ebay exec: "Don't give money to eBay that you don't have to give to us."

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

There was a question today on the ebay for business podcast about using "subtitle" in an ebay listing. I'll skip the details, but thought this quote was worth repeating, from long time ebay exec Brian Burke brian_burke@ebay 

"Don't give money to eBay that you don't have to give  to us. ... if you can successfully sell your item without doing it. And that's why we encourage folks to test, because that will allow you to optimize the dollars you spend on eBay, which means you're gonna keep selling on eBay, which is good for eBay and good for you. And for some things like you sell , really unique items, rarely do you need something like some of the features that we offer."

I agree with this. There is a big difference between something ebay requires (for example, the required item specifics for a certain category) and the many optional features and tools ebay provides, which might or might not be useful for a particular seller. My own take on this:

For any optional feature/tool:

1. If you are convinced it won't help your business, ignore it.

2. If you think it MIGHT help your business, experiment with it.

3. If the experiment shows it doesn't help you, don't use it.

4. If the experiment shows it does help you, go ahead and use it.

Examples from my own business:

1. Promoted Listing Advanced: Ignore.

2. Coded Coupons: Experiment. 

ebay is huge, and there are a lot of different business models here, and ebay provides a lot of optional features and tools. The Vault?  I doubt I will ever use it. But , obviously, some sellers will benefit from it. Promoted Listings? Useful for some sellers, not a good fit for others. Much of the data provided by Seller Hub is much more useful for sellers of multi-quantity listings, but some is useful for sellers like me, with long tail one offs....

Use whatever you find works for you. 

[katzrul15]

Understood - I have never used it.  I guess for something HV or rarer, OOP, etc..........it just seems like money you are potentially throwing away on e-Bay for something that is not searchable.  

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@katzrul15  I think a lot of us sell single quantity listings. But if I sold multi quantity listings, and I experimented with a subtitle and found I could go from selling 50 $20 items a month from that listing to selling 100 $20 items a month from that listing, I wouldn't consider that $2.00 "thrown away". I'd consider it a very small price to pay for a lot of extra sales.

Like you, I don't use it. There might be a time when I will use it....I like knowing that the option is there.  

[joshuacbraun]

I want to thank you for your post. This is helpful info from a seller making 20+ sales per day, to see that a 3-4% promoted percentage is needed. I sell much less, usually with around 125 items listed and I promote all my items 2%. I usually sell about 25-30 items per month and it was less than that before promoting, so this has been beneficial to me.

I’m amazed after listing an item and searching for it that often, less than 20% of similar items are promoted at all, showing how few DIY sellers use this feature. I’ve experimented over the years with adjusting the promoted percentage up to 10% and I’ve watched YouTube videos on it, too. For me, this has resulted in a short term explosion of sales and then a reduction down to the 2% level or even less. My guess is this is to encourage promoting more than 10%, but that quickly becomes financially detrimental for me. Sticking with 2% for now.  Thanks again. Great post!

[zamo-zuan]

That's all and good in theory, but that's not truly how the system works.

As a #1 seller in our category, want to see the reality of what happens if you don't invest in promoted listings?

See that big drop? We did NOT stop promotions there. We went from our usual 3-4% to 1% to test things. 

Where we went up again afterwards? That's when we went back to our normal 3-4%.

• Investing less dropped our promoted impressions from ~270k to 38k. A drop of ~86%.
• Investing dropped our organic impressions from ~140k to 8k. A drop of ~94%.
• Investing the same exact amount after testing it lower led to lower values than we had before, as we lost the earlier momentum that was built over months. 
• Average promoted impressions after reinvesting was ~210k. A drop of ~23%.
• Average organic impressions after reinvesting was ~85k. A drop of ~40%.

Conclusions:

• Organic impressions (which are not supposed to be free impressions/not altered by paying) have a greater change than promoted impressions do if you do not invest.
• Investing only 1 or 2% isn't enough to trigger their systems. You must hit a certain level that seems to vary based on category.
• If you don't hit the "target level" in your category you will lost 80-90% or more of your total impressions.
• Simply experimenting in your category is dangerous, as you could permanently lose momentum and not regain what you lost. Meaning you're safest if you keep your investment and don't dare risk reducing.

I have to say, I don't think it can be fairly argued that saturation is the problem. Because in eBay's system, ORGANIC impressions are PAID IMPRESSIONS too. It's not saturation that's a problem, it's that you're not even given organic traffic unless you pay.

Now based on the above information, can you honestly say it's *really* a choice?

