@siamjane8 Like a lot of data ebay provides, this might be more useful for sellers who function more like traditional retailers, with multi-quantity listings, most stuff bought at wholesale, retail arbitrage, etc., and stuff that, generally , is not way out at the end of the "long tail"
The kind of stuff many of us here sell is single quantity ,long tail used or vintage sourced from estate sales, flea markets etc. Lots more variables with what we sell, and so the data ebay provides is often less useful.
I don't like the new way of calculating PLS (on total price) and I'm not happy about the increase in the minimum from 1 to 2%. But I continue to use it (although at a reduced rate from what I had usually been using.)
Why?
I want increased sales velocity, and I do think PLS can help with that (although, as you say, there is no way to know whether an item would have sold without it or not).
How does PLS help me with sales velocity? Most of my stuff probably shows up on the first page of search results without PLS IF the buyer has used a narrow enough search term. But it's long tail stuff, which means---usually--- not a lot of people are searching for it in the first place. So I don't think getting the top spot with PLS makes much difference for me. I suspect the real value with PLS is that ebay shows my PLS items on many other pages and I think that's where most of my PLS sales come from: In other words, many of them are more like impulse buys....buyer wasn't searching for exactly what I'm selling, but when they look at something else and see my item, they decide: "Oooh, I like that..." and "click", I get a sale. If it's a true impulse buy, they don't do a full search to see if my price is lowest, they just buy it because there it is.
So, I do see value in it for me. If I can keep the fee low enough.
Fortunately, I have good margins on most of my stuff, so I'm willing to make the trade off, same as I'm willing to send out offers to watchers. I guess one way to look at it is to forget that ebay is getting it as a cut. Try to think of it this way: $40.00 item. If I'm willing to offer that at, say, $37.50 because I'll still make a decent profit, then I can also sell that $40 item for full price and reduce my cut by paying ebay $2.50 for PLS...either way, I'm making less and I'm willing to do it because I have strong enough margins. (Of course, the tighter the margins, the more difficult this becomes).
It's all about the margins. It's one thing if I paid $1.00 for that $40.00 item, it's a whole other thing if I paid $30.00 for it.
Each seller has to do some math and figure out what works (or doesn't work)
