You are awesome Pete... this was such a HUGE EYE-OPENER. I agree with you. It's so exciting to have the proper knowledge so I can make "correctly" informed decisions for my reselling business versus just shooting arrows in the dark. Trust me you're not an idiot -- in my observation you are the most knowledgeable in the business and I greatly look forward to all your videos. Carry on... I'll be watching & learning! Thank you.
You explain it better than I! Stop Promoted Listings! or only 2.5% if you feel like you have to. But no matter what your better (more popular) items will sell better, faster, more.
Pete, this has to be one of my favourite videos from you. very informative and an eye opener about pronoted listings. I nearls spat my coffee out when you nearly said a rude word beginning with the letter F!
Good job.... you are very smart. I don't think you are an idiot. I think you are a genius and I have listened to this 3 times....I think you need to dumb it down for me 😊😊ty
Thank you for the great video. You explained a lot plus I was laughing too which is always good. Now I can’t wait for next Fridays video. Everyone remember math is math.
4:13 100% correct Pete! i remember those days wow that is a blast from the past! yes it was the wild west regarding advertising back then! i did a lot of affiliate websites where you paid google to send people to your site then there would be Items but they were affiliate items for other companies they buyer could actually checkout right on your site and you would get a commission for the sale! very very easy money back then!
I for sure got some aspects wrong in promoted listing knowledge. I however, agree... people are growing a reliance on them and it clouds their ability to understand how their business works. Maybe in the future, I can review the process on a hybrid promoted listing policy that I implement in my store. This would be based on the factors we already know play a part in the algorithm such as quality of listing and sell through. Great video and keep them coming. The community needs your understanding!!
I started getting suspicious of promoted listings when I realized that ALL of my sales were from promoted listings. Zero organic. How do we know if our sale was really from promoted? Maybe they just say they are ALL from promoted. Who's to say? Our word against eBay. No proof.
My man! Good stuff! Still too many variables to consider overall, but I like your style. You should talk about why buyer behaviour makes PL worthless and profits only eBay.
Loved your video, happy it popped into my feed and yes I have now subscribed. I don’t promote, and still sell stuff! I tried it and had 0 sales, so agree why give them more money. Promoting is not the magic pill to sell stuff!!
Thank you for this video! I'm looking forwards to next one. I find PL like a gang of bullies that ask you for money to use the slide or the swings in a park. The playground is free to walk through and enjoyed by everybody but these bullies [ PL] think they can own anything. You choose to pay them to get the "joy" , you choose to go to another park [ other platforms or even a physical stall in a market] or stay at home getting the " joy" from watching TV [ close down shop and build up a new business else where]. I'm sure people don't see these options and prefer to get bullied but I won't judge their circumstances to stay in the game. All the best to you!
People (including me) have just believed over the years, that we can get more sales, extra sales, additional sales, using promoted listings. Today some of them can't sell anything without PL, and call it pay to play. Which is not true in my opinion.
hey pete! thanks for the video. I may not be understanding your point correctly but I think the "junk impressions" with the promoted ads within listings is a real thing. Maybe not for all categories, but for clothing it definitely is. I sell clothing but I also like to buy clothing and I notice when I search and filter down to my size, once I start clicking on listings, I may see the item I'm looking for in the similar item ads- but once I click on it I see the item is a different size. I've almost accidentally bought wrong size items because of this. It's really confusing for the buyer. And probably worse for the sellers, it's probably messing up their sales conversion rate because the algorithm thought I was a potential buyer for that item and clicked away because there was an issue with the listing, when really there was nothing wrong besides it not being my size. It's 100% a junk impression if they're showing items to a buyer that isn't the size they searched because that is never going to lead to a sale. Ebay's AI seems to not understand the concept of sizes and also not the difference between waist and inseam because frequently I'll filter by waist size and find items with that number inseam but not waist (for example, searching waist 32 and getting pants that are 30 x 32). As a buyer I often find myself spending more to buy the item on other platforms (recently I've been buying instead from poshmark, mercari, and thredup) just because I can find the item quickly, buy it and move on with my life. I stopped promoting a lot of my items and my sales are actually better than in the summer when I was promoting everything up to 6%. I've seen some clothing sellers in the US even promoting up to 10% and not getting good sales. I think this may have worked before but not with the AI ebay is implementing, sorry but their AI is not very smart. In my case it would definitely make sense because most of the items I sell are pants and jeans and search seems to be most dysfunctional for those categories because of the issues I mentioned. Sorry if this comment is too long, hopefully it makes sense.
I think the reason for this is customer’s selecting multiple sizes in the side bar. Because I do this when looking for items because I might fit a medium or a large depending on the item. So possibly the ai has learned this and recommends something that they think might fit based on previous customer searches or sales. Also if you noticed they have implemented add your size option so that I can be saved. Definitely makes it hard to comp items but maybe preferable to customer.
1. There's no such thing as garbage impression, if you can turn it into sale. I do this many times a week. 2. 100% is a very strong word. Ifonly one is not junk, than it's not 100% any more. 3. I'll talk about promoting/not promoting in next videos. Also, how to promote very low, and still get sales. 4. In my opinion, and I think Stoic Reseller has a similar one, Ebay's AI is not real AI.
