eBay Tests New Approaches to Promoted Listings Ads

by: RL15

mr walmart is not going to do anything for sellers...he is a failure just like all the other fleecebay "big shots"

speaking of failures, is the grifter still on the payroll?

by: JohnGermaine

They are never going to understand that THEY are a PLATFORM where independent operators have their own stores. Thinking that "they" need a catalog is insane.

by: Geetar

I think the catalog was all about being amazon. They figured if they could get all the name brand stuff on board, throw the used, vintage, handmade, and generic items by the wayside they would be like or maybe ahead of amazon. But that failed and the thrown stuff is in tatters. That thrown away stuff is what made ebay. I think this announcement kind of says that they understand that. I never understood it really, why throw any business away at all. I think thats a problem with these ivy league mba types. They think because they think it, it must be right. Dangerous thinking.

Hell, as much as I hate Bezo's, I have to admit, he did pull off what i thought would be impossible, or at the very least would have taken another 5-7 yrs. Ebay was thinking 2 steps ahead when Bezo's was thinking 10 steps. But even Amazon's catalog doesnt work right. If anything it's not much better than ebay's.

Ebay really needs to hire some good people to run it. Even if they had the stuff to do it, these guys at the top of ebay have too much of the old way system in them. I hate to say it. But they need to go.

by: eBay Shill Buster

eBay search is so bad due to executive who have no idea on how to run the marketplace, they have China sellers at the top of every search result in the USA with multiple variation listings dominating the search result pages.

So instead of the user being able to find what they want they have to sort through hundreds of variation listings (model 1-2-3-4-5, instead of simply model 1), this lunacy and incompetence of people like Wenig and Temkin forces sellers into sponsored listings since their items never show up in search. This is the reason for slow sales across the entire marketplace for eBay sellers and eBay itself. All caused by excessive greed and utter incompetence of misguided executives who are out of touch with reality.

by: Jairib

They are going to start immediately screwing around with the site.  It was so smooth for 1.5 months.  UGH.

by: pace306

They spent the money that they could have used on the catalog building Walkers West.

The catalog doesnt work because eBay cheaped out (an idea egged on by the former CEO - lets use the seller base as slave labor and get it done for free).

JS is a dope. He was a dope THEN, hes a dope now, and his main concern is his pocketbook, not how sellers are doing. The proof is the "ask me anything" which produced nothing. Maybe at eBayClosed in Vegas where its 107 in shade in July, they can trot him and "Ole Griff" on stage, they can do a barbershop quartet song/number and explain how they are "there for the seller". HOGWASH.

Any "redoing" of PL is because its not producing the expected income. eBay hides you or puts you on page 3, the extorts you to pay them more to be seen - but still not promising anything concrete in return (MAYBE visibility).

by: maxmad

"He indicated sellers should use the ad program judiciously - for example, to promote new products. But he said sellers should not take money away from investments in fast shipping or better packing in order to pay for a promoted listing placement instead."


This guy is so full of it, it's not even funny, just another typical sad day for ebay

by: toolguy

@ESB

"eBay search is so bad due to executive who have no idea on how to run the marketplace, they have China sellers at the top of every search result in the USA"

More silliness from a disgruntled seller!

If I'm looking for a 1967 327 cylinder head with .202 intake valves the chances of a chinese seller stocking these are about ZERO!

Your blanket statements DON'T hold water!

Now if it's a chinese made product I can understand why a chinese seller would be on the top of search. . . .PS: I think you're running out of axe to grind!

by: eBay Shill Buster

All search results in competitive categories have variation listings from thousands of China sellers flooding the search results on the US facing site, so small US sellers will never be found by buyers.

When a buyers is searching for a '1" and the search results show thousands of variation listings for "1,2,3,4, 5, and 6", they are wasting the buyers time and they simply leave. Most searchers don't even know how to use filters and don't use them, this plays into Devin and Temkin's criminal schemes of fee churning unsold items and forcing sellers to buy promoted listings to sell on eBay.

The new CEO needs to be aware of these criminal schemes, they only why he will see them is right here because they have banned any member who dares to tell the truth on eBay forums.

by: Whatever

OMG I just now saw a glimpse into the minds of these "exec's" at eBay. Here's what happened: I sold something on eBay the buyer was kind enough to drop me a note telling me she had purchased all a seller had on etsy. So she finds mine on ebay and was grateful.
Curious I thought I would look on etsy myself. I input the precise verbiage and got this: One page of  kind of related same item - everything on the page was a promoted ad - not a couple - EVERY one and there was nothing past that page one. Can you imagine what those sellers coughed up to be one of the only 30 selling those items???
I just kept thinking OMG is this what ebay has up their sleeve? It was pretty horrifying. I don't do PL - won't do it either. If eBay needs more money just ask for it - upfront - let the sellers decide whether they want to play or not. Scared ebay? If you just ran your own dam site your way and quit screwing everyone things might be better.  Somebody please start an honest seller website.  

by: pace306

New Years Preview

The GENIUS of JS

Coming Soon to a theater near you - bidding on top spots aka page 1

its why he was brought back. PL dont work. It robs and cheats sellers who refuse to be blackmailed by eBay to get their goods sold.

