Survey: Fundamentals, Ads Are Key to Gaining Visibility on eBay

by: Rexford

"Many sellers reported that they felt visibility was tied to a seller's willingness to spend more on Promoted Listing ads."

Imagine a grocery store or a department store showing a supplier who is promoting a product in thosoe stores, perhaps even paying the store for the best placement, but then the stores hiding every other suppliers' products in the back room, out of site.

Isn't this the current state of eBay?  There are just too many venues to list to pay them a dime more.  When you pay for a store and high fees on top of that you expect your items to be seen.  Hiding listings or pushing them down to the bottom of search is also a huge disservice to buyers who are looking for these products.

by: Rogue

🤑Fleece~Bay💩executives revealed on Wednesday “July 2018” that if sales offers aren't good enough, eBay will ''suppress'' them. Thus, doing so since January,‼️🤔That may be unwelcome news, but at least sellers now have a greater understanding of how to deal with this new, unannounced policy⁉️
😠Therefore, This is no speculation nor glitch! eBay is intentionally hiding sales‼️👎 What is more continues until this day, and above all moving forward‼️🖕

by: spooky

if sellers are paying for more visibility, sellers who do not are getting less visibility. It is a zero sum game unfortunately. There is only so many eyeballs on the site, you can not create more out of thin air  

by: Rexford

Long term sellers remember eBay's stick and carrot approach to get sellers to bend to their desires. That was a bit gentler than what is going on now, but even then, many sellers felt like they were getting beaten with the stick and choked by the carrot.

Currently, it appears that eBay has gone full pay-"EVEN MORE"-to-play.  eBay is blinded by greed. If this is the case, no amount of tweaking, perfecting or relisting will help.  And as sales nose dive, who has the time for all of this busy work?

by: Whatever

After leaving ebay entirely for almost 2 years I decided recently to go back and see what has happened. I re-opened my 3 existing stores and started listing. I was shocked at what the listing process is now and how demanding it is AND just how long it took to actually list an item. I forged ahead. Some brief activity at first then slowly dwindled down to nothing. I did not pay to promote. I did list unique items that could be found nowhere on the worldwide net being careful to investigate each item.  Conclusion: I have shut down the 2 smaller stores leaving just the one bigger store open. Way too  much time was consumed with daily chores over-all.  I had kinda forgotten the hoop jumping required to navigate the system.  I'll leave the one store open but not for much longer. Simply not profitable in relation to labor expended.

On a further note Rexford - grocery stores have been selling better placement for a long time

by: The End

America needs at least 6 brand new venues catering ONLY to Domestic Americans, Mom and Pop sized businesses and casual selling folks.
3% take, and we take care of all aspects.

by: Rexford

"On a further note Rexford - grocery stores have been selling better placement for a long time"

True, but they don't hide the other items. Customers can still see them. I am sure that you and I agree on that.  It was nice getting your perspective of someone who has been away a while and I agree with your points.

by: pace306

It’s not the grocery store - that’s not an apt comparison

It’s you renting a (ebay) store in a mall.

ALL stores are shown in the directory, period.

As well, the mall owner can’t legally:

A) force you to take or not take certain payment methods
B) has no control over your returns policies
C) can’t tell you how to display (list) your stock
and more.

Only on places like ebay can they mafia up and on one hand says it’s YOUR business then on the other hand try to run it for you

by: Rexford

PACE, I never said that eBay was a grocery store.  I said IMAGINE a grocery store or department store.....

Aren't department stores in malls?

I do think that your analogy is a better one though. Mall owner with lots of vendors.  Makes sense.

by: Snapped

The most interesting aspect of this question is that there are sellers who still believe there are actually ‘things’ (besides upending their purses) they can do to influence being ‘visible’ on eBay - while eBay has decided that any ‘inventory’ a seller ‘supplies’ via listing submission is eBay’s alone to offer or not, as THEY see fit.  

After all, “For this kind of technology, customers don’t always know what they want.”  An eBay mantra since late 2007.  That’s almost 15 YEARS of wanton - and unwanted - marketplace supply v demand manipulation.  15 years of “Best Match” being only what eBay perceives to be best for them.  Not for the sellers.  And not for the buyers either.  

Incidentally, ‘paying for placement’ offers no assurance one’s offer will be visible ‘everywhere’ and ‘always’ either.  That’s why three different members doing the same search with the same search terms at the same time will return different results for each one.   Along with a variable array of other items completely unrelated, albeit with some of those being ‘shown’ because they were ‘promoted’ by 30 extra pieces if silver or so.

by: pace306

Rex

Im open to new ideas - aka another comparison :)

I was actually replying to Whatever - but its all good !

by: Snapped

“… aka another comparison :)”

How about newsprint classified ads?  One can get ‘the minimum’.  Or pay more for a ‘full page’ ad.  

But they don’t hide them, or only print them in some of the day’s edition.  

They also don’t ‘take over’ the whole transaction, or restrict P2P contact, or try anything else the on-line classified ‘entities’ try to pull.