Thanks for sharing Pete. Always appreciate your input. I came to the same conclusions most don't understand PL.It's a shame that a lot are giving away their hard earned money unecessarily.
Thank you for this explainer Pete. In the US Ebay has put the "halo effect" into play with promoted listings. Customers who click on a PL and then locate, click on and purchase a non-PL from that same seller create a halo effect for that non-PL listing and any others from that seller. The non-PL listing purchased will be charged the PL rate attributed to the PL which the buyer first encountered and clicked open. Second thought - I have long wondered whether Ebay purposefully made some changes that predictably produced dramatically negative impact for some seller sales in 2023.. The off-the-cliff drop in sales for affected accounts would predictably drive desperate sellers to get on the PL train at increasingly higher percentage and make Ebay money in a year with soft consumer spending and in spite of buyer loss for the platform. By the way, you made a great pelican impression! 😂😂😂
Are you 100% sure with that halo effect, as I had a sale on Wednesday, 9PM. Two items, same buyer, one item is promoted, one is organic. It may be different terms and conditions. I literally can't believe in that. They are squeezing us out to the bone. There's a massive run on PL lately. Fees went up dramaticaly. I mean they've tripled at least. People who were paying 2-3% are now ready to pay 10%. Definitely, there's something to it. I don't know if ebay would be evil enough to do it deliberately, but you can expect the worst out of them, so who knows. Maybe if accunt was promoting high enough, they've tried to squeez them to pay even more, by restricting traffic. Tbh, I don't like conspiracy theories, but who knows.
@@polish_pete_ukI tried to post a link but my comment was removed- but yes there was an official announcement by ebay about the halo effect. you can probably find it if you google. I don't know if ebay UK has it but US definitely does.
Great insight. I’m only a tiny reseller with less than 100 items at a time but I still promote most (not all things) at 2%. I always just thought promoted listings created a faster sale so better cash flow as such rather than necessarily creating extra sales. I am experimenting with a higher promoted listing rate for items that just won’t move but am not really confident that will work. I will look forward to the next instalment. Thanks for the content.
OMG I am on the floor laughing, Pete, you are so funny, this is better than Comedy Central, and yes, you are sooo right about it all with promoted listings, I proved that to myself after a nuclear store reset, never went back to promoting high or using the Dynamic campaign (another of eBay's jokes AKA self promoted hyperinflation, since John did 12%, Marc must do 13%, so Martha might as well do 14%, hopefully you can do a video about the joke that the dynamic rate is soon!!!) God Bless:)
I am very proud of you, Patricia, that you understand how it works, and what causes PL "inflation". Good job! Spot on! This is exactly why we are paying 10x more that we've paid 3-5 years ago, for better results.
I turned off my promoted listings on November 21st. It took 3 days for the impressions to normalize. My internal page views are up and so is my click through rate. And that's really what you want.
Awesome. Great informative video. A couple of things might be different for us in USA. Minor points. My promoted plan is getting rid of dead stock so I monitor impressions either daily or weekly. I don’t change the fee amount I change title. Here in the USA we do get charged a promoted fee if the buyer buys more than one item or if buyer buys a different item from the promoted item that brought him to the store or item. It has been that way for several months now. I promote high because I am selling either saturated or not popular stuff. After most of this is gone I will rethink promoted again. I haven’t listed anything new since may. I manage to sell about 75-100 old listings a month. I am enjoying doing this so I can really dive into how to use ai to my advantage. It will be nice if I can eliminate promoted just like you mentioned. I still have issues selling saturated and popular items. Those are what I am trying to figure out why. Lowering promoted would be a disaster for them right now. I know being a low volume seller is part of it but it was the same when I was selling 10-15 a day and promoting less. I will keep working to figure it out. I look forward to your next informative video. I appreciate your knowledge.
You can't find more saturated market, that I'm on. Cheap ladies clothing. Run of a mill. Plenty of them on Ebay. My average promoted fee is below 4%. About 25% my sales comes from promoted listings.
@@polish_pete_uk I know,. I sell mens clothing and I am in California where everything is stupid expensive. I have been priced out of buying used clothing unless I can get it half off. I will continue selling but at a much reduced return. I hope to get promoted way down too. I hope to start sourcing again in January. I can’t give up. I need eBay to survive. Businesses are closing here everyday. I live less than an hour from eBay headquarters. Terrible things are happening here. I look forward to your next video.
Wait for next videos. I'll show you how to save money on promoted listings. My averege promoted fee is below 4%, and only 20-25% of my sales are from promoted listings.
What an insightful analysis. I definitely believe the "bay" carries out withholds listings. I see it for myself. Capitalism minus reasonable ethics in my opinion. 😮😮😮😮
Yes, I constantly see 13, 15, 17 when I'm bothered to check it. Its ebay way to pull it up. For sure there will be somebody who'll believe in that. Even if he or she says oh 17 is too much but I'll go 12. Even that is what gives ebay extra money and pumps the rate up.
