Home › Forums › Buying and Selling › Selling on eBay › Promoted Listings Trending Rates – 16.4% for Collectibles!?
- This topic has 21 replies, 10 voices, and was last updated 2 years, 5 months ago by
Jay.
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03/17/2019 at 8:48 am #58740
Just checked this today and the trending rate for collectibles is really 16.4%. The highest I remember seeing before the expansion of promoted listings was around 12%. Are there really people out there crazy enough to more than double the eBay fee they’re paying? 12% was also crazy in my opinion but still…
It also seems like everything in collectibles has a 16.4% rate even though there are really thousands of sub-categories in that larger one. Interesting to think how many of those sub-categories really aren’t that competitive and wouldn’t warrant such a high promoted rate.
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03/17/2019 at 8:50 am #58741
On this same topic, I just came across this interesting link that describes the trending rates across all categories. It’s pretty outdated (mid-January) but still has some insights.
https://pages.ebay.com/promoted-listings/adrates.html#20081
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This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by
cmtella.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by
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03/17/2019 at 9:13 am #58746
I assume the problem are the eBay sellers willing to discount their items to sell at any low price. The impatient sellers who sell for $5 with free shipping. eBay is capitalizing on these sellers’ hunger to lose money.
I can see some sellers who would gladly give up 50% of their profit just to sell item. It’s like Amazon where they keep reminding you that your item isnt the lowest price, pushing you to lower your price more to get the “buy box”. Race to the bottom.
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03/17/2019 at 9:43 am #58747
yeah i’ve been seeing some crazy trending rates for collectibles and clothes. too high!
but that’s the issue is that a lot of people just put a very high promoted rate and then everyone does and that becomes trending. -
03/17/2019 at 8:08 pm #58802
I’ve been revising listings lately, and have seen trending rates both decline and increase from where they had been. Pretty sure some of the items I revised were in Collectibles cat and the subcat was no where near that high. I’m not sure, but I think ebay’s “trending rates” by category is some sort of average across sub cats, and I’ve found it to be meaningless for specific items.
Part of the problem is, some ebay sellers are absolutely convinced that having the highest rate provides top placement. Some sellers have said they increase their item price to cover the high rate. This is folly, but some sellers insist it is the way PL works.
It isn’t, unless PL has changed drastically, and I see no real reason to think it has… The rate you choose is not the most important thing. As I’ve explained before, the PL team is judged on how well the listings they choose to promote, actually convert. Let’s say we both have the same item, and we both put it in PL, the only two sellers to do so. A fair selling price, based on past history, is, say, $20.00. I price mine at $20.00 and set a PL fee of 4% You price yours at $40.00 and set a PL fee of 50%. According to some sellers, that should guarantee them the prime spot, because they believe ebay wants to collect the highest fee. But my PL will probably be top spot, why? Because ebay does indeed want money, and 4% of $20 is better more than 50% of zero My item, at a reasonable price, has a much better chance of selling than the way overpriced one. So mine goes to the top, because its all about making the sale, not which listing has the highest PL fee.
I’m oversimplifying the factors involved, but this is a case of sellers being their own worst enemies, convinced that a really high PL fee allows them to game the system. But it’s just self defeating.
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03/18/2019 at 8:25 am #58833
That’s an interesting perspective. Just a continuation of the seller behavior of putting 50% sale on their store but also raising their prices by 50%.
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03/18/2019 at 1:11 pm #58883
This statistic is staggering. I can’t believe that many people are willing to throw away their hard-earned work that easily. Are there less f/t’ers overall doing this compared to even 10 years ago? No matter what, it is not a sound financial decision to throw that much money at questionable results with little data to back up that that sort of fee is doing anything to generate sales (less than a year’s worth of data at this point?).
Yikes.
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03/18/2019 at 1:42 pm #58887
I didn’t realize that PL’s worked like this. Thanks for the information!
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03/18/2019 at 1:46 pm #58889
I’ve also noticed that sometimes Ebays suggestion for what you should promote your item at is much higher than the trending rate. It doesn’t happen every time but it’s something I have noticed more than once.
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03/18/2019 at 1:59 pm #58891
Can someone remind me the URL where you can see what percent items sold that were promoted?
Does it list the specific items that sold through Promotions? -
03/18/2019 at 2:03 pm #58892
I had an interesting accidental experiment using promoted listings. I always use 1% as my promoted rate but I accidentally put 7% instead of 1% on my last campaign. And had super slow sales, with days of no sales at all.
That confirmed my belief that upping the promoted rate doesn’t do anything to increase sales. My sales are usually pretty good, with sales every day in my 200 item store, and I list my stuff at the lower end of average. I think MyCottage is correct and it’s price that drives sales, not higher promotion rates.
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03/18/2019 at 2:15 pm #58894
To me, it’s like the thinking that re-listing items as new each month gives you a boost. There may be minimal advantage, but I believe eBay’s algorithm isnt as easy to fool as people think.
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03/18/2019 at 5:19 pm #58903
The way to think about PLs is really pretty much the way to think about your listings in general: use best practices. Good photos, good title, item specifics, etc. All the stuff we already know. And go with a PL fee YOU are happy with. I’ve sold stuff on PL with as low as a 1% fee.
