Promotional listings

[ozstockman]

This is about promoting your listings not about free listings. eBay may use the same word for both terms so I have to clarify it just to explain what I am talking about below.

So I decided to create promotions for my listings. Quite a strange process where you need to select listings, then download a csv file and set discounts rates for each item. When it is done you need to upload the file back to eBay.

I do not think it can be called as discount rates because this is what I believe you will pay to eBay if any promotional item is sold and it does not apply any discounts to the actual item price, it just creates duplicates for promotional items. Anyway I did it for more than 90 items in my store and started it three days ago 

I have got over 2000 impressions for my items, 21 clicks and no items sold for three bloody days. 21 clicks and no sale is ok, as I am more used to 3% conversion rate so I would have to wait to at least another 10-20 clicks.

However what scared me was I could not sell any of my regular items for the whole three days which was way beyond normal. I usually sell at least $30-50 worth of items everyday. So no sales at all for three days in a row it just cannot be right especially with extra people looking at my items through promotion running. I had to turn it off yesterday as nobody knows what damage it doing to all your listings.

The position of the promotional items where weird, they were somewhere in the middle of search result and they look absolutely the same as any other regular listing. The only difference they had small "Sponsored" text somewhere next to it

Sure I have not lost anything in terms of fees as no sales from promotions means you are no paying for them but they fact that this promotion seemed to stop all my regular sales make me thinking that it is better not to run this weird feature at all. 

If anyone have a better experience with it please let me know. It may be just coincidence but it is a weird one.

[davewil1964]

I decided not to use them when they first came out.

I have a set volume discount applied to all my store listings, through SMP Markdown Manager. I don't know whether that would suit you, but it is an option.

[digital*ghost]

The promoted listings like those mean (in a nutshell) the listing appears in promotional spots on eBay (if relevant to the buyer's search) and you pay the nominated percentage to eBay as an additional fee if someone buys the item after clicking on a promoted ad. 

Promoted listings should appear in search results twice - one normal listing and one sponsored listing, and it can also appear in the sidebar on search results. In the US they've started getting rid of some third party advertising placements and replacing them with promoted listings, so they may do that here too. 

I've never used them myself, so can't tell you how effective they are, but I think they would have some pros and cons that makes them effective in some cases, and ineffective in others, depending on how saturated your categories are. 

Promotions Manager is where you can create purchase discounts for buyers. eBay now seems to have a search filter that buyers can use to only show items with offers, I don't know how often it's used though (I've never used it). 

[ozstockman]

I just wanted to try them to see what good they can do in terms of sales. It looks like they do completelly opposite dropping your sales.

I have just checked traffic report and it says my conversion rate is 25% on ebay and it seems to be more right than through adwodrs where I get 3-5% top.

And after I cancelled promotions I had a buyer who bought two of my items. I do not know if it prooves anything but it is all very strange.

I was incorrect a bit saying that I did not sell anything since I started promotion. I had one sale but buyer asked me to cancel within 10 minutes after it was sold. This sale was not shown as sold through promotional listings though.

Markdown manager works and I have used it before. However it does not make any sence on eBay now as for buyers to see your sale they need to see it in search results. And that's a problem with thouthands item listed and your discounted items are shown somewhere in the middle of this big pile. And even if it is on the page buyers looking at you cannot clearly see it is on sale. So in my opinion you are not convincing anyone to buy because you have a discount, you just giving discounts to those who was going to buy it anyway. 

So without any place on ebay to advertise your sale markdown manager seems to be waste of time and money. At least before they put discount on an item image and it was noticable but they do not do it anymore.

[davewil1964]

You could be right.

From my point of view, I definitely get multiple sales because of the MM. I am not competing against cheap Chinese junk, though. And I suspect my buyers aren't using 'best' match.

[davewil1964]

I have no idea how I managed to attach that pic. It is one of my books, but is irrelevant to this discussion. Sorry

[imastawka]

And there I was, thinking you were all cryptic and stuff  

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 I'll join you

[ozstockman]

Ok, one good and one bad thing came from it

I will start with a good one,

After I cancelled my promotion on the last Sunday(13th of August) all my sales went back to normal. I would says I even got some boost in sales. Sold a bit more than usual and had a lot eBay users contacting me for a quote. So even  though these promotions look like they are somehow damaging your item positions cancelling them brings everything back. That was a good thing.

Now a bad one, I went to check the promotion page in my ebay today and I was surprised to see that I sold one item with this promotion on 14th of August and I was charged add rate fee on top of the final value fee for that item. What the *beep* i thought to myself. I stopped promotion on 13.08.17, all impressions stopped on 13.08.17, sold something next day and I was charged  with an add fee?

This actually was not to much of surprise for me because I read some story from another eBay user who cancelled promotion but eBay was still charging him  add fees even after his promotion stopped. This story was a reason why I went to the promotion page today to check it was stopped and they were not charging me add fees. 

I have called eBay, they have apologized and refunded back that extra fee. However since it happened to one user and it happened to me there is definitely a bug in eBay logic. I would recommend to everybody who has ever tried promotions to check their promotion page and all fees in their account just to make sure your promotions did not hit the same bug after being stopped and eBay did not charge you ad rate for nothing.

[lyndal1838]

I am an experienced buyer and responder on these boards so I knew about Promoted listings but I was surprised when speaking to 2 very new members today to find out that they are suspicious of Promotional listings.

Neither one could really explain why but it may help explain why your Promotional listings were not a runaway success.  If 2 members are suspicious you can be sure there are many more out there in ebayland.