@@polish_pete_uk the problem as I see it is that it i potentially causing Ebay to become more expensive for buyers. If you had an actual shop and the landlord more than doubled your rent like Ebay are proposing then of course your prices will need to be increased a lot and at the expense of your customers. There are those who pay high % but charge high amounts as it needs to be paid for by the buyer but there are also those who have no clue what they are doing and promoting very high while selling at average to low prices and literally paying a third in fees. Promoting that high without a big price increase is not sustainable. For those who do promote high and charge high it only works on a minority % of buyers who do as they are told like sheep. Other buyers who recognise that the price is way too high will just by pass the listing. The seller will then not be in a position where they cant do a best offer at a lower price because they've needed to sell at that much higher price point. Promoted listings are a cynical cash grab by Ebay since day one behind the smoke screen of bringing in outside traffic. Ebay would do better to encourage people to sell at lower prices and keep fees low which would benefit buyers and increase sales volume with more appealing prices. Ebay have things set up where by the minority of huge shops probably paying very high % are taking most of the sales from promoted. An example such as the top 5% of huge used clothing shops gaining say 70% of sales as an imaginary example. It would be better for us sellers to sell say 10 clothing items with the price at or just below average with a low % than one priced sky high at 18%. If Ebay had wanted more fee revenue they should have just been honest from the start and just made everything say a new flat rate of 15% plus the VAT = 18%. Yes, unpopular but a cost that could potentially be adapted to and just get rid of this promoted BS which is making sellers miserable.
The other problem with promoted listings is when people who understand that they must increase their price a lot when promoting double digits then get over exposure. Page views and impressions go up but conversion rate and click thru go down which is at odds with the very reason for promoting. The algorithm is on one hand pushing the listing more while also penalising it because the price is too high with either people looking but not buying due to the price or the listing being pitched inappropriately to buyers who are not even looking for that item. When people increase the price to pay for the extra promotion they have to increase it even more because the FVF are also on a sliding scale so you have two taxes independent of each other based on %, a bit like paying the same monthly variable rate mortgage two two different banks for the same house except both the banks are Ebay. Ebay cannot expect people to absorb extra costs yet keep their prices the same. When I sell I'm looking for the profit element of the sale to be in the 40-50% zone. Those who promote high but dont increase their prices are probably making only 20-30% of the transaction in profit which in my opinion is too low and as you still have all the other costs of running the business on top of this.
16:50 It's not either or. Your listings show up in both. I see it all the time. Nobody would promote if it removed your listing from organically being found.
Where have I said that it'll remove your listing from organic search? English is not my first language, so I apologise, if I haven't said that clearly. Please, do me a favour, go to fall 2019 update, and read it for yourself. It took me 7 seconds to find related page in google. I'll quote it for you: 'Starting in September 2019, we’ll no longer show duplicate promoted and non-promoted listings on the search results page. If you are using Promoted Listings, only one of your listings, either promoted or non-promoted will appear in a given set of search results, giving buyers a cleaner, more relevant search experience.' Is that good enough evidence for you, mate?
sellers should not concentrate on impressions they need to concentrate on page views (this is when a buyer clicks on your listing) the more of these you have with no sales the lower your conversion rate goes down you want them to click and buy not click and leave
How to get views without impressions? It's like saying, mothers should not concentrate on learning babies to walk, they should concentrate on learning them to run.
False. If you could have 50,000 impressions(plus whatever views they bring) or 300 views from a specific search from a buyer interested in the same items you own, which would you rather have??? Obviously the 300 views. Random impressions are virtually meaningless, -which is why eBay gives them out like hotcakes. I only want views from buyers who are searching for my exact item, -which is why I don't promote. Only sell stuff that people are specifically looking for and you won't need to promote ever.@@polish_pete_uk
Pete I hope you will answer a question of mine. If eBay is capping page view traffic and sales on a daily/weekly/monthly/location based formula to "spread the wealth" how do promoted listings help? They obviously help eBay make more revenue but for a reseller who is capped to a certain amount of eBay traffic visibility and sales opportunities the obvious answer would be "no" to promotions. There is no real benefit to the reseller because the reseller can't grow inside the eBay controlled and manipulated marketplace with thresholds/caps in place. Do you agree or disagree here?
I can't say anything about location based traffic capping, as I don't see anything like that in Europe. In terms of daily/weekly/monthly cappig. It's based on amount and type of item you have in your shop, nothing else. Unless you've got another evidence. What do you mean by grow? If you mean number of items in your shop, than it's not growth, it's storage expansion.
Great video. I'm going to listen to this again later. I've been doing so much experimenting and while of course I want to make money, I enjoy the analytics analysis too. Number one of course is an item customer wants and priced correctly as you mentioned. But understanding promoting essential yes. So many factors! For sure you can't list and forget anymore. I appreciate how much you put into this video. I was on the corporate side for years so I can put myself in ebays shoes. We have to look at what they want in order to have our wins. I agree with what you say about not really pay to play. Know the rules. To me its like sports or chess or whatever. Figure out your opponent and just do what you have to do to win.