One pays up front.  Seller takes the ‘risk’ of no sale for the effort -knowing that going in.  As it should be.  Buyer shares it, requiring buying decisions to be thoughtful and educated, as is (should be) always true.  That’s where “caveat emptor” (buyer beware) comes from.  Keeps out those who would offer ‘less’ than any sale would recoup, and keeps everybody’s costs down as a result.

On second thought, maybe not such an ‘equitable comparison’.  eBay doesn’t measure up.

by: toolguy

For some sellers like myself promoted listings are a complete waste of money!

Never used them, never will. . . . .

eBay changed "Reply with offer", I have an item listed for $10, the buyer wants to buy 4 of them at a discount. You used to be able to reply with an offer "higher" than the listed price. I wanted to offer them at $30. Now you can't do that. . . .

by: AddyUp

Over here we have a site called eBid. It's cheap but doesn't advertise so a sale is pretty rare on there. Though it seems to be picking for some people and some items.

But one thing that did surprise me when I put a couple of things up for sale on there. They were all over google. On the sale page or the side bar for that item. I've never seen that with eBay.

by: pace306

The only take away from all the surveys and all the YouTube people is that eBay is pure pay for play

That coupled with eBay’s asserting full control over your funds - means that sellers as said many many times by many people are no longer in control over their future and businesses

If you can’t see that and you can’t see that eBay isn’t what it used to be - is blind, period.

You can tell yourself it’s not true - but why lie to ur self?

Look, if you can afford to give eBay %20-30 or more percent- then great - but most sellers can’t even get close to it unless everything you own you found on the curb.

The other 1/2 of all this is that neither eBay nor the seller can grow - so where does it leave anyone?????

Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered and ripping people off can only last so long.

Good luck Jaime - you are going to need it explaining Q1 and forward.

by: Snapped

“ They were all over google.  I've never seen that with eBay.”

Don’t know your tenure, but eBay and Google have had a bit of Hatfield-McCoy relationship since almost a decade ago.  eBay saw Google’s model, knew they couldn’t really compete as a ‘marketplace’ (also) and postulated they could become the ‘go to’ link for buyer needs as they believed they had a larger market share of ‘buyers eyeballs’ than Google, who were capturing information researchers of all types, but not necessarily shoppers.  Yet.

That’s why they began bludgeoning potential eBay buyers with off-site ads - even on a seller’s ‘pay now’ page.  As in, look what kind of deal you might be missing.  Alternately, if we don’t got it, check these out.  It was pure eyeball fishing.  They thought they had better bait. And could make a buck or two more than caring about a pesky sale might turn.

Incidentally, their endemic hypocrisy could not allow a seller to do the same for ‘themselves’.  Might miss a sale fee take don’tcha know.  Especially these days, since so many other pieces of the payment are skimmed.  And while we’re at it, we can diminish and bury pesky listing details on ‘convenient’ tabs and jam even more ads on seller paid real estate AND those other pages too.  

Meanwhile, eBay undertook to ‘arrange’ their own ‘proprietary’ item specific attributes in a fashion incompatible with what Google could digest, while trying ineptly to also build their ‘catalogue’.  A few quarters later, they start to get desperate though, and dragged poor Griff off his rocker (pun intended) to plea for sellers to build it for them.

Google of course, didn’t need eBay’s grief.  Or ‘business’.  Or links.  Exponentially less so today and looking ahead.  

So, where once in the age of pre-disruption one could find lots ‘directly visible’ links to eBay listings when searching Google, (imagine what it could be today) now, one can still find but a sprinkling.  However those are usually ‘redirects’ from other entities that may be running their own cross-platform promotions.  And that’s why they’re also usually stale if not broken, and return a generic eBay page with nothing remotely similar to what was ‘described’ by Google.  

Unless eBay comes to it’s senses, (unlikely in so many ways) and quits thinking they can be the ‘first thought’ for a search engine - even if it DID ever actually ‘work right’, and simplifies their ‘specifics’ to match the rest of globe in what’s become ‘industry standard’ (they claim to know that term) for Google visibility, you WILL never see what you saw on eBid “with eBay”.

Nor the exponential (and some of the ‘value’ part of FVF) increased sale potential it brings.

by: DingDong

@Addyup   "Over here we have a site called eBid."

I am on the USA side of eBid and my sales are starting to pick up more.  
It's a nice "mall type" site and if you had your own store, you still have to promote yourself.
I have 4 stores there and use the buy it now option with an automatic relisting. Once a year I have to update the relisting and then my flat rate shipping that I use.

I won't return to eBay for selling, but I do a few purchases.  Nothing like I use to do.

by: Bill

eBid is a great site that hardly costs anything to sell. Yes you have to do your own promoting BUT you do get sales and what you do is up to yourself. If you do not know how to do that then you should not be selling.
Anyone who has been selling on eBay for years should have a long email list and that is where you start.
Yes you can do that on your own website but it will take a while and money to build it.
It is all up to what you want to do.