Their suggested ad rate used to be 5% -7% .... now the suggested rate on everything in my store is 12% to 20% ... the fact that our items are invisible without promoting makes me so mad.. Hopefully someone on eBay sees this video because you make some really good points about promoted listings.
Great video, lots of common sense, thank you. Sadly, it is unlikely for eBay to remove promoted listings. If you look at their latest earning report, sales went down but their earnings went up. It’s easy to conclude where the profit came from - the sellers’ pockets.
i'm glad you're honest with this. my theory on promoted is you want to be high enough to be placed on page 1 with the visiblity you're looking for. however, once you're #1 on best match, paying more money isn't going to make you any more #1. so you have to play around with the numbers to see if you can get placed where you want. i'm not saying people are just going to buy the first thing that comes up on their hits. but it's also pretty likely they will NOT go to page 4 to find yours either. i feel if you have a seasonal product where you sell like crazy without help, then it may be a good time to drop your promoted rate or drop it entirely if you don't need help selling then. i would really prefer not to pay any promoted at all, but it's hard to confidently say that promoted does not help. i think it helps, but at a huge rate increase and i probably do come out ahead about 30k profit a year despite huge fees in quantity and at a % level
I have all my promoted listings set at 5% across the board. Lately though, I've been noticing that some of my listings are getting changed without my knowledge. I found another one yesterday that was supposed to be at 5% and eBay changed it to 13.6%. I went in and changed it back. Got to watch my listings all the time.
You may want to try what I do, because I’ve never had any issues like that. Instead of setting a fixed ad rate, I choose dynamic ad rate and set a cap at my max rate. Of course the suggested rate is much higher than my cap, so all of my listings are the same rate anyway, but it feels better to me having a cap on everything.
Always great to have more data points! I’ve tried 12% for a brief period and noticed no difference between that and 6%. However, I did have a pretty big slowdown going down to 2% (but I know 2% works for a lot of other sellers, just not for me).
Agree 1000% that it’s not smart on their part to force promoted listings with the best match and sponsored algorithms because this is a huge platform for collectibles and collectors. I can’t imagine we are the only collectors changing the filter to newly listed and looking at every single item. I do this all the time when I am looking to add to my personal collections. Specifically with DVD, Blu-ray, and VHS. Majority of people don’t even know what they are selling and therefore they have inaccurate listing titles and descriptions, so I try to catch these slip ups by first looking at every single listing and first skimming the thumbnail listing picture to see if it might be the copy, edition etc. I’ve found first and original prints super cheap this way. I was initially sorting newly listed and then brand new; but now I don’t sort the brand new category until I’ve already scrolled through all options first. Long post but you comment nailed it and i didn’t think of it from that perspective as a buyer and seller bc it didn’t even dawn on me. So thanks for pointing that out while I continue to change my promotion rate from 2-4% until they remove this highway robbery feature 😂
You bring up great points but as we all know all to well, ebay can careless what their buyers and sellers want. I've promoted my listings from high to low and there seems to be no difference other than when I sell a high % promoted listing I make less. I now keep my promotions at 3% across the board. I've actually thought that ebay should get rid of promotions as well but then the question always comes up of how would I get my items to show up. At 3% my items aren't showing up the way I wished they would but we can't all be on the first page in every search so it's kind of a catch 20 if you will.
1:13 My eBay page like this doesn’t have my Ad fee standard charge like this. I have to chase it down to find out what I’m charged for Ad fees and sometimes it’s higher than my normal promotional % I set for all my listings.
Hi yes I do promo standard up to 14% sales or few watchers . They attached a campaign to mine charged me a lot. Agreed on returning funds never ever did five calls later I removed 400 items. Turned off promoted no sales at all . Slowly had to put it all back on but still down at 400 not 800 . I got rid of campaigns deadly for fees. Yes I use suggested but more or I get no views or sales annoying no wonder so many sellers shutting shop. I have sold since 2001 . I will try lower my rates my keywords are not good I think this is why I have to promote
i mean amazon has sponsored ads all over the place as well. i consider them like banner ads, where over a decade of internet use -i just glaze over them but never click on them. in fact if i see sponsored, i go out of my way to not click on them because i feel it's a contrived forced placement and then also if i know i'm making the seller pay a bigger fee, i'll just sort lowest to highest and do them a favor by clicking and buying on their organic listing
This was very helpful. I had thought the ad rate was like buying ads on facebook, something I paid up front. Knowing it is part of the final sale fee makes me much more likely to use it. Going to start with 5%. I'll come back if my success goes up.