Also, keep in mind that ebay doesn’t just look at the seller and his/her listing, PL also looks at the buyer. If a buyer has a long buying history on ebay, and ebay concludes from that history that the buyer is very partial to free shipping, then a PL listing with free shipping might trump one without it, even if all other factors are the same.
So, trying to “game” PL is mostly a waste of time.
For me, if PL listings only showed up on the search results page I wouldn’t bother with PL at all, because my stuff is mostly oddball/uncommon enough to show on the first page of a fairly narrowly defined search as it is. Where I think I benefit is : PLs show up on other pages as well, and ebay has hinted that they aren’t afraid to show a buyer something that is not exactly what the buyer is looking for, but something ebay’s algo thinks the buyer would buy if the buyer only knew it existed. I suspect, but have no way to prove, that the non search results pages are the ones that fuel my PL sales.
My margins are generally high enough that I have room to do make offers, run sales, or do PLs. Sure, I’d always like to get top dollar, but there are times when I’m just happy to make a good sale, even if I’m trimming my potential net profit a little. I don’t raise my prices before starting a PL, and I don’t do it before running a sale. But again, that’s me, I know many sellers have much tighter margins. I just sold a hat for about $100…it was on sale in my store (17% off for March 17th, St Paddy’s Day). It sold as a PL, so I not only gave the buyer a discount but paid ebay a little more. Still, the hat cost me a buck at a church rummage sale. With stuff like that, I’ve got plenty of room to play around. Of course, my margins aren’t THAT great on most stuff, but like I say, I usually have wiggle room.
I’ve seen a lot of sellers post about their PL “tests”, with both good and bad results, but the only basically “scientific” test I’ve seen done (admittedly with eBay’s cooperation, so dismiss it if you want to) is the one by a third party vendor on Tamebay. I’ll try to find the link later when I get a chance.
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03/18/2019 at 5:56 pm #58908
Here’s the Tamebay article:
eBay Promoted Listings have a Significant Effect on Sales– Experimental Results
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03/19/2019 at 7:43 am #58926
Here is a link back to the experiment I did:
Promoted listings experiment RESULTS: Reducing all promoted listings to 1% rate
Ebay gives you plenty of data right in promoted listings to gage how much your items are being put in front of buyers, and how often buyers click through.
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03/19/2019 at 9:19 am #58930
–Have your promoted numbers gone up/down over the past five months?
–What eBay link are you using to see all that data?-
03/19/2019 at 12:02 pm #58940
So here was my bounce back numbers back in November:
November 16-30 total impressions: 311650
November 16-30 clicks: 3378
November 16-30 PL Sales: 29
10 of the 29 sales were Buy It Now.And here is the first half of March:
March 1-15
Total Impressions: 714507
Clicks: 3008
PL Sales: 20
Total Sales: 49
9 of the 20 sales were Buy it now.I had an average of 1080 items in November in my store. I haven’t really listed much this March – about 20 items so my sales are actually down a bit.
Looking back at my numbers, I was listing a lot in the second half of January so let’s look at those PL numbers.
January 16-31
Total Impressions: 536950
Clicks: 3735
PL Sales: 31
Total Sales: 57
13 of the 31 sales were Buy it now.I’ve been floating between 1050 and 1100 items in my store since October. I add items to PL after they’ve been listed about 30 days.
All of this data is available right on the main Promoted listings page. You can change the date range to whatever you want. If you click on the sales tab you can view the sales report.
To get my total sales I just downloaded a report.-
03/19/2019 at 12:14 pm #58941
Ah, I see the URL now for Promoted Info:
https://pls.ebay.com/plsweb/dashboard
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03/19/2019 at 9:13 am #58928
I still think PL is a cash grab that doesn’t significantly increase sales, no matter how much studies say otherwise. All that matters is having good stock with good prices, photos, descriptions, feedback and a fair return policy. I’m currently at 50+ orders per week on a store of 10k, and 5-10 orders per week on a store of 250 listings.
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03/19/2019 at 9:21 am #58931
I concur with this opinion.
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03/19/2019 at 11:02 am #58936
I agree as well – if PL’s were amazing, eBay would be pushing them with real statistical data.
I read a lot of junk data on PLs – and some of it doesn’t make statistical sense to a math nerd like me. From the data I see on people who increase sales, it looks like they are selling a few items more than usual, which statistically may happen month to month anyway. Also, for the fees they are paying for PL, an extra few sales actually costs money if all your items are PLs.
PLs are impossible to quantify statistically anyways – rarely is anyone selling the exact same items month to month, and demand over a period of time will change on any item.
I think most buyers do there research, look for the best quality/condition/price combo for there needs, and look at things like shipping and item location which are fixed costs. A PL isn’t going to improve your item, improve your photos, improve your shipping costs – it just gets your listing moved up a bit or duplicated.
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03/19/2019 at 11:31 am #58939
I’ve considered messaging buyers who purchase my items through PL and use Buy it now, but at the same time I wouldn’t want to be bothered as a buyer so why should I bother my buyers.
Really I shouldn’t have to do this. Ebay already knows where the buyers are coming in from and they should supply us with this data.
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