They will say whatever you want to hear. If regulator will not force them, they won't allow it. They'll say "soon, maybe, of course" but nbothing will happen. And regulator has pissed on me and my complaint. I'll try to talk to my MP next time I'm in UK.
Promoted Listings is more about 'Control' than Money. How many millions of dollars has eBay lost in the last 9 months from Sellers leaving or Cross-Listing? Eventually the only sellers left on eBay will be obedient sheep willing to chase whatever carrot eBay dangles in front of them,...and when eventually 'everyone' is promoting...at the same rate...essentially nobody is 'actually' promoting, and more sellers will leave. Ebay is also losing millions of dollars from buyers who are confused by the broken search results and sponsored spam results, -and they end up not coming back. I sold 21 items yesterday, and 22 items today,....3300 item store,...no promoted listings. Your judgement might be skewed because you specialize in $10 - $20 clothing items, -which definitely need some kind of promoting. I end-and-sell-similar and it still works.
I hop you don't claim that end and sell similar works as it's worked a year ago, as this is simply not true, and has been confirmaed by multiple tests. If I'm skewed towards anything, then entire youtube is not even skewed, it's twisted. I can see pros and cons. I can see how to use PL to my advantage. I know how to get organic sales. 75% my sales are organic, and average PL rate is below 4%.
End-and-sell-similar works for anybody who sorts by newest-to-oldest, -and it also helps for about 4 days. I sell $50-$100 clothing items,...but apparently if you're selling cheaper items like $20 Old Navy jeans with 1,000 results, maybe end-sell-similar doesn't really work.@@polish_pete_uk
Your an Ebay Fan boy good luck to you with promoted listings, you deserve to pay more. The truth is this, if you were selling IN DEMAND ITEMS and your titles were correct YOU WOULDNT NEED PROMOTED LISTINGS. Thats the facts! This weeds out the sheep from the goats. Go ahead, pay Ebay more money. For those of us who can SOURCE IN DEMAND items and construct a decent title we are laughing all the way to the bank.
Do you feel better now? Thanks for your comment. Nothing better than piece of hate at 6am. Tell me, smart boy, what if I can't source better items? Tell me! If you can't tell me, restrain yourself from trolling.
@@polish_pete_uk Not trolling just voicing my opinion. And you hate that! So if someone doesnt agree with Mr Pete you call them a troll and hater? GTFO!
I don't know why RUclipsrs have taken so long to finally get it that Promoted listings is garbage and only Ebay profits from it. However, there is one way to use it to your advantage and that is to only promote a few items per listing categories preferably no more than 1% of what you have in those categories. You just want the Promoted stuff to be an ad to get someone into your store and not to sell other promoted items in it.
There are many ways of using promoted listings to your advantage. I'll be talking about it in next videos. 25% of my sales come from promoted listings. I pay on average below 4% in PL fees.
Ebay is US based. All I know about US is money money money... and nothing else matters... to quote Abba and Metallica. But, what do I know? I'm an ignorant, and never been to US in my life.
@polish_pete_uk I don't live in the USA however if ebay carry on with their arrogance like a lot of multinational American companies they will end up with eggs on their faces.
@polish_pete_uk I'm a full time reseller and have stopped and started promoted listings several times over the last 12 months and each time over the first few days see a small reduction in sales and within a week see a 30% to 40% drop off. Restart the promoted listings and lo and behold within as little as 12 hours sales are back up to where they where previously. I'm not saying that promoted listings are the answer for poor service or crap listings or bad pricing but if you are providing a good service, you are top rated, you use key words and your standards are where they should be, then promoted listings give you the edge over similar sellers who don't promote.
Do you run your business on week to week basis? Nobody says that after switching off PL, your organic sales will explode. On a contrary, algo will push you down. Why? SO, you switch your PL back, which is exactly what you've done. Wait for my next videos. DO not switch them off all in one go. Wean yourself slowly. Start dropping down % rate, switch off some listings, when you end and sell similar. Just do it effing slowly!
"squeeze our balls so we can sing falsetto" has to be the best analogy i've heard in a long time. nice work. appreciate the video.
You are awesome Pete... this was such a HUGE EYE-OPENER. I agree with you. It's so exciting to have the proper knowledge so I can make "correctly" informed decisions for my reselling business versus just shooting arrows in the dark. Trust me you're not an idiot -- in my observation you are the most knowledgeable in the business and I greatly look forward to all your videos. Carry on... I'll be watching & learning! Thank you.
Pete can i just say you are the most genuine and informative ebay RUclipsr of our time ❤
You explain it better than I! Stop Promoted Listings! or only 2.5% if you feel like you have to. But no matter what your better (more popular) items will sell better, faster, more.
Great video Pete! Your one of the most honest resellers on the RUclipss 😊
Pete, this has to be one of my favourite videos from you. very informative and an eye opener about pronoted listings. I nearls spat my coffee out when you nearly said a rude word beginning with the letter F!
