Unless you pay to promote your listings you're not going to get viewed or sold. PERIOD

[4-peepsandpaws]

Some time ago I stopped listing much on eBay because I wasn't getting views or sales.  I didn't know anything about this promoted listing stuff except I glanced once and they wanted some ridiculous amount, like 7%, before I even posted the listing so I just ignored it.

Recently I started to list a few items again and after many weeks and months of getting no views and chatting endlessly with eBay Representatives about why I'm getting no views, I'm still getting no views and no sales.  

I paid to promote a couple of items just to see what would happen and I got a couple of views and I mean literally one to two views...

This pay to promote makes NO sense!  If a buyer is looking for an item it should pop up, PERIOD!  I have had other people go looking for my listings and they cannot find them!   

eBay should just come out and call it what it is.  Either you pay the fee or your listings aren't going to get viewed.  PERIOD.  eBay just needs to advise that they have changed their selling platform and that unless you "pay to promote", as they call it, just forgeddaboudit.  

[chapeau-noir]

Some consider 2 sales a day for $20 "sales"

So, those are NOT sales?  Some of us are pretty darned small (I promote but don't promote everything, my sales are fine all things considered).

I don't think there can be consensus on this in such a small sample such as here - people's markets, wares, experiences, etc. are simply too diverse.  One would need a far larger cohort to really get an accurate sampling, with decent study parameters - I'd be really curious to see results from something like that. 

[stephenmorgan]

Not exactly what you asked but if you read between the lines, 63% of people in the US are selling stuff from around their house, I would call these causal sellers because they are not accumulating merchandise for resale.

eBay-Recommerce-Report-2021.pdf  From April 2022

https://static.ebayinc.com/assets/Uploads/Documents/eBay-Recommerce-Report-2021.pdf

[the-hook-and-the-loop]

This is a chart of promoted listings being turned off from about Oct. 12-14:

[mam98031]

There seems to be a bit of a disconnect between what this thread was asking and what you want to talk about.  If there was some kind of an outage on PLs, that is a completely separate, yet very important issue.  But not one that this thread was started to speak too.

The OP of this thread is saying that if you do not promote listings you can't get any views or sell anything.  That on it's face is way too broad of a statement and can't possibly be true since most sellers don't use promoted listings and they do have sales.

That is not to take away from the categories, especially saturated categories in which promoted listings work very well in.  Because in this situation it can be very important.  Some just want to make it seem it is all or nothing and that simply is not the case.

[ladyindecadence]

The graph in the advertising dashboard only reports organic impressions of items that are included in an active promoted listing campaign. IF you turn off a campaign or let it end everything goes to zero as there are no listings to collect data for.

You have to look at the traffic report under performance for the same dates to get real data on impressions at that time.

From looking at all of my charts it does appear that there is a small boost of organic impressions for an item that is included in a promoted listing campaign. The only reason I can think that this happens is that being promoted drives more impressions and page views which then causes the algorithm to rank the listing higher organically as well.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@ladyindecadence is correct. If you end a PL campaign (and don't start a new one) the chart will show basically zero for both PL and Organic. 

Just want to add: This is the way the chart works, and it is the way it is supposed to work. However, for a long time, ebay was ----incorrectly---showing ALL organic listings on the PL chart, so if you ended a PL campaign, the PL line would go to Zero but the Organic would not. I complained about this numerous times and ebay finally did correct it.....but never announced the correction.

I only mention this because some people see Organic at Zero and say: "There's something wrong---it never went to Zero before" but there's nothing wrong. It was wrong before, it is correct now.

[gloryglorygifts]

Sad, but true. Unless you have a bigger store or higher priced items, and make ebay oodles of money, your listings are not going to be seen without PL. They are, after all,  a business looking to make money and grow and if you are not going to make them do that they aren't going to be there for you either.

[the-hook-and-the-loop]

Forget about the stupid chart. THERE ARE AND WERE NO SALES WITHOUT PROMOTING THE LISTINGS. FOR REAL.

[mam98031]

---

@the-hook-and-the-loop wrote:

Forget about the stupid chart. THERE ARE AND WERE NO SALES WITHOUT PROMOTING THE LISTINGS. FOR REAL.

---

FOR YOU.  I believe you.  I have no problem believing you.  But that is NOT true for ALL sellers as this thread wants to state as a fact.  That is not a fact, millions of sellers sell without using promotional listings regularly and they are NOT big / huge / large or mega sellers.  

Even Ebay's own stats do not say that ONLY promoted listings sell.   I'm sure there are more current stats, but I did not continue to look.

Around 16% of listings are promoted listings.

There are 250 million promoted listings, according to eBay data. With 1.6 billion active listings on eBay, this gives us the percentage that are promoted.

Like most online marketplaces, competition is fierce on eBay. You will not move the needle without marketing, even if your prices are low.

eBay sellers implement various marketing services, such as:

• Email marketing
• Content marketing
• Creating websites to promote their eBay stores.

Promoted eBay listings are a popular way for eBay users to grow their online businesses. And the numbers prove it. Promoted eBay listings gave eBay sellers $186 million in revenue for Q3 2020.

https://smallbiztrends.com/2021/02/ebay-statistics.html

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@the-hook-and-the-loop 

"Forget about the stupid chart."

Then why did you post it in the first place?

[the-hook-and-the-loop]

It's amazing how certain reps just want to disagree with what's happening.

I'm glad that your happy selling one sewing kit a week, but some people would like a little more traffic.

[ukfan9]

You have seven feedbacks in one year. Are you really doing that great?

[mam98031]

---

@ukfan9 wrote:

You have seven feedbacks in one year. Are you really doing that great?

---

It is likely they are using a posting ID as many members do to protect their selling accounts.

[urbanrummage]

No offense, but did you maybe think its your choice of pieces to sell and their price point?? Plus you barely have any inventory for people to browse through to maybe hook a buyer that does look. You are getting crushed by your competition. And unfortunately most people probably buy the stuff you are selling on Amazon... Sorry to come off as negative sounding, but hopefully all the feedback you are getting helps you become a better seller. Good luck out there!! 

[richardwillardcollection]

This not true because gold is easily sold without promotion at the going price. If you sell high demand items then you need not promote.