@@mailseum I sold an item this weekend that I had listed for ages, maybe close to a year. I asked the buyer and she said she saw it in the 1st 10 listings and that she periodically searches for this kind of item since she uses it regularly. Likely it was being hid like you said until I promoted it.
EBay is very misleading with their promotions. They took two promotion fees out of a sale that wasn't promoted, and they didn't show that on the receipt for the sale, which prompted a phone call to eBay. LOL Just explain it better.
Thanks again for a very informative video, I was wondering if raising my promoted rates on postcards would help because I currently do 2%. It also matters on our title description and thanks to you I now take a closer look at the picture to see if there is anything that would help it sell at a higher price that other sellers might be missing. Thanks
For me it did, you could always try it at higher rates for an extended period of time to see what works best. For example, try 3% for a month and then maybe 4%. Looking for those details is the best because the only cost is time!
I've only sold a couple of things on eBay one was a promoted without my permission and I've noticed they keep promoting my existing items I have to keep deleting some of my listings because they keep applying promote even though I've said no.
I’m currently promoting my smaller store at eBay’s suggested rates. Nothing has sold. I don’t usually promote because every time I’ve tried in the past it killed my store.
I was doing 2% for a very long time then got greedy and turned on the dynamic listing and sales did improve but then I realized how much money I was paying for ads so I turned it off and then no more sales. I tried going back to 2% and still no sales so had to return to dynamic.
Have you thought about trying somewhere in the middle? I had little luck with 2%, but have about the same sales with mid single digits as double digits.
I just wanted to say how happy I am that I found your channel. I am very new to selling postcards. Only been listing them for a week. $130 so far. How many postcards do you currently have listed and how many do you list in a week. Thanks for your time. I am looking forwards to more of your great content.
I promote every item 2% agter 7 days. I do just fine. I want to see if i can do great. I just changed 200 used silverware listings to Dynamic rate with a cap of 15%. The listings were 45 days old and were ended/sell similar. This is day 1 so no results yet. Bottom line...if sales are slow then try something new. You aremt married to any idea. I do fine but maybe i can do better.
They should discontinue their store memberships if they want to go this way tbh buying a google adsense campaign would be better, as for advanced you should note that a lot of people use ebay to do comps and they will click on your listing to sell one like it meaning you even pay for other sellers clicking on your listing
Am I limited to how many listings of print-on-demand I can post on eBay? so am I understanding correctly, my listings will not show on search at all If I don't promote them?
Hi! There’s no rule that applies to everyone. Sometimes your listings show up without promoting at all. However, in some searches you will not show up unless your listing is promoted. The best thing you can do is see what happens when you don’t promote and then try promoting and compare the results. Best of luck!
I do every single postcard - it’s just too difficult for me to keep track of which ones have more or less listed. My faster sellers generally sell from non-promoted listings anyway, so I’m not too worried about it.
It is frustrating! I continually price my items higher because eBay collects fees on even taxes paid. I have debated lowering my price and going without the promotion, but when I do they get no views.
Yeah from my experience it’s better for sellers to price items higher and use promoted listings. Another reason why it would be better to get rid of promoted entirely, a better experience for buyers and sellers!
I haven’t, but I may have to in the future since I have so much back stock. Buying from other resellers can be good, but keep in mind that if you buy from any postcard resellers the best stuff has probably already been sold. This will be totally fine if you deal in quantity and get them cheap. Popeye’s Postcards is one of the best resellers to buy from, he does WhatNot shows pretty frequently. If you want really good inventory it is a bit of work. Sorting through online auctions, going to antique stores, traveling to postcard shows, estate sales on the weekend. Let all your friends and family know you’re looking to buy old postcards and they’ll keep an eye out for you. I’ll make sure to announce it on my channel if I ever do sell any, but after selling so much to SM Postcards earlier this year it may be a while!
Oh the promoted listings advanced? That’s awesome! I went in to try to experiment with it for this video and it looked like I would have to individually set it up for each listing, which I was not prepared to do. It does seem like there may be opportunities for sellers who are willing to put in the work, but the CPC is pretty scary to me.