I get aggrevated quite easily. Sorry.
I'm not offended at all, I get aggravated too and say naughty words!
@@polish_pete_uk
Good job.... you are very smart. I don't think you are an idiot. I think you are a genius and I have listened to this 3 times....I think you need to dumb it down for me 😊😊ty
Thank you for the great video. You explained a lot plus I was laughing too which is always good. Now I can’t wait for next Fridays video. Everyone remember math is math.
You can't fool the numbers. 2+2 is always 4. No matter in which country, planet, universe.
4:13 100% correct Pete! i remember those days wow that is a blast from the past! yes it was the wild west regarding advertising back then! i did a lot of affiliate websites where you paid google to send people to your site then there would be Items but they were affiliate items for other companies they buyer could actually checkout right on your site and you would get a commission for the sale! very very easy money back then!
I for sure got some aspects wrong in promoted listing knowledge. I however, agree... people are growing a reliance on them and it clouds their ability to understand how their business works. Maybe in the future, I can review the process on a hybrid promoted listing policy that I implement in my store. This would be based on the factors we already know play a part in the algorithm such as quality of listing and sell through.
Great video and keep them coming. The community needs your understanding!!
This makes SO MUCH SENSE! Thank you for the insight.
I started getting suspicious of promoted listings when I realized that ALL of my sales were from promoted listings. Zero organic. How do we know if our sale was really from promoted? Maybe they just say they are ALL from promoted. Who's to say? Our word against eBay. No proof.
Like I've said. it's either or. If ebay can show your listing as promoted, why wouldn't they?
My man! Good stuff! Still too many variables to consider overall, but I like your style. You should talk about why buyer behaviour makes PL worthless and profits only eBay.
Loved your video, happy it popped into my feed and yes I have now subscribed. I don’t promote, and still sell stuff! I tried it and had 0 sales, so agree why give them more money. Promoting is not the magic pill to sell stuff!!
Thank you for this video! I'm looking forwards to next one.
I find PL like a gang of bullies that ask you for money to use the slide or the swings in a park. The playground is free to walk through and enjoyed by everybody but these bullies [ PL] think they can own anything. You choose to pay them to get the "joy" , you choose to go to another park [ other platforms or even a physical stall in a market] or stay at home getting the " joy" from watching TV [ close down shop and build up a new business else where].
I'm sure people don't see these options and prefer to get bullied but I won't judge their circumstances to stay in the game.
All the best to you!
People (including me) have just believed over the years, that we can get more sales, extra sales, additional sales, using promoted listings. Today some of them can't sell anything without PL, and call it pay to play. Which is not true in my opinion.
Excellent video, Pete! I found this to be very helpful! Have a great day. Wishing you lots of sales.
hey pete! thanks for the video. I may not be understanding your point correctly but I think the "junk impressions" with the promoted ads within listings is a real thing. Maybe not for all categories, but for clothing it definitely is. I sell clothing but I also like to buy clothing and I notice when I search and filter down to my size, once I start clicking on listings, I may see the item I'm looking for in the similar item ads- but once I click on it I see the item is a different size. I've almost accidentally bought wrong size items because of this. It's really confusing for the buyer. And probably worse for the sellers, it's probably messing up their sales conversion rate because the algorithm thought I was a potential buyer for that item and clicked away because there was an issue with the listing, when really there was nothing wrong besides it not being my size. It's 100% a junk impression if they're showing items to a buyer that isn't the size they searched because that is never going to lead to a sale.
Ebay's AI seems to not understand the concept of sizes and also not the difference between waist and inseam because frequently I'll filter by waist size and find items with that number inseam but not waist (for example, searching waist 32 and getting pants that are 30 x 32). As a buyer I often find myself spending more to buy the item on other platforms (recently I've been buying instead from poshmark, mercari, and thredup) just because I can find the item quickly, buy it and move on with my life.
I stopped promoting a lot of my items and my sales are actually better than in the summer when I was promoting everything up to 6%. I've seen some clothing sellers in the US even promoting up to 10% and not getting good sales. I think this may have worked before but not with the AI ebay is implementing, sorry but their AI is not very smart. In my case it would definitely make sense because most of the items I sell are pants and jeans and search seems to be most dysfunctional for those categories because of the issues I mentioned. Sorry if this comment is too long, hopefully it makes sense.
I think the reason for this is customer’s selecting multiple sizes in the side bar. Because I do this when looking for items because I might fit a medium or a large depending on the item. So possibly the ai has learned this and recommends something that they think might fit based on previous customer searches or sales. Also if you noticed they have implemented add your size option so that I can be saved. Definitely makes it hard to comp items but maybe preferable to customer.
1. There's no such thing as garbage impression, if you can turn it into sale. I do this many times a week.
2. 100% is a very strong word. Ifonly one is not junk, than it's not 100% any more.
3. I'll talk about promoting/not promoting in next videos. Also, how to promote very low, and still get sales.
4. In my opinion, and I think Stoic Reseller has a similar one, Ebay's AI is not real AI.
Thanks for sharing Pete. Always appreciate your input. I came to the same conclusions most don't understand PL.It's a shame that a lot are giving away their hard earned money unecessarily.