It doesnt bring in enough $$$ so eBay will up the game .... Look for it in April.

so says a little birdie - lets see if shes right

by: purpleiris

I know there are a lot of people out there who don't mind buying from Chinese sellers, but I never would. So, I simply don't understand why these sites insist on pushing them to the top of search results.

If I went shopping on a site and saw mostly Chinese sellers, I'd leave instantly. Nowadays, they have gotten sneaky about hiding where they're located, but you can still figure it out if you know what to look for. For example, who else could sell a king-size quilt for $26 with free shipping from Michigan?

When I look at listings on eBay these days, it's amazing just how many are from Chinese sellers. When I have to spend time figuring out where something is REALLY coming from on each and every listing, why bother shopping there? It's not like you can just go by feedback anymore.

I support my fellow American sellers, not the unscrupulous Chinese sellers.

by: eBay Shill Buster

Pace, it is already done, bidding on placement, because in categories where the China sellers are posting multi-model variation listings the entire first few pages are clogged up with these sort of listings from China, so small sellers will never have items shown at all unless they pay for promoted listings. This is why sales are dead on eBay and why sellers are closing their eBay stores and pulling inventory from eBay.

by: lancecorp

Many of us have done well selling on Ebay in years past but realize that changes they've made are affecting our sales and we need to make changes so we add additional venues to sell on or move off Ebay completely and devote our time to a site where the rewards benefit all the hard work we put in it.

For the niche sellers here - Ebay is still working for them and that's good but I take each of their comments with a grain of salt as they may not as yet experienced many of the problems that have plagued the vast majority of us. I do think they'll get a wake up call once China starts replicating their airplane tools and markets them as OEM Made in the USA and those are seen before their items. Buyers do not want to weed through listings to find what they want. It's much easier for a search that pulls up items specific to their query and not items that were paid to be shown or rank higher due to asinine algorithms.

Ebay doesn't seem to get it that sellers are also buyers. My latest purchases were made on other sites due to the fact that my search on Ebay was not showing me what I was really looking for and for those I did find the prices were higher than other sites due to sellers having to charge more to cover false SNAD returns, higher FVFs due to these false SNAD returns and eBay's inability to pass on USPS savings to the sellers or make better deals with the USPS like other venues have.

by: Frank Abagnale

@lancecorp

IMO, The niche sites are the best way to compete with ebay and they represent the best competition with ebay's business model ( a non FBA model such as Amazon). You can literally tell which sites offer the most competition to ebay based on the commission fee for that catagory. Ebay dropped the fees on such categories such as musical instruments (because of Reverb), stamps and paper money (because of Delcampe) and recently with the zero commission fee on sneakers over $100 (because of StockX). These sites want to be THE go to place.  

by: purpleiris

Maybe if they'd quit spending their money on buying up their competition and focus on being the best option for sellers, then they wouldn't have such issues.

by: eBay Shill Buster

Devin certainly doomed eBay, see this post from a programming and search engine expert and the rest of the thread too about how eBay executives are completely lost and are sitting on their hands helpless to fix the site.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Down-down-down-terrible-2019-hol
iday-season-on-eBay/m-p/30541971#M1529187

by: Smallseller

Jordan Sweetnam said he agreed with sellers who expressed concern that eBay allows sub-par sellers to get greater visibility than quality sellers by paying for search exposure.

Is this really what sellers are concerned with? It seems to me that sellers are considered that they are using promoted listings and not being seen. That ad blockers are resulting in listings not being found. And that since the seller update, that sales are being made from promoted listings all the time and not organic listings.

I feel like ebay is going to do testing to see how they can get more money from promoted listings from sellers because since the seller update, a lot of people have stopped using promoted listings and ebay has seen their ad revenue decrease.

by: Shanna

Tool, your myopic world is brings us all quite a laugh. Keep up the good work, but don't forget to hype the 2 drink minimum.

by: Geetar

#1-
sellers that stopped using PL after they found out that ad blockers are weeding them out are not going to use it again. Remember, at one time you got your normal listing listed and another PL listing that was shown. I stopped after they made it only 1 listing. So, with PL, and ad blocker now, my listing completely disappears?
   They would need to completely end PL, come up with a new name, and start over for a lot of sellers to use it.

#2-

   Remember, PL relies on the search...search terms used, and the results that are generated. DOES SEARCH WORK GOOD? The way it works right now doesnt work. Because search does not bring up good results, so therefore, PL will not work properly. Maybe to weed out PL bullies you could use exact search terms in the order it is typed??