Traffic count down ad fees go up

[animal-house-8]

So in the last month in my 2 stores traffic has been in a steady decline so I decided to boost my ad rate from 2% to 4% a 100% increase. My traffic count said down -20% compared to the week before now 2 weeks later it says down -37.4% compared to the week before plus I added 17 new items in the last week.  I sell nothing anyone needs so when the economy goes south so do my stores. I have noticed the ad fees have jumped a lot looks like many people are in the same boat. So today my ad fees got doubled again to 8% lets see what happens. FYI my ad fees were 2% all last year and we had a boom year. 

[fbusoni]

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

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@fbusoni wrote:

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@animal-house-8 wrote:

Ad fees are bid on, the bid is higher, yes you can choose your ad fee, I choose 8% the high bid is now 14.5% in my category when not long ago it was 12%

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@animal-house-8 

Would you be so kind as to explain the process to which you refer?

I thought that one simply selected the percentage rate at which you wanted your items promoted.

Are you suggesting that you will have to keep raising your fees because of forces outside your control?

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That's basically how it works. Promotional percentages rise from internal pressure as entities keep raising their rates to try to get ahead of their competition. After a while it will become unsustainable to any but the wealthiest sellers/companies.

It's why Google ads became priced out of most people's budgets and Google abolished the program (this was years ago).

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Thanks, I guess what I am after is whether the person purchasing the ads can exercise free will, in this case, by simply limiting the amount of money they want to spend.  That was not clear to me. 

I understand that if the competition spends more, then the seller who does not keep up with the competition is at a disadvantage.

The whole thing sounds slightly horrifying quite frankly… an ever- spinning vortex of sorts, entry into which is no guarantee of benefit of any kind, from which a seller, fearful of missing out or lagging behind, cannot easily escape.

When all is said and done, I can’t help but wonder if it just makes more sense to lower the price of a listing to make it more attractive. 

[inhawaii]

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@animal-house-8 wrote:

 I have noticed the ad fees have jumped a lot

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I believe 5% is still 5%.

[animal-house-8]

Good observation, but the ad fees people are willing to pay have gone up and 14% is 14% still.

[inhawaii]

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@animal-house-8 wrote:

Good observation, but the ad fees people are willing to pay have gone up and 14% is 14% still.

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Ok, so the fees have not gone up ... the amount that people want to pay has gone up.  Gotcha!

[pls-consignments]

"The whole thing sounds slightly horrifying quite frankly… an ever- spinning vortex of sorts, entry into which is no guarantee of benefit of any kind, from which a seller, fearful of missing out or lagging behind, cannot easily escape."

That's exactly what they are banking on, sellers becoming "fearful of missing out". It's is designed to "stir up" the competition with embellished numbers and language that ignites fear.

"When all is said and done, I can’t help but wonder if it just makes more sense to lower the price of a listing to make it more attractive. "

Yes. EBay knows that they cannot afford to stifle sales (atleast long-term) since it's their primary revenue source. They know that most sellers are reactionary, and don't have the patience to weather a couple of weeks of abnormally slow sales. Enter in PL. It's no different than the advertising we see on TV . Yet, real eBay competition is price-based, not who has the biggest billboard.

[chapeau-noir]

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@pls-consignments wrote:

"The whole thing sounds slightly horrifying quite frankly… an ever- spinning vortex of sorts, entry into which is no guarantee of benefit of any kind, from which a seller, fearful of missing out or lagging behind, cannot easily escape."

That's exactly what they are banking on, sellers becoming "fearful of missing out". It's is designed to "stir up" the competition with embellished numbers and language that ignites fear.

"When all is said and done, I can’t help but wonder if it just makes more sense to lower the price of a listing to make it more attractive. "

Yes. EBay knows that they cannot afford to stifle sales (atleast long-term) since it's their primary revenue source. They know that most sellers are reactionary, and don't have the patience to weather a couple of weeks of abnormally slow sales. Enter in PL. It's no different than the advertising we see on TV . Yet, real eBay competition is price-based, not who has the biggest billboard.

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You'd be surprised at how often that is not true. In a heavily saturated category (anywhere) with finite buyer patience and choice fatigue, the biggest billboard sometimes wins out, and the more choice, the more ads become the primary means of selling. Those who don't use ads are fond of mocking those who do, but after a while the abnormal in the "couple of weeks of abnormally slow sales" - becomes "normal." We don't live in a perfect world, people make choices.

My small contribution to PLs easily pays for itself in my super-saturated category. I tried Poshmark's ad program and it absolutely did not, so I stopped it. That's basically my criteria for using them - is the ROI profitable? When it stops being so, I'll quit using them.

IAC, this ad promotion has its own end-point, just as Google's did. I just ride it to the end as I did Google.

[animal-house-8]

Ok, so now that I have your attention, what are you going to do when Trump puts tariffs on the country of Hawaii? ..... LOL 

[meme6253]

Just use PL's cautiously, Don't get caught up in a war with your competition, It won't end well for your bottom line, Too many bigger sellers with bigger bucks will drag you down.

[fbusoni]

@pls-consignments 

I for one am pleased as punch (how's that for an archaic expression!) that so many millions of sellers are spending money on promoted listings.

That way eBay can keep its fees down for the rest of us.

Which, in a roundabout way, is actually a small incentive for me to periodically lower my prices a little.  

It's sort of like that thrill you feel when you make a ridiculously ginormous profit on an item, then feel sufficiently liberated to lower the prices on a couple dozen other listings and move them the heck out.  

Pennies from heaven, as it were.

(Has there yet been a thread here about the biggest profit sellers have ever made on a single item without the use of promoted listings?)

[soh.maryl]

Presuming you're referring to choosing to promote your items, isn't that optional?  

[animal-house-8]

"When all is said and done, I can’t help but wonder if it just makes more sense to lower the price of a listing to make it more attractive."  

  And I think sometimes it does if you have a lot of watchers on that item, but then I have found that on items that just don't seem to get watchers and views just instead of taking the % off just use that as your ad rate and surprising enough it will move product, you have to keep active, toggle between both for hard selling stuff.

[chapeau-noir]

Right. I don't see the point, also, in dropping a price 10% when I can raise it a tad and slap a 4% promotional on it (the "tad" price raise covers the promotional).

It's just not black and white when it comes to doing this stuff.

[chapeau-noir]

Also if people don't want to use them, then don't. But calling people "sheeple" and inferring that they/we are somehow deficient in intelligence because they weigh the options and decide to give promotions a try is just childish. If they don't work, then just cut them off. 🙄

[tobaccocardyahoo]

Bids for promotion are often a waste of money.

If the potential audience for your items is small, and buyers do searches which are specific and represent what they are looking for, promotion is a waste of money because your item which meets the specific search will appear at a point in the search results within the potential buyer's attention span, even if you do not pay to promote.

If the item is common, or the buyer is looking for a broad category of items in their search, promotion may help, but often it does not help, even then, because most of those who are presented with the item do not care and will not view.

I truly wish Ebay provided me with what the buyer searched for when they purchased some of my items. I often have no clue how the buyer of an item actually found my listing.

[a_happyhoarder]

4%?

I'm doing 10% and I'm still not getting views or sales!