This was eye opening. Great video.
Thank you for this explainer Pete. In the US Ebay has put the "halo effect" into play with promoted listings. Customers who click on a PL and then locate, click on and purchase a non-PL from that same seller create a halo effect for that non-PL listing and any others from that seller. The non-PL listing purchased will be charged the PL rate attributed to the PL which the buyer first encountered and clicked open. Second thought - I have long wondered whether Ebay purposefully made some changes that predictably produced dramatically negative impact for some seller sales in 2023.. The off-the-cliff drop in sales for affected accounts would predictably drive desperate sellers to get on the PL train at increasingly higher percentage and make Ebay money in a year with soft consumer spending and in spite of buyer loss for the platform. By the way, you made a great pelican impression! 😂😂😂
Are you 100% sure with that halo effect, as I had a sale on Wednesday, 9PM. Two items, same buyer, one item is promoted, one is organic. It may be different terms and conditions. I literally can't believe in that. They are squeezing us out to the bone.
There's a massive run on PL lately. Fees went up dramaticaly. I mean they've tripled at least. People who were paying 2-3% are now ready to pay 10%. Definitely, there's something to it. I don't know if ebay would be evil enough to do it deliberately, but you can expect the worst out of them, so who knows. Maybe if accunt was promoting high enough, they've tried to squeez them to pay even more, by restricting traffic. Tbh, I don't like conspiracy theories, but who knows.
@@polish_pete_ukI tried to post a link but my comment was removed- but yes there was an official announcement by ebay about the halo effect. you can probably find it if you google. I don't know if ebay UK has it but US definitely does.
Great video Pete! 🤘
Excellent video and powerful message...
Great insight. I’m only a tiny reseller with less than 100 items at a time but I still promote most (not all things) at 2%. I always just thought promoted listings created a faster sale so better cash flow as such rather than necessarily creating extra sales. I am experimenting with a higher promoted listing rate for items that just won’t move but am not really confident that will work. I will look forward to the next instalment. Thanks for the content.
Thanks Pete.
Popcorn marinating for next friday polish pete
OMG I am on the floor laughing, Pete, you are so funny, this is better than Comedy Central, and yes, you are sooo right about it all with promoted listings, I proved that to myself after a nuclear store reset, never went back to promoting high or using the Dynamic campaign (another of eBay's jokes AKA self promoted hyperinflation, since John did 12%, Marc must do 13%, so Martha might as well do 14%, hopefully you can do a video about the joke that the dynamic rate is soon!!!) God Bless:)
I am very proud of you, Patricia, that you understand how it works, and what causes PL "inflation". Good job! Spot on! This is exactly why we are paying 10x more that we've paid 3-5 years ago, for better results.
I turned off my promoted listings on November 21st. It took 3 days for the impressions to normalize. My internal page views are up and so is my click through rate. And that's really what you want.
Awesome. Great informative video.
A couple of things might be different for us in USA.
Minor points.
My promoted plan is getting rid of dead stock so I monitor impressions either daily or weekly.
I don’t change the fee amount I change title.
Here in the USA we do get charged a promoted fee if the buyer buys more than one item or if buyer buys a different item from the promoted item that brought him to the store or item. It has been that way for several months now.
I promote high because I am selling either saturated or not popular stuff.
After most of this is gone I will rethink promoted again.
I haven’t listed anything new since may. I manage to sell about 75-100 old listings a month. I am enjoying doing this so I can really dive into how to use ai to my advantage.
It will be nice if I can eliminate promoted just like you mentioned.
I still have issues selling saturated and popular items. Those are what I am trying to figure out why. Lowering promoted would be a disaster for them right now.
I know being a low volume seller is part of it but it was the same when I was selling 10-15 a day and promoting less. I will keep working to figure it out.
I look forward to your next informative video.
I appreciate your knowledge.
You can't find more saturated market, that I'm on. Cheap ladies clothing. Run of a mill. Plenty of them on Ebay.
My average promoted fee is below 4%. About 25% my sales comes from promoted listings.
@@polish_pete_uk I know,. I sell mens clothing and I am in California where everything is stupid expensive. I have been priced out of buying used clothing unless I can get it half off. I will continue selling but at a much reduced return. I hope to get promoted way down too. I hope to start sourcing again in January. I can’t give up. I need eBay to survive. Businesses are closing here everyday. I live less than an hour from eBay headquarters. Terrible things are happening here. I look forward to your next video.
Great video, thanks for exposing ebays exploitation of us all.
thanks. Knowledge is everything. Without knowledge you don't even know that somebody is ripping you off.
Thank you for the information when I use promoted list I lose a lot of money they take a big chunk I ignore them when they tell me to promote
Wait for next videos. I'll show you how to save money on promoted listings.
My averege promoted fee is below 4%, and only 20-25% of my sales are from promoted listings.
