed costs, cost of goods sold, everything) and to that I add a % profit margin.  

I list it for that number.

So, if it cost me $1 for the item, $5 to ship it, $3 advertising my total cost is $9.

I sell it for $18.  

I might discount that to $15 after a while, but I don't give stuff away for less than my cost.

Never.

I will stay with eBay as long as the profit margin is good.

When its not, I'm gone.

And ... I bet eBay 'feels' the same way.  If they can't make money by working with us, then they will shut it down.  We need to pay what eBay needs, or be gone.  My buyers need to pay what I need or they can be gone.  I can live without a 'buyer' that won't let me be profitable.

To eBay WE ARE THEIR CUSTOMER, and one thing I learned a long time ago is that I don't need OR WANT every customer out there.  In fact, I have told customers (face to face) before that "You are the type of 'customer' my competition needs.  Want their address?"

Can ya'll imagine that eBay feels the same way ABOUT YOU?

If eBay and I can make money together, great.

If not, then a divorce is immanent.

[12345jamesstamps]

This time of the year with all the bad weather in the USA its hard to tell if promoted listings do work. I did really good during November when weather was nice. And a week in January and February...again weather was great. Like today...the weather in the Midwest with tornado warnings...I had not a sale today. Very strange. But it's a huge storm coming from west coast and ending on the east coast. I took off all my high end promoted listings for the time being in February . Image promoting something for 25% for months and it didn't sell. Then I took them off promoted listings and they sold. Here's a strange one....I heard if you take off a promoted listing and if sells in 30 days you will get charged a promoted listing...it didn't happen. Maybe it's an error. I don't know. But it was a nice surprise(s). I just think buyers are not buying during bad weather. After all, no electricity means buyers can't buy. Or, buyers are more worried about bad weather than buyer on eBay.

[inhawaii]

I used it when it first came out.

I didn't notice any significant difference so I stopped using it. 

I have never used it since.

[susanb1872]

Ebay has been charging fees on tax and shipping for years. Recently, there has been a discussion on this topic every week in this forum so you will find many comments on the "ethics" of this practice if you search.

Here is a recent post about it:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Is-it-legal-for-Ebay-to-charge-a-fee-on-sales-tax/m-p/33654951...

[shopping.with.moana.lali]

I like this idea... 

I was adding cost, shipping and ebay fees then mark up. I wasn't taking the promotional fee into account prior to markup. Thank you!  That was a simple fix

[reallynicestamps]

I found that PL brought more boys to the yard. I got a lot more Views on PL items (although I only used the minimum fee).

But no great bounce in sales on those PL items.

What did happen, at least at first, was that those customers who were Viewing seemed to then look at my Store and sales on non-PL Store items went up.

This was true from November 2019 to around May 2020, then the pandemic surge in all online shopping hit and my anecdotal evidence became garbled.

That surge ended around January 2022, and eBay changed the way Views were counted*, so it's even more difficult.

A Canadian stamp dealer has been experimenting with his similar lots, using PL on some and Best Offer discounts to Watchers on others.  He does not have figures yet, the experiment will require time for accuracy, but so far, anecdotally, with a pound of salt, it looks like PL works better to get sales than larger discounts to Watchers, who would be expected to have shown some firm interest.

* The new system only counts Views from humans and within the past 30 days, which is a more useful number.

[reallynicestamps]

@shopping.with.moana.lali   You are also charged the FVF on the buyer's sales tax payment. However that varies from 0% to nearly 20% depending on the buyer's location.

I reckon it as 20%, which is too high, and then feel happy when I pay less. (I know it's stupid. I buy lottery tickets too.)

[bestpartshouse]

Yeah, I just realized that the fee is for the entire sale including Tax and Shipping.   They charge on the  TAX??  Basically you’re paying 6-10% more due the tax that there is zero profit.  I’ve spent thousands of dollars on this program. I am going to stop and see what happens.   It would be nice if eBay would breakdown the fees and itemize them so knew what you were pay for.  

[shopping.with.moana.lali]

Just a follow up on this piece of discussion in March. I stopped promoting for 6 months, my sales came to a halt. Added a few items in a promotion, which happened to be the only ones with any activity. Since then I have added promoting to all items listed with a slight markup to cover the cost. I'm seeing a decent return, even with the fee added to taxes (which I don't agree with either). I did mark up the ship charge to accommodate the fee as well. How are things progressing on your end?

[shopping.with.moana.lali]

I did put a halt on promoting for about 6 months, sales dropped. So I increased ship charge slightly, as well marked up sale price by $1.00 to help absorb the promotion cost. 

Added promoting back onto all store items about 2 months ago, saw a decent increase in sales. So, as long as we cushion our cost in the price of the sale it is worth it to promote. 

How are thing going with your sales these days?

[kh-cathy]

Hi everyone,

Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.

Thank you for understanding.