eBay has embarked upon a charm offensive and wants you to consider their Promoted Listings service. It’s a way you can spend more with them to get greater prominence on eBay by buying ads.
As they say: “When you come to eBay to list that modern-style floor lamp or that rustic farmhouse dining table, how can you give the items you’re selling a chance to stand out from the other millions of home decor listings in our marketplace? How can you give your listings that extra edge? You can read the full statement from eBay here: Want to Help Your Item Sell? Increase the Chances with eBay’s New Listing Feature.
eBay’s new listing feature—Promoted Listings—makes it easier for business sellers to do just that, by giving sellers the option to bump up their item listing to places on eBay with more visibility, so it has a better chance of standing out and selling—faster. All it takes is a few simple clicks while listing that item. We’ll even recommend how much sellers should spend to improve the chances of sales by boosting the visibility of their listing.
When we launched Promoted Listings for multi-quantity listings, business sellers who used it had more buyers who saw their listings and their inventory sold faster, boosting visibility by about 30% on average. With this new feature, business sellers can use Promoted Listings for single quantity and multi-quantity listings.”
Several questions do present themselves, especially for UK and EU sellers. Firstly, from a UK eBay seller perspective, it’s worth noting that (unlike in the US), eBay UK hasn’t banished adverts in eBay search in the same way that’s been the case on eBay.com. When you pay for an additional ad in search, you’re still competing with an third party advertiser over here. And the US site has made a decent change and removed such ads.
It would be good if eBay in the UK did remove the paid-for ads across the site but it doesn’t seem imminent.
18 Responses
If every seller chose the promoted listings then all the listings would stay in the same place , and eBay would double their income
not surprising they are promoting them 🙂
What absolute crazy ideas. The new hub is active on my account this morning links are not working invoices are freezing when we try to adjust it. It then tells me there is an error when i attempt to update the listings they say have links on them yet they waste yet more time trying to take more money from me.
Our listings do not get the exposure now because we will not abide by all their top rated requirements as we are unable to work or spend like the big boys and so they now offer people the ability to send more to increase sales which are plummeting year on year for us little sellers.
We are slowly getting all our inventory onto other platforms and will eventually pull the plug it will lose sales income for us but i may not end up in hospital with PTSD.
the company is idiotic change after change after change.
We used Promoted Listings for 6 months and over time it drove sales down. I suspect that the increased views, which were to a broad audience, decreased conversion rate. Given the eBay algorithms pick up on conversion rate then we slowly disappeared from view, due to poor conversion scores.
We switched off Promotions, also did a lot of relisting, and after around a month the sales bounced back.
The experience may differ by category, we sell jewellery, which tends to be higher value but slow to sell as customers are looking for a very specific design, hence the experience detailed above.
7 Days ago I became a Top Rated Seller… so assuming my sales would naturally go up, I cancelled my promoted Ads. 7 Days later, I checked my sales for the last 7 days and they have gone down on the previous 7 days. So basically, Top Rated means nothing… it’s paying for promoted Ads that gets you exposure. So why bother to work hard to be a TRS and take the financial hits that incurs with going the extra mile in service.!
I’d be more tempted to try it if the promoted listings I see in search were anywhere near the top of the results.
They are usually not what I’m looking for and dont follow your filters. ie I’m sure i have filtered for uk sellers only and then found someone from china selling it because it is sponsored/promoted. This is not help the buyer when searching for items.
Never been asked if I want to do it.
I have used ebay promoted listings intermittently over the course of this year and only had 2 sales from it. Its been a waste of time. If the ads were near the top of search then maybe they would be more effective.
Just like Google shopping, we know. Truth is you have no choice but to use them sometimes as they have your product that well down the listings, basically hidden. Again another unfair advantage as the bigger clients who can afford this more. It is just fees in stealth.
Amazon are exactly the same with their sponsored ads. It is all about fleecing sellers for every penny they can. Am surprised there has never been a class action in the States against practices like this.
They always have the promo item above the generic listing. The only advantage with eBay stealth fees is you have to get a sale first.
Things like speed of courier service TRS just do not mean a thing. FeeBay and FleeceyoumoreBay.
Ebay is becoming nearly as big a pain in the arse to deal with as Amazon is! Sales are plummeting and some days you will discover that your listing are not even visible due to Ebay screwing with their criteria (i.e. protecting the sales of all the Big Boys on there!). Try it over a week long period for a few of your sporadically selling items and sometimes you’ll find that your listings have “disappeared” for a few days! They don’t play fair but they STILL want their fees!!!!!!!!!!
I run a business. Figuring out cost effective ways of increasing sales and total profit.
What works for the business I keep doing.
Sponsored ads through eBay work, currently over a third of the sales in a month are due to that and total sales are up considerably.
I think the ebay model for this is perfect and actually is much fairer than the likes of Amazon or Google as you only pay when you sell.
Ebay are not going to push listings that are not going to sell as they don’t get paid.
Personally I think it’s the best tool ebay have come up with for years, if you use it well it actually doesn’t cost that much and is far more cost effective than Amazon’s PPC.
I’ve been using them since eBay started giving me £10 towards promotional stuff. I’ve had mixed results but for a couple of my categories they do quite well. What I’m never sure of is whether the customer would have bought the item anyway so I can’t say 100% if they’re ‘extra’ sales. I do think that some items that were slow moving are performing better with promoted listings.
With regards to the comment in the article about not eBay UK still showing 3rd party adverts, this is a clear case of double standards. They’re coming down hard on sharing contact information because of off-eBay sales but they’re happy to promote off-eBay sales themselves. That’s shameful.
i have been forced to use the seller hub. didn’t want it as i like the original way but when i logged in i had it and although they say theres an option button to go back to the original way it is not on my page. i hate it its really confusing and ugly why are they forcing us to have it. I’ve been using eBay for 7 years continually but i cannot use a system i do not like or understand
I didnt have the option button for a day so was annoyed. We spent time tring to sort it out as we had to do different ways.
The next day we went to it and at the top of our manage order (the page where you can see all the order you have to process) on the right just above the orders there was a button to go back to the old selling manager. it worked
JD, for every sale I make someone else doesn’t.
Pretty sure as a business owner I and most people won’t have a problem with that.
Its never bothered me in the past and am sure it won’t bother me in the future. If it bothers you then have you tried a different site where you can sell without competition?
Ebay increasing their fee intake? Great – and we increased our sales and profits far more than their extra fee intake.
Its known as business.
They do something for money. If its worthwhile for my business to keep paying for that service then they continue to make money and we continue to make more money.
If its not worthwhile for my business to pay for that service we won’t use it.
Is that simple enough for you?
If you don’t like a service then don’t use it. You do not get to decide such matters for other businesses.
JD – so far it’s short term and long term gain. We make far more profit on the sales than it’s costing us, like all other costs the buyers pay for it.
Once it’s not a gain we will stop using it. Same as any other service.
In the meantime it helps boosts sales which boosts profits.