EBay cut into your sale so much with fees and all the rest and then promoted listing fees makes the whole sale experience extremely disappointing and you are left feeling royally shafted. Who’s the crook ? 🤷🏻♂️
Ebay, like most other selling platforms would rather increase their shareholders profits by charging sellers more...not attracting more buyers and encouraging more selling and buying on their platform. It's a short sighted lazy way to increase their profits...but what else would you expect from a multinational corporation. These people are out of ideas except for...charge sellers more to sell on our platform.
Same for me however at one point in time I was getting great sales just at 2% but got greedy and turned Dynamic ON then turned it back to 2% and my store was dead until I turned back to dynamic. eBay likes making money and so do I but as a seller we already pay so much in fees, final fee and then ad fee. It’s too much.
This move to encourage ads benefits ebay to get more revenue with ads and higher final value while penalizing sellers and buyers. Ebay is losing buyers and possibly sellers but they still are making more money by raising fees. I see ebay dying over time. It will be a slow death though.
Their suggested ad rate used to be 5% -7% .... now the suggested rate on everything in my store is 12% to 20% ... the fact that our items are invisible without promoting makes me so mad..
Hopefully someone on eBay sees this video because you make some really good points about promoted listings.
Thanks! I used to use promoted listings a few years back and maybe 4-5% was the suggestion! Now its like you said 12-13% so ridiculous!
Great video, lots of common sense, thank you.
Sadly, it is unlikely for eBay to remove promoted listings. If you look at their latest earning report, sales went down but their earnings went up.
It’s easy to conclude where the profit came from - the sellers’ pockets.
I guess we are their new customers.
Buyers are leaving for other platforms and as well as sellers. This penalizes the smaller sellers who don't promote as much as the large sellers.
eBay and the post office are not going to be satisfied until selling costs are 70%!🎉
i'm glad you're honest with this. my theory on promoted is you want to be high enough to be placed on page 1 with the visiblity you're looking for. however, once you're #1 on best match, paying more money isn't going to make you any more #1. so you have to play around with the numbers to see if you can get placed where you want. i'm not saying people are just going to buy the first thing that comes up on their hits. but it's also pretty likely they will NOT go to page 4 to find yours either. i feel if you have a seasonal product where you sell like crazy without help, then it may be a good time to drop your promoted rate or drop it entirely if you don't need help selling then. i would really prefer not to pay any promoted at all, but it's hard to confidently say that promoted does not help. i think it helps, but at a huge rate increase and i probably do come out ahead about 30k profit a year despite huge fees in quantity and at a % level
I have all my promoted listings set at 5% across the board. Lately though, I've been noticing that some of my listings are getting changed without my knowledge. I found another one yesterday that was supposed to be at 5% and eBay changed it to 13.6%. I went in and changed it back. Got to watch my listings all the time.
You may want to try what I do, because I’ve never had any issues like that. Instead of setting a fixed ad rate, I choose dynamic ad rate and set a cap at my max rate. Of course the suggested rate is much higher than my cap, so all of my listings are the same rate anyway, but it feels better to me having a cap on everything.
Yes, eBay is guilty also they add a minimum amount to your automatic accepted if you are allowing offers
I've noticed this several times!@@CyndiConnard
Let me be the first to say I promoted everything in my store at 15% as a test and sales have been no different then without promoting.
Always great to have more data points! I’ve tried 12% for a brief period and noticed no difference between that and 6%. However, I did have a pretty big slowdown going down to 2% (but I know 2% works for a lot of other sellers, just not for me).
Same here. No difference
Same product?
Agree 1000% that it’s not smart on their part to force promoted listings with the best match and sponsored algorithms because this is a huge platform for collectibles and collectors. I can’t imagine we are the only collectors changing the filter to newly listed and looking at every single item. I do this all the time when I am looking to add to my personal collections. Specifically with DVD, Blu-ray, and VHS. Majority of people don’t even know what they are selling and therefore they have inaccurate listing titles and descriptions, so I try to catch these slip ups by first looking at every single listing and first skimming the thumbnail listing picture to see if it might be the copy, edition etc. I’ve found first and original prints super cheap this way. I was initially sorting newly listed and then brand new; but now I don’t sort the brand new category until I’ve already scrolled through all options first. Long post but you comment nailed it and i didn’t think of it from that perspective as a buyer and seller bc it didn’t even dawn on me. So thanks for pointing that out while I continue to change my promotion rate from 2-4% until they remove this highway robbery feature 😂
You bring up great points but as we all know all to well, ebay can careless what their buyers and sellers want. I've promoted my listings from high to low and there seems to be no difference other than when I sell a high % promoted listing I make less. I now keep my promotions at 3% across the board.