Awesome video! TY
What an insightful analysis. I definitely believe the "bay" carries out withholds listings. I see it for myself. Capitalism minus reasonable ethics in my opinion. 😮😮😮😮
Saw 18 per cent suggested rate yesterday.
Yes, I constantly see 13, 15, 17 when I'm bothered to check it. Its ebay way to pull it up. For sure there will be somebody who'll believe in that. Even if he or she says oh 17 is too much but I'll go 12. Even that is what gives ebay extra money and pumps the rate up.
@@polish_pete_uk the problem as I see it is that it i potentially causing Ebay to become more expensive for buyers. If you had an actual shop and the landlord more than doubled your rent like Ebay are proposing then of course your prices will need to be increased a lot and at the expense of your customers. There are those who pay high % but charge high amounts as it needs to be paid for by the buyer but there are also those who have no clue what they are doing and promoting very high while selling at average to low prices and literally paying a third in fees. Promoting that high without a big price increase is not sustainable. For those who do promote high and charge high it only works on a minority % of buyers who do as they are told like sheep. Other buyers who recognise that the price is way too high will just by pass the listing. The seller will then not be in a position where they cant do a best offer at a lower price because they've needed to sell at that much higher price point. Promoted listings are a cynical cash grab by Ebay since day one behind the smoke screen of bringing in outside traffic. Ebay would do better to encourage people to sell at lower prices and keep fees low which would benefit buyers and increase sales volume with more appealing prices. Ebay have things set up where by the minority of huge shops probably paying very high % are taking most of the sales from promoted. An example such as the top 5% of huge used clothing shops gaining say 70% of sales as an imaginary example. It would be better for us sellers to sell say 10 clothing items with the price at or just below average with a low % than one priced sky high at 18%. If Ebay had wanted more fee revenue they should have just been honest from the start and just made everything say a new flat rate of 15% plus the VAT = 18%. Yes, unpopular but a cost that could potentially be adapted to and just get rid of this promoted BS which is making sellers miserable.
The other problem with promoted listings is when people who understand that they must increase their price a lot when promoting double digits then get over exposure. Page views and impressions go up but conversion rate and click thru go down which is at odds with the very reason for promoting. The algorithm is on one hand pushing the listing more while also penalising it because the price is too high with either people looking but not buying due to the price or the listing being pitched inappropriately to buyers who are not even looking for that item. When people increase the price to pay for the extra promotion they have to increase it even more because the FVF are also on a sliding scale so you have two taxes independent of each other based on %, a bit like paying the same monthly variable rate mortgage two two different banks for the same house except both the banks are Ebay. Ebay cannot expect people to absorb extra costs yet keep their prices the same. When I sell I'm looking for the profit element of the sale to be in the 40-50% zone. Those who promote high but dont increase their prices are probably making only 20-30% of the transaction in profit which in my opinion is too low and as you still have all the other costs of running the business on top of this.
16:50 It's not either or. Your listings show up in both. I see it all the time. Nobody would promote if it removed your listing from organically being found.
Where have I said that it'll remove your listing from organic search? English is not my first language, so I apologise, if I haven't said that clearly.
Please, do me a favour, go to fall 2019 update, and read it for yourself. It took me 7 seconds to find related page in google.
I'll quote it for you:
'Starting in September 2019, we’ll no longer show duplicate promoted and non-promoted listings on the search results page. If you are using Promoted Listings, only one of your listings, either promoted or non-promoted will appear in a given set of search results, giving buyers a cleaner, more relevant search experience.'
Is that good enough evidence for you, mate?
sellers should not concentrate on impressions they need to concentrate on page views (this is when a buyer clicks on your listing) the more of these you have with no sales the lower your conversion rate goes down you want them to click and buy not click and leave
How to get views without impressions?
It's like saying, mothers should not concentrate on learning babies to walk, they should concentrate on learning them to run.
False. If you could have 50,000 impressions(plus whatever views they bring) or 300 views from a specific search from a buyer interested in the same items you own, which would you rather have??? Obviously the 300 views. Random impressions are virtually meaningless, -which is why eBay gives them out like hotcakes. I only want views from buyers who are searching for my exact item, -which is why I don't promote. Only sell stuff that people are specifically looking for and you won't need to promote ever.@@polish_pete_uk
Pete I hope you will answer a question of mine. If eBay is capping page view traffic and sales on a daily/weekly/monthly/location based formula to "spread the wealth" how do promoted listings help? They obviously help eBay make more revenue but for a reseller who is capped to a certain amount of eBay traffic visibility and sales opportunities the obvious answer would be "no" to promotions. There is no real benefit to the reseller because the reseller can't grow inside the eBay controlled and manipulated marketplace with thresholds/caps in place. Do you agree or disagree here?
I can't say anything about location based traffic capping, as I don't see anything like that in Europe.
In terms of daily/weekly/monthly cappig. It's based on amount and type of item you have in your shop, nothing else. Unless you've got another evidence.
What do you mean by grow? If you mean number of items in your shop, than it's not growth, it's storage expansion.