(PS: Random little note here, eBay is clearly aware of this. Because if you mouse over the bar it says "Organic impressions (promoted)". But if you view your other traffic pages, you'll find that it's the actual organic impressions. Meaning eBay tried to hide the fact that organic impressions are actually paid by adding that little promoted banner - which is a lie.)

[zamo-zuan]

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@joshuacbraun wrote:

I want to thank you for your post. This is helpful info from a seller making 20+ sales per day, to see that a 3-4% promoted percentage is needed. I sell much less, usually with around 125 items listed and I promote all my items 2%. I usually sell about 25-30 items per month and it was less than that before promoting, so this has been beneficial to me.

I’m amazed after listing an item and searching for it that often, less than 20% of similar items are promoted at all, showing how few DIY sellers use this feature. I’ve experimented over the years with adjusting the promoted percentage up to 10% and I’ve watched YouTube videos on it, too. For me, this has resulted in a short term explosion of sales and then a reduction down to the 2% level or even less. My guess is this is to encourage promoting more than 10%, but that quickly becomes financially detrimental for me. Sticking with 2% for now.  Thanks again. Great post!

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The percentage is something you sadly have to test. And as shown above, it's not safe to test as you may lose momentum. But you do need to find that "target" area for your category.

1% used to be fine, but then it plummeted. Then 2% used to be fine, then it plummeted. As eBay raises the "bar" in the category, you have to hit that target level. If you're below target, you'll get almost no traffic. If you clear it, you'll get more traffic.

Another random note - once you're above target, investing more does NOT raise the bar more! Think of it like a switch. Either you're investing enough to flick the switch up, or you're not. 

Also, using the "eBay recommendations" leads to temporary gains and then drops as well.

Just find that target and you'll be set. And be aware they may change it, as I had covered here, and eBay claimed it was a "test': https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Potential-problem-with-Promoted-Listings-impressions/td-p/3121...

(Another note as you can see on that page, organic impressions were NOT always altered by promotions. This was a change they made some time last year.)

[shafern-6847]

yes.. your correct

[vintagecraze50]

I guess this also depends on what your competition is doing right? If they raise the bar, then yours are going to go way down, Correct?

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@zamo-zuan First, just so I'm clear, we are only talking about PL Standard, correct? 

I do not have enough information to get into a discussion about your specific graph, but do want to discuss this:

 "Because if you mouse over the bar it says "Organic impressions (promoted)". But if you view your other traffic pages, you'll find that it's the actual organic impressions."

The traffic graph for ebay on the Advertising Dashboard was incorrect for a long time, a point I made repeatedly to ebay. At some point, they finally (and quietly, without ever admitting it had been wrong) corrected this.

The graph has always STATED that the organic impressions shown in the graph are: 

"The number of times your listings have appeared in an organic placement (i.e. not sponsored) on any eBay site.

Data is only for items in active promoted listings campaigns for the time period you have selected."

However, for a long time, this is NOT what ebay was actually showing. ebay was actually showing ALL organic traffic, including impressions for items that were NOT part of the PL campaign. 

The error was obvious if you ended a campaign and went a couple days with NO campaign. The graph would show a flatlined "PL" line, but would show organic listing numbers that matched the number shown in the regular traffic report. 

Now, if I end a campaign and have NO listings in a PL campaign, BOTH lines are flatlined (as they should be).

So, let's say I'm running a PL campaign. I have 1000 listings in my store, but I only include 250 listings in the PL campaign. The impressions I'm now seeing in the graph are ONLY for the 250 listings in the campaign. The 750 listings that are NOT part of the campaign are not counted as "organic" on the graph. 

I'm sure you know this, but for those who might not: When you run a PL campaign, any item that is part of your campaign might be seen as a PL, or it might be seen as organic. That is why ebay shows lines for both in the Advertising graph. So, before ebay fixed the graph, in the example I gave, ebay was showing me organic impressions for ALL 1000 listings, even though only 250 were part of the campaign. NOW ebay is showing me----correctly---only the 250 that are part of the campaign.

(Of course, IF you are running a campaign with ALL of your listings in the PL campaign, I would expect the organic numbers would match the organic numbers in the main Traffic Report Impressions graph.) 

I don't know if I explained this very well, but I hope it makes sense.

[siamjane8]

"Comparing to the old days (before promoted listings) we used to be able to get enough of a margin to survive AND provide better service to our customers. Now eBay is eating the margin that used to be invested in customer service, and our margins are even lower because of it. 