I've actually thought that ebay should get rid of promotions as well but then the question always comes up of how would I get my items to show up. At 3% my items aren't showing up the way I wished they would but we can't all be on the first page in every search so it's kind of a catch 20 if you will.
1:13 My eBay page like this doesn’t have my Ad fee standard charge like this. I have to chase it down to find out what I’m charged for Ad fees and sometimes it’s higher than my normal promotional % I set for all my listings.
Hi yes I do promo standard up to 14% sales or few watchers . They attached a campaign to mine charged me a lot. Agreed on returning funds never ever did five calls later I removed 400 items. Turned off promoted no sales at all . Slowly had to put it all back on but still down at 400 not 800 . I got rid of campaigns deadly for fees. Yes I use suggested but more or I get no views or sales annoying no wonder so many sellers shutting shop. I have sold since 2001 . I will try lower my rates my keywords are not good I think this is why I have to promote
I’m running at 2% PLS and it made a big difference.
i mean amazon has sponsored ads all over the place as well. i consider them like banner ads, where over a decade of internet use -i just glaze over them but never click on them. in fact if i see sponsored, i go out of my way to not click on them because i feel it's a contrived forced placement and then also if i know i'm making the seller pay a bigger fee, i'll just sort lowest to highest and do them a favor by clicking and buying on their organic listing
This was very helpful. I had thought the ad rate was like buying ads on facebook, something I paid up front. Knowing it is part of the final sale fee makes me much more likely to use it. Going to start with 5%. I'll come back if my success goes up.
The do have “Promoted Listings Advanced” where you pay upfront, but I believe “Promoted Listings Standard” is the way to go!
@@mailseum I sold an item this weekend that I had listed for ages, maybe close to a year. I asked the buyer and she said she saw it in the 1st 10 listings and that she periodically searches for this kind of item since she uses it regularly. Likely it was being hid like you said until I promoted it.
EBay is very misleading with their promotions. They took two promotion fees out of a sale that wasn't promoted, and they didn't show that on the receipt for the sale, which prompted a phone call to eBay. LOL Just explain it better.
Thanks again for a very informative video, I was wondering if raising my promoted rates on postcards would help because
I currently do 2%. It also matters on our title description and thanks to you I now take a closer look at the picture to
see if there is anything that would help it sell at a higher price that other sellers might be missing. Thanks
For me it did, you could always try it at higher rates for an extended period of time to see what works best. For example, try 3% for a month and then maybe 4%.
Looking for those details is the best because the only cost is time!
I've only sold a couple of things on eBay one was a promoted without my permission and I've noticed they keep promoting my existing items I have to keep deleting some of my listings because they keep applying promote even though I've said no.
I’m currently promoting my smaller store at eBay’s suggested rates. Nothing has sold. I don’t usually promote because every time I’ve tried in the past it killed my store.
How to turn off eBay suggested rate😢?
I was doing 2% for a very long time then got greedy and turned on the dynamic listing and sales did improve but then I realized how much money I was paying for ads so I turned it off and then no more sales. I tried going back to 2% and still no sales so had to return to dynamic.
Have you thought about trying somewhere in the middle? I had little luck with 2%, but have about the same sales with mid single digits as double digits.
My promoted rate is between 6 and 7% right now but the suggested is between 14% and 17%. It's nuts. Thanks for doing this video :)
They get crazier and crazier with suggested rates every month it seems like!
That's what I place mine at, However, I do not have a Ebay store, I just list items.
...SO the Promoted Listings, are they great for someone who has a Ebay store? I do not have a Ebay store, I just list. @@mailseum
Promoted listings work the same whether you have a store or not!
@@mailseum ...ok TY. I guess I can't get around paying fees. I will just raise my prices and see what happens
I just wanted to say how happy I am that I found your channel. I am very new to selling postcards. Only been listing them for a week. $130 so far. How many postcards do you currently have listed and how many do you list in a week. Thanks for your time. I am looking forwards to more of your great content.
