Promoted listings – my results with trying new percentages

[Retro Treasures WV]

So I have 2 weeks of promoted listings data to compare to the previous period. I added a bunch of listings to a new campaign, and changed the other 2 existing campaigns rate to do some comparison.

I have 3 campaigns:

• 5% – all new items. 437 listings – ebay says a 5% rate will boost the listings about 35%
• 4% – old items. 1323 listings. Changed from 2.1% to 4% promoted rate. Projected boost of 25%
• 3% – old items. 1128 listings. Changed from 2.1% to 4%. Projected boost of 11%

For the 3% campaign, impressions were flat compared to the previous 2 weeks., clicks were up 12%, and item sold was up 43%. Items sold was only 10, so that’s not really meaningful. It seems going from 2.1 to didn’t do anything at all. Ebay pretty much told me at best it would be a 10-15% boost and it appears they were correct.

 

For the 4% campaign impressions were up 12%, clicks up 25%, quantity sold was down 45%, but again, just 6 items. A better visibility boost than 3%, but didn’t really translate to sales.

 

For the 5% campaign, I don’t have anything to compare to. I sold 35 items in this campaign in 2 weeks. Is that good or just a new item bump? It seems like alot compared to historical data. I can compare the results to the other campaigns for the same period. The 5% campaign – even thought it is only currently 437 listings – had almost DOUBLE the impressions of the other two campaigns. Clicks  were almost TRIPLE! That is simply put – shocking.

The improvements in clicks for both of the old campaigns wer almost spot on with the improvement ebay said I would see. So what I am doing today is swapping the 3% and 4% campaigns to 5% for the next 2 weeks.

I want to change the 5% campaign to 3%…but do I want to sacrifice sales if it really does appear to be performing this well? I went back and forth and in the end decided NOT to change this campaign. We’ll just compare it directly to the other two with all 3 at 5%.

If I see a major bump in clicks and sales in the two old campaigns, I will be doing 5% from here on out. $2300 in sales for the 5% campaign in 2 weeks. I can’t ignore that kind of boost!

[ChristineR]

Interesting.  I have heard from various sources not to go down, or at least not to turn it off or you will be punished.  New items are definitely favored as we know, so hard to say how much is due to the percentage of promoted.

I listened to Ebay’s podcast about fixing slow sales.  He offered that he does only 2%.  He said at least participate in PL.  I used to do that but upped it to 4% to try to keep ahead of people doing the bare minimum.  If there was some magical thing about 5% I’d sure love to know!  I know that when I ran sales of at least 20% I did much better than 10-15% which was my standard before.  Could be coded in there, who knows?

[Retro Treasures WV]

So now I can compare week over week after updating rates.

5% – stayed at 5%: Impressions and clicks dropped 30% – the new car smell wore off I guess.

3% increased to 5%: Impressions and clicks up 20%. Sold 16 items. Very nice

4%-5%: Impressions increased only 3% but clicks was up 32%. Sold 7 items.

 

Overall I got around 300k impressions from each campaign and roughly 55-600 clicks. That’s a crazy

So even though the 3% & 4% are VERY old listings, bumping to 5% PL rate got these listings in front of the same amount of eyeballs as 5% campaign with new more desirable items.

 

I have the data I need – I’m sticking with 5%. It works, plain & simple. I sold 23 items from ancient campaigns due to a slight bump in percentage.

One question I have that remains is if Cassini will reward me for increasing my PL rate. For instance, lets say I start a campaign at 3% and then increase it just 0.1% every week. Would that result in an activity bump or would it be a waste of time?

[craig rex]

I have been thinking a lot about promoted listings lately. I have also decided to stick with a 5% rate. That is what has worked for me for the last year or two, so I haven’t really fiddled with it. Sometimes I will up that percentage to 7.5%, especially if it’s a bulkier item or something I have in quantity, but I’m not sure there is a meaningful difference in small PL percentages.

A few weeks ago, when I did end and sell similar to my store, I adjusted a lot of prices down and also adjusted PL down from 7.5% to 5%. I got a lot of sales from lower price in that first week, then it felt like a much slower week the following week. I wanted to blame promoted listings. Instead, I dug in my heels and listed almost twice the listings that I normally list. Surprise, surprise, my sales went back to “normal” — whatever that means during summer, and considering that my STRs are quite high by the nature of how selective I am with my eBay inventory.

If you’re going to decrease your promoted listings percentage, I would also plan to lower prices and, ideally, create a good amount of new listings shortly after. It makes sense to adjust these levels every summer, at least, when sales are naturally slower.

I think there is a massive difference in sales when you don’t use PL at all. Literally like an on/off switch. That’s anecdotal, from when I first started using PL a few years ago after never using it, as well as thinking about the boost in sales I get every time I end my slow listings, adjust them and sell similar. I can’t deny the consistency of those results.

Here’s an interesting thought — when does it make sense to add a promoted listings campaign to your listing? Right now, I always add my standard 5% campaign when I list the item. About half of my sales come from promoted listings, historically, and that has remained pretty consistent over the last couple years. I like this because then I don’t have to think about the listing again until I get an offer or it sells, or until it’s time for sell similar.

But with certain items that are rare and/or waiting for that perfect buyer, promoted listings might not be necessary. Or at least not until after 30 days, or 60, or whatever the number is. I’m probably going to stick with what’s been working for the rest of this year. But I’m open to changing my process in 2025 if there’s a better way.

[Retro Treasures WV]

I only add listings quarterly. In the future I might switch to 60 days.

years ago after using PL for a while ( and when they gave ZERO metrics to judge performance) I did an experiment and turned off PL. it was an unmitigated disaster and I only made it like 3 days and turned it back on. Quite literally was like eBay shut my store off.

[Author]

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