Does anyone use any of eBay's promotions when selling?
 

Just wondering if anyone occasionally, or regularly, uses any of eBay's promotions, when selling? I've been using eBay since 1998 and am beginning to wonder if I might have a better sell thru rate if I occasionally try a promotion. I'm loathe to add any more fees though. The amount of items listed on eBay these days is staggering, which is probably my problem.

I’ve never promoted a listing, but I recently read that on their UK site they recently changed the system where if you promote any listing than you are charged the fee if any item in your inventory is sold even if it wasn’t the promoted item. As they usually test their new procedures in foreign markets before rolling them out company wide I would expect that to be the case here relatively soon.

I have tried the version that they take a percentage of the sale price. I have only tried it with a few items. I have sold several of those items with and without the promotion being on. It did bring more views but I don't believe it helped sell faster. I personally added the fee to the price so even though more people seen it the higher price slowed down the sale. So in my case it really didn't make any difference.

Wow, that is pretty bad Steve! I've never featured or promoted anything on eBay. I've always hoped that my listings were good enough to reach an interested market. I will say I'm definitely selling more privately these days, primarily to escape eBay fees. But I've also noticed that there are a TON of listings on eBay now, in the sports cards/memorabilia categories, and a lot of other collectible categories. Great for buyers, not so much for sellers.

I have but I always set it at the lowest percentage (2%).

I promoted one of my listings and it is definitely is getting more looks. I've also sold a few non-promo items since promoting that one and at least in my case the promotional fee wasn't added to them.

I have not and will not. People who buy my stuff are typically specialists who will find the items regardless of promotion as long as the descriptors are accurate. That should hold true for anything except perhaps the most generic items.

The only special of theirs I used was the cut fee special on $1K+ cards that expired some weeks ago. I sold one card and in thanks for it they froze my proceeds for a specious 'security check'; i wrote a screed on my Substack about it if you really want to see a verbatim transcript of what it is like reasoning with farm animals, er, eBay service reps.

The other offers I've gotten are along the lines of 'promote a 10% sale' (at your cost, not ours). You have to read the terms really, really carefully before you jump in and use anything eBay offers because there is extractive language usually buried in the terms and conditions.

I've had ok luck with using this. I do it fairly rarely but have done it.

- As with other posters, I almost always use a percentage that is lower than the "recommended" one, usually 2-5%.
- I almost always do it on low value cards--if you have a $1000 card for sale and you set a 5% promotion, that's $50 extra in fees on top of the roughly $130 they are taking already, and if I actually want to sell the card, I can't raise the price $50 in most cases.
- For cheaper cards, though, it works ok-- if you have a $8 card and it's 3% promotion, I can usually live with the extra 24 cents in fees if it means I get it out of my inventory.
- You can actually look into views to see which views were organic and which were promoted, and in many cases I do see a substantial increase in views even with the low %s. Whether those people are the kind of people who are gonna buy the item is a question, but I am almost using this in cases where the thing hasn't sold on its own for a while, so different eyeballs is almost always good.

Anyway, that's my experience if that helps anyone...

I try not to give them any more money than their already high fees.