Great video. I'm going to listen to this again later. I've been doing so much experimenting and while of course I want to make money, I enjoy the analytics analysis too. Number one of course is an item customer wants and priced correctly as you mentioned. But understanding promoting essential yes. So many factors! For sure you can't list and forget anymore. I appreciate how much you put into this video. I was on the corporate side for years so I can put myself in ebays shoes. We have to look at what they want in order to have our wins. I agree with what you say about not really pay to play. Know the rules. To me its like sports or chess or whatever. Figure out your opponent and just do what you have to do to win.
Vinted may allow professional sellers from January 2024.
They will say whatever you want to hear. If regulator will not force them, they won't allow it. They'll say "soon, maybe, of course" but nbothing will happen. And regulator has pissed on me and my complaint. I'll try to talk to my MP next time I'm in UK.
The fact that ROAS even became a talking point shows how uneducated most people are in regard to PL.
Promoted Listings is more about 'Control' than Money. How many millions of dollars has eBay lost in the last 9 months from Sellers leaving or Cross-Listing? Eventually the only sellers left on eBay will be obedient sheep willing to chase whatever carrot eBay dangles in front of them,...and when eventually 'everyone' is promoting...at the same rate...essentially nobody is 'actually' promoting, and more sellers will leave. Ebay is also losing millions of dollars from buyers who are confused by the broken search results and sponsored spam results, -and they end up not coming back. I sold 21 items yesterday, and 22 items today,....3300 item store,...no promoted listings. Your judgement might be skewed because you specialize in $10 - $20 clothing items, -which definitely need some kind of promoting. I end-and-sell-similar and it still works.
I hop you don't claim that end and sell similar works as it's worked a year ago, as this is simply not true, and has been confirmaed by multiple tests.
If I'm skewed towards anything, then entire youtube is not even skewed, it's twisted. I can see pros and cons. I can see how to use PL to my advantage. I know how to get organic sales. 75% my sales are organic, and average PL rate is below 4%.
End-and-sell-similar works for anybody who sorts by newest-to-oldest, -and it also helps for about 4 days. I sell $50-$100 clothing items,...but apparently if you're selling cheaper items like $20 Old Navy jeans with 1,000 results, maybe end-sell-similar doesn't really work.@@polish_pete_uk
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Your an Ebay Fan boy good luck to you with promoted listings, you deserve to pay more. The truth is this, if you were selling IN DEMAND ITEMS and your titles were correct YOU WOULDNT NEED PROMOTED LISTINGS. Thats the facts! This weeds out the sheep from the goats. Go ahead, pay Ebay more money. For those of us who can SOURCE IN DEMAND items and construct a decent title we are laughing all the way to the bank.
Do you feel better now? Thanks for your comment. Nothing better than piece of hate at 6am.
Tell me, smart boy, what if I can't source better items? Tell me! If you can't tell me, restrain yourself from trolling.
@@polish_pete_uk Not trolling just voicing my opinion. And you hate that! So if someone doesnt agree with Mr Pete you call them a troll and hater? GTFO!
Thanks ehhhh
I don't know why RUclipsrs have taken so long to finally get it that Promoted listings is garbage and only Ebay profits from it. However, there is one way to use it to your advantage and that is to only promote a few items per listing categories preferably no more than 1% of what you have in those categories. You just want the Promoted stuff to be an ad to get someone into your store and not to sell other promoted items in it.
There are many ways of using promoted listings to your advantage. I'll be talking about it in next videos. 25% of my sales come from promoted listings. I pay on average below 4% in PL fees.
Did you take your promoted listing off?
I'm slowly weaning myself off of it.
Basically promoted listings WONT save you still have to do everything else 100% and still have as cheap a price as possible
Agree. It's not a magical solution for low sales problem. No matter how high we can/want to promote.
Also i would add doing all this hard work for minimal money is hilarious.
Ebay are so out of touch with their competitors especially in Europe.
Ebay is US based. All I know about US is money money money... and nothing else matters...
to quote Abba and Metallica.
But, what do I know? I'm an ignorant, and never been to US in my life.
@polish_pete_uk I don't live in the USA however if ebay carry on with their arrogance like a lot of multinational American companies they will end up with eggs on their faces.
Turn your promoted listings off and after a couple of days watch your sales drop.
Can you show any evidence, as all I see is opposite.
@polish_pete_uk I'm a full time reseller and have stopped and started promoted listings several times over the last 12 months and each time over the first few days see a small reduction in sales and within a week see a 30% to 40% drop off. Restart the promoted listings and lo and behold within as little as 12 hours sales are back up to where they where previously. I'm not saying that promoted listings are the answer for poor service or crap listings or bad pricing but if you are providing a good service, you are top rated, you use key words and your standards are where they should be, then promoted listings give you the edge over similar sellers who don't promote.
Do you run your business on week to week basis?
Nobody says that after switching off PL, your organic sales will explode. On a contrary, algo will push you down. Why? SO, you switch your PL back, which is exactly what you've done.
Wait for my next videos. DO not switch them off all in one go. Wean yourself slowly. Start dropping down % rate, switch off some listings, when you end and sell similar. Just do it effing slowly!