eBay Promoted Listings Costs in 2023!

Do you have to spend money on Promoted Listings to
succeed on eBay?

In short, yes. Here’s why. As eBay CEO Jamie Iannone acknowledged during eBay’s recent Q4 earnings call, eBay’s active buyer base has declined by 9% year over year.
Ecommerce sites across all platforms are in the same buyer-leaking boat. With COVID mostly in the rear view mirror at long last, shoppers are flocking back to newly reopened brick-and-mortar stores.

Meanwhile, Promoted Listings (PL for short) is bringing in big bucks for eBay.

It’s the primary driver among the company’s first-party advertising programs, which collectively brought in an impressive $276 million in revenue during Q4. Most of that is thanks to Promoted Listings Standard (PLS), eBay’s pay- per-sale ad program for eBay sellers. Those numbers tell the story: Nowadays, most sellers promote their listings.

So what does mean for you and your business on eBay?

It boils down to this: Use PLS (if you aren’t already). But be sure you use it wisely and well. Here’s what you need to know in order to do so.

Using eBay’s Promoted Listings costs money, but you need it to stay competitive.

Because you can bet that your competition is promoting their listings! As ecommerce marketing guru Neal Patel states in his excellent article The Keys to Success with Amazon Advertising , “People don’t have the time to search through pages two, three, and four of Amazon’s results. They expect to find the best results at the top of page one, and, if your product isn’t there, then your sales are going to suffer.” The same is true on eBay. So how can you get the maximum bang for your PLS buck?

First, create a great listing.

Start by knowing and following eBay best practices for crafting an effective title: eBay gives you 80 characters for your title; use at least 75-80 of them. Make your title keyword rich (don’t waste characters on punctuation, emojis, or unnecessary verbiage) and be sure to front-load “the noun” — i.e., what your item is, be it a shirt, a vase, or a hubcap

eBay’s search engine, Cassini, uses those keywords to rank your listing in search results. Furthermore, your title is what gets buyers to click on your listing; it’s what they see first and foremost, especially in the eBay Mobile app. And more than 80% of all eBay buyers shop via their mobile device!

For more details on optimizing your listings for PLS, read my blog post eBay Promoted Listings: Your Holiday Superpower! 

Second, remember that PLS is PPS (pay per sale), not PPC (pay per click).

Set your ad rate (the percentage of the sale price that you’re willing to pay eBay when your item sells), and then review the data in your Advertising Dashboard. It’s located under the Marketing tab on your Seller Hub Overview page. Starting on March 30, 2023, eBay is changing the way your PLS fees are calculated by expanding their definition of what counts as a sale via PLS. In addition to direct clicks — where the buyer clicks on a promoted listing, then buys that item within 30 days — eBay will now also include what it calls “halo sales”, wherein a buyer clicks on your promoted listing, then buys any of your promoted items within 30 days.

Thanks to this redefinition, you’re probably going to pay more in PLS fees.

So keep a keen eye on your dashboard to keep up with how much PLS is costing you! Bear in mind, too, that eBay’s recommended ad rates for various categories and items go up and down. It pays to be aware of these fluctuations so that you can adjust your own rates accordingly.

What are your Promoted Listings costs adding up to?

Check your sales, then crunch the numbers. Is spending, say, $120 in PL fees (in addition to your FVFs — final values fees) worth $3000 in sales?

How can you pay for PLS and still make money?

My free guide Winning with Promoted Listings spells out the smartest strategies to stay profitable despite these escalating fees. In my free guