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That was one of the things I liked about Griff’s ebay podcast—ebay supplied a transcript — I can get through a podcast a lot faster if I can read it—skimming the stuff I’m not interested in—and nice to be able to go back and re-read something I maybe didn’t understand the first time.
For those who might be interested: ebay will be running monthly one hour online webinars on various topics beginning this month. Naturally, the first one is about using ebay ads LOL March will be Stores and AI. The others don’t have designated subjects yet, but in a rare move for ebay, they have released the dates and times for the entire year. May and Fall will have two hour “Seller Check-Ins” instead of the Webinars. You can reserve a spot for Feb, or the entire year….I went ahead and signed up for all of them.
More info here:
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/Announcing-the-eBay-for-Sellers-Webinar/ba-p/35460427
31 days is a drop down. You can also see last week, this month, this quarter and this year…although ,this early in the year, some of those aren’t going to be very useful.
Some of is had been asking ebay to give us store traffic reports for a long time, but they only gave them to us when they started ebay Store Ads….since those ads are Pay Per Click, they needed a way to show us view numbers (ads and non ads).
We’ve also been asking for more granularity for store traffic (where is it coming from? Off ebay?, ebay?, etc, and what are they looking at? How many click on a store video, for example?)
But since none of that actually ties in with ad campaigns, I suspect we will never see that kind of reporting.
ebay announced changes to Store Ads on Jan 14th, with a link to try the changes, but the link still goes to the old page, and it appears none of the changes have actually been released, even though it is now ten days since the announcement. I’ve asked about this on the Selling Board, and my questions were forwarded to the Ads Team by the Community Team, but so far, The Ads team hasn’t seen fit to explain why nothing has been released.
The interesting things is, buried in the announcement are hints that ebay may be making some changes to stores, but it is completely unclear.
I’m hoping to get an answer sooner or later, but “later” seems more likely. LOL
One other thing I’m going to be trying…I will likely have a sale running nearly every day…partly to get the row of other items on sale that ebay shows in my listings….I don’t know if that gets much attention , but I figure if I’m not promoting I’ve got to try to work whatever angles I can come up with.
My listing goal is to get to the point where I’m listing 50 to 70 new items per week. It will take me a while to get to that point, because I really need to improve my work space and listing process.
I’m hoping a steady flow of new listings will help to reduce any negative impact resulting from my decision to end Promoted Listings on the 12th (and I have not been promoting any new listings since the beginning of 2026.
If my sales absolutely crash, I can always start advertising again.
I’m hoping 2026 will be a good year, but I think we’re going to be facing some real challenges as competition heats up and as AI advances, all of this within an uncertain economy.
But here’s hoping the New Year manages to bring us prosperity despite all that!
I’ll have to look into Posh and Mercari, maybe etsy.
The main thing I have to do is get better organized here. My listed inventory is scattered throughout the house and should all be easily accessible in one room. And I need a better photo set up and better packing area. I’m a little hesitant to expand too much beyond ebay until I am better organized.
As far as ads go, I have never felt that my kind of long tail stuff really benefitted all that much from being promoted in search itself….I have felt that the greatest benefit came from showing up on all the other pages (such as other seller’s listing pages)…but I feel ebay has crowded so much stuff onto these pages that the benefit has been greatly reduced.
I think with the rise of AI , and people using sites like ChatGPT to ask recommendations while shopping, things are going to get even more complicated in 2026. If ebay decides to require that sellers use ads in order for items to appear in sites like ChatGPT, well, that could either convince me to use ads or to leave ebay LOL
I think AI is going to have a big impact in 2026, and no one knows just how it will play out. So eventually I definitely want to be cross channel, because if ebay doesn’t get its act together, it could rapidly lose ground to other sites….so I don’t want to be reliant on only ebay.
@ChristineR I was considering doing that, but I’m really curious to see if I can generate enough sales without ads first. At this point, I’m going to try to make up for the lack of ads by:
1. Keep filling the pipeline. I have plenty of inventory, and if I would list every day (or nearly so) I think that listing activity would make a difference.
2. Because ebay seems to downgrade stale/stagnant inventory (I gather long tail one offs are treated no different than new, multi quantity listings in this respect), I am setting aside time each week to revise and relist older inventory (or bundle or purge)
3. Use free social media to drive traffic to my ebay store.
4. And try ebay’s Ambassador Store in conjunction with social media.
5. And finally, experiment with multi channel selling , and maybe (circling back to #1) try one of the third party AI listing tools, which supposedly speed up the listing process enormously. (ebay’s own AI listing stuff I mostly ignore)
I have good margins on most of my stuff, so continuing ads at 2-3% wouldn’t hurt that much, but to me, ebay’s new rule is basically an admission by ebay that ads aren’t really very effective at driving sales….if they were, ebay could employ a genuine attribution rule that would require a plausible connection between the ad and sale, and they’d still make money. So, if ebay has no confidence in their ads, why should I?
One final note on this: It isn’t Jan 13th yet, and ebay could still modify the rule and its reporting , etc. So, if they make changes, maybe I’ll just go ahead and continue using ads. But I’m not holding my breath.
Thanks, @VintageLacy….looking forward to reading it!
Merry Christmas everyone! I’m spending part of the day today trying to set some goals for 2026, probably unrealistic so I’ll see what I’ve achieved by the end of Q1 before saying much about that. Immediate plans however include running an after Christmas sale this weekend, probably on most everything in my store. And I’ll probably run another one around New Years.
I still haven’t decided exactly what I’m going to do about Jan 13th and the ebay General Ad Campaign arbitration rule change, but I suspect I’ll start by simply ending any existing campaign on the 12th and monitor sales after that…If I feel I need to, I’ll gradually reintroduce ads….but I’m hoping to avoid that entirely.
Have you guys decided what you are doing about it? Or maybe you haven’t been using ads to begin with?
There is now a formal announcement (including some FAQs):
One thing to note:
If I’m promoting an item before the attribution update to general campaigns, how will sales and ad fees be attributed after the update?
We will consider clicks from up to 30 days before the attribution update takes effect to apply the updated logic. The sale must occur after the update (January 13, 2026 onward).
For example, a buyer clicks on a promoted listing that uses a general campaign strategy on December 20, 2025.
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<li aria-level=”1″>If that promoted item sells on December 26, 2025, Direct or Halo item attribution will be applied.
<li aria-level=”1″>If that promoted item sells on January 13, 2026 or after, the updated attribution logic will be applied.(In other words, while this policy change begins Jan 13, there will be a 30 day lookback period, which means ad campaigns active from mid December on could result in the new rule being applied is the sale is made after the 13th.)
Mixed bag. Yes, absolutely LOL
A couple You Tubers were saying that ebay execs have indicated they will be pushing for more of us to use videos. Well, that makes sense. But then why do we STILL not have the ability to upload video directly into the App? They want to see more store videos on store home pages. But then why not provide tutorials on how to make a good store video, different styles, etc.
Every since they added video to the gallery, I’ve been BEGGING them to provide an icon or something in search results to show that “Hey, this listing has a video”. And to have a filter for listings with videos. Or, do what etsy does, actually use the video as the first image in the Gallery, and in search, make it possible to hover over the video and play it right there.
Do those things, and sellers will start uploading more videos.
I can’t tell you how often I’ve had ebay reps tell me “Those are great ideas. We’ll take them back to the team.” And then: crickets. Ask about it, and they mention ebay’s “Priorities”. What? Like making more changes to the Seller Hub layout that no one has asked for?
ebay should absolutely dominate the used and vintage market…and they’ve had five years since they admitted chasing Amazon was a failure. But they’ve let a lot of the used market slip off to Social Media, to WhatNot, to etsy, etc.
ebay is absolutely still worth selling on for me. But the platform and its management is just so frustrating. It could be SO much better than it is.
I did listen, and while it wasn’t God awful, I didn’t really hear much in the way of NEW stuff. And none of the stuff I mentioned above was discussed. I would say I’m disappointed, but my expectations were so low, I’m not sure that would be true LOL
I’d love to say I came away feeling excited about my Q4 prospects, but mostly I feel like I’m in for a long slog between now and about Dec 15th, when I’ll start to pull back some. I did not come away thinking: Boy oh boy, it sure sounds like ebay is going to be pulling out all the stops this Holiday Season to help us during this period of economic uncertainty.
For anyone who is interested: Tomorrow, from 3 to 5 ET, is eBay’s final “Seller Check In” for the year. If you haven’t reserved a spot (it’s free), or want to review the agenda, go here:
https://events.ringcentral.com/events/ebay-winter-seller-check-in/registration
All sessions are usually recorded and made available with a few days on eBay’s own You Tube channel. (I’m not sure about the “networking sessions”, which are hosted by ebay sellers, not ebay staff)
If there are any significant policy changes or new features coming, they are usually announced in the first session.
A few things I’m hoping to hear about (but doubt I will):
ebay’s Facebook Marketplace “partnership” was announced to much fanfare a while back, and since then….mostly crickets.
eBay’s Ambassador affiliate program.
Also, at ebay Open it was announced that we would soon be able to use the App to upload videos directly in the app listing flow. I have yet to see it in my App.
And, given recent announcements from etsy, Shopify, and even Wal Mart…that they have integrated with ChatGPT for direct shopping….will eBay have anything to say about this? Or about their own progress (if any) on implementing AI for listings (load photos, and eBay does the rest….I’m not seeing it for my stuff, although there are 3rd party programs that apparently can do this for you)
And finally, will this be the year that eBay finally decides to run an actual HOLIDAY ad campaign, or will it be another year of marketing focusing only on ebay’s Focus Categories, with little or no connection to the Holiday Season?
I’ve been listing some stuff on a particular Facebook Group….just a few things, last week I got one sale out of I think 6 or 8 things I put there. But the only fee is the PayPal transaction fee, so no ebay fees. And, over time, I’m hoping to be viewed as a regular in the group, which helps with sales. Also, on this last sale (first time I tried this) I added an ebay discount coupon to the package….will do that with all the Facebook sales from now on. Might help, might not, but can’t hurt to try.
I’m hoping to do more with my FB business page (I post, but it doesn’t really get views….) and IG and You Tube. Also, I want to update my existing Pinterest account. A friend, with no real social media experience, but real artistic talent, got 15,000 followers on Tik Tok in two weeks by posting videos of her making her paper mache jack o lanterns. So I just joined Tik Tok and will see what I can figure out there.
I’m also considering the new ebay Ambassador program. I would use that to promote some of my stuff, but also other seller’s stuff….
So, a lot of things I hope to try, but we’re already in Q4 and I need to focus most of my energy on getting new listings up….trying to figure out how to add a lot of listings AND gain more visibility with social media etc.