Key point here, with their promoted listings implementation, you're at a fraction of the impressions you used to get for free unless you invest. People who don't invest effectively got their numbers decreased, and to get them back you need to invest more. But now you're paying for what you used to get for free.

And the most frustrating part about it is the customer gets NOTHING out of this. They're actually just paying more than they used to since the prices increased from having to increase the price. "

Spot on @zamo-zuan - Although I might add that the impressions were not free before promoted listings. That is what we paid our FVF for- site visibility and potential for sales....... With PL, ebay basically devalued the FVF and charges more if you "really" want to get impressions.  Its unfortune but as you mentioned it seems like they are actually suppressing organic results now if you do not promote. Almost criminal but I'm sure the TOS is rock solid.   In either event PL are not good for the seller, buyer, or the platform- just short term profit for shareholders that buy and sell on a whim. I can all but guarantee there is not a CEO out there with the guts to actually make ebay great again by focusing on platform growth instead of short term gains.

[golfdreams]

Agree 100%! I use promoted feature for some of my listings generally ones that are of higher value so I'm not going to miss a few bucks if the item sells from the promoted listing. For smaller value items no I won't use it as it's not worth the cost. I sell mainly sports trading cards and some memorabilia which don't really need a lot of advertising much of the time, they sell themselves! 

So yes take your time and evaluate what features help you the best and give you the most bang for your buck! 

[siamjane8]

@zamo-zuan 

By definition, organic (unpaid) traffic isn't intended to be altered by promoted traffic.

Isn't that the truth! The FVF is tied to a service that they have severely limited- organic impressions

      Ebay has clearly struggled with search engine algorithms for many years- moving towards Google's rejected Cassini AI search engine was a huge step backwards- now the whole search has been built on a set of code that GOOGLE deemed a failed version and sold to Ebay!

     That being said- every additional query or demand that they put on the search engine such as PL, interpreting additional cookies, constant item specific changes, general tinkering- has made it one of if the the most irrelevant search engine on the internet- forcing its users to go off site 90% of the time to find active items on ebay !!

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@zamo-zuan Well,  just looked at some of my numbers, and it looks like I might need to go back to the drawing board. I thought ebay had fixed this, but comparing some random dates from my last campaign with the Traffic Report, I am seeing the same number of PL impressions (as I would expect) but the organic are higher in the Traffic report....either I did not have all my listings included in the last campaign (I thought I did, but I'm not 100% sure) or there is something else going on here.

Sigh.

Guess I'll have to waste time running some tests over the next couple weeks, and maybe badgering ebay for more info LOL

[glasser]

I agree, don't spend what you don't have too. First apply all the best practices you can before you pay for add ons. and then as others have said, experiment to see if anything increases sales, shortens listing time, yileds a better price, etc.

I know this may sound crazy to some, but eBay wants its sellers to be successful. That's the best strategy they can have. Not saying they don't get in the way of that, because they do, but I believe they believe that's true.

[zamo-zuan]

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@vintagecraze50 wrote:

I guess this also depends on what your competition is doing right? If they raise the bar, then yours are going to go way down, Correct?

---

Not exactly. There's more than enough sponsored slots on a full search page for all the sellers that want to invest.

The drops are not related to what competitors were doing. In the thread I made regarding a sudden drop for PL impressions, eBay was open about it being a change they did, and specifically called it a "test". The outcome of this was simply that you had to invest 2-3% more than you did prior in order to get the same amount of impressions you had in the past.

This is besides the fact that we're aware of which competitors do and don't invest in to PL as well as PLA. That comes with the territory of knowing the cheapest manufacturer prices available,  as well as other sellers placement in regular search/sponsored listings. Also, the sellers at the top of a category have a working relationship with each other. There's only a couple competitors that invest as much (or more than) we do. Long story short, based on a competitors prices, we can immediately tell if they're a manufacturer, importer, or drop shipper. And comparing their search placement (sponsored and organic) quickly lets us know how much they're investing (and of course we can see the pricing differences to reflect their investment).

It's also been well documented that the "peer" numbers are falsified as well. People have posted mistakenly made duplicate listings and they would have different peer recommendations. When relisting some of our items, we've noticed the same thing. 

[zamo-zuan]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@zamo-zuan First, just so I'm clear, we are only talking about PL Standard, correct? 

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Yeah. PLA likely has similar results, but there's only 2 sellers in our category who use PLA, and you don't see these drastic drops without it, so PLA actually is optional.

Normal PL isn't designed in a way that it's really an option, though, since ~80%+ of your organic traffic relies on it.