Aw thanks! I have over 13,000 listed now and try to do 50 every day during the week, and usually don’t list on weekends.
How do you modify the promote rate?
Thank you. Your very insightful and intelligent. I have subscribed.
I promote every item 2% agter 7 days. I do just fine. I want to see if i can do great. I just changed 200 used silverware listings to Dynamic rate with a cap of 15%. The listings were 45 days old and were ended/sell similar. This is day 1 so no results yet. Bottom line...if sales are slow then try something new. You aremt married to any idea. I do fine but maybe i can do better.
Very thorough. Thank you sir.
Good points at the end. I agree. More items being sent to other platforms to sell also.
Thanks for the valuable content!
They should discontinue their store memberships if they want to go this way tbh buying a google adsense campaign would be better, as for advanced you should note that a lot of people use ebay to do comps and they will click on your listing to sell one like it meaning you even pay for other sellers clicking on your listing
Great video...thank you!!
Am I limited to how many listings of print-on-demand I can post on eBay? so am I understanding correctly, my listings will not show on search at all If I don't promote them?
Hi! There’s no rule that applies to everyone. Sometimes your listings show up without promoting at all. However, in some searches you will not show up unless your listing is promoted.
The best thing you can do is see what happens when you don’t promote and then try promoting and compare the results. Best of luck!
thank you.
@@mailseum
Do you promote every card or do you have a minimum number of listed postcards for a town before you decide to promote yours?
I do every single postcard - it’s just too difficult for me to keep track of which ones have more or less listed. My faster sellers generally sell from non-promoted listings anyway, so I’m not too worried about it.
It is frustrating! I continually price my items higher because eBay collects fees on even taxes paid. I have debated lowering my price and going without the promotion, but when I do they get no views.
Yeah from my experience it’s better for sellers to price items higher and use promoted listings. Another reason why it would be better to get rid of promoted entirely, a better experience for buyers and sellers!
I think your microphone is overheating; it keeps changing color.
Thanks for the video, I always love your insights. Sorry my ADHD always forgets to say that in my first comment 😅
Dou you ever sell postcard lots? I am looking for some good inventory
I haven’t, but I may have to in the future since I have so much back stock.
Buying from other resellers can be good, but keep in mind that if you buy from any postcard resellers the best stuff has probably already been sold. This will be totally fine if you deal in quantity and get them cheap. Popeye’s Postcards is one of the best resellers to buy from, he does WhatNot shows pretty frequently.
If you want really good inventory it is a bit of work. Sorting through online auctions, going to antique stores, traveling to postcard shows, estate sales on the weekend. Let all your friends and family know you’re looking to buy old postcards and they’ll keep an eye out for you.
I’ll make sure to announce it on my channel if I ever do sell any, but after selling so much to SM Postcards earlier this year it may be a while!
Last quarter they made 340 million off promoted listings, it’s not going away
Duely noted 😂
I use it, so now you know someone!
Oh the promoted listings advanced? That’s awesome! I went in to try to experiment with it for this video and it looked like I would have to individually set it up for each listing, which I was not prepared to do. It does seem like there may be opportunities for sellers who are willing to put in the work, but the CPC is pretty scary to me.
EBay cut into your sale so much with fees and all the rest and then promoted listing fees makes the whole sale experience extremely disappointing and you are left feeling royally shafted. Who’s the crook ? 🤷🏻♂️
Ebay, like most other selling platforms would rather increase their shareholders profits by charging sellers more...not attracting more buyers and encouraging more selling and buying on their platform. It's a short sighted lazy way to increase their profits...but what else would you expect from a multinational corporation. These people are out of ideas except for...charge sellers more to sell on our platform.
Dynamic sales listings is the only way I can sell anything.
Same for me however at one point in time I was getting great sales just at 2% but got greedy and turned Dynamic ON then turned it back to 2% and my store was dead until I turned back to dynamic. eBay likes making money and so do I but as a seller we already pay so much in fees, final fee and then ad fee. It’s too much.
This move to encourage ads benefits ebay to get more revenue with ads and higher final value while penalizing sellers and buyers. Ebay is losing buyers and possibly sellers but they still are making more money by raising fees. I see ebay dying over time. It will be a slow death though.