SELLING

[clothingniche]

I would just like to make a comment about the extent eBay is going to make additional money by promoting stores that sellers can pay extra for them to do so.  It sickens me that when a customer pulls up one of my listings, all the work, taking pictures etc., I do, they advertise another store that sells basically the same items as the listing a customer pulls up of mine and maybe its lower, maybe its higher but that is not the case, they are taking a potential customer away from my store they found through search!

They put:  "Find similar items from (they list the store name) and show the item and then give them a link to click on to go to the other store."  This is so wrong, so wrong, I did not do my listing to draw someone to my item to sell so that eBay can advertise another seller's store, and it is even shown before my own!

[gurlcat]

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@ryry-jj wrote:

Ebay is here for the buyer...in a sense all of us sellers are ebay's product used for the purpose to reach those buyers and sell...ebay doesn't care if it's me or you that makes the sale, they just want the sale made

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They definitely want sales made, but prefer that promoted sales get made over non-promoted ones.  And the result is a profoundly messy and confusing look.   You can't honestly say "eBay is here for the buyer" when in fact the goal is to manipulate the buyer, so blatantly and frustratingly that it surely spooks some buyers away completely.  -Ones that have been here long enough to have witnessed the "evolution" are probably used to ignoring the distractions, but imagine being used to nice clean listings on other websites and then coming here for the first time.  

[tobaccocardyahoo]

There are more offers of many items than there are buyers for them. Promotion allows sellers to improve the visibility of their items.

Sellers can and should consider the amount of competition BEFORE they acquire items for sale. If you need to promote at 14% you had better have a lot of margin, and depth of product.

You are high volume and a Top Rated Seller, you are probably faring better than other sellers, in spite of their promotion.

[le-5262]

In theory...

you just hope that there's enough customers for everybody.

but there is one thing that kinda bothers me when I'm searching for comparisons

You think you are seeing all of the listings for something

but if you click on say the most expensive of the listings

you end up seeing similarly priced items that don't come up in the initial search.

Probably just me, though...

[12345jamesstamps]

The photos you use kinda look generic like from other platforms...

Realistically, I can't imagine a seller having thousands of hats, thousands of shirts, thousands of figurines sitting at home or even in a garage collecting mildew or smells from boxes.

Kinda looks like 'drop shipping' from other platforms...but I could be wrong.

[gurlcat]

It's 1001 listings, most of which have variations (some a LOT of variations) and yes it appears they use stock images.  But I don't think they're dropshipping.  If they were, there would be at least 1 or 2 neutral or negative comments about it.  And in their response to a comment they mentioned how "the staff" had double-checked the buyer's order before shipping.  

So this is just a bigger size seller with employees and (surely) a climate controlled warehouse, or maybe even a brick and mortar store that also lists items here.   

[chapeau-noir]

I agree - it's crap, and obviously wedging it in for even more monetization. 

The tortured reasoning on this thread on why it's OK doesn't change my mind, mostly because it's such an obvious ploy. *

ETA: Maybe OP buys overstock. 

*Obvious ploy on the part of eBay. 

[foster9]

Those promoted items tend to be 2-3 times more than what the item is worth because the seller is including the promotion fee into the cost of item.

Widget from seller X with promoted listing-$15.99

Same widget from seller Y without promoted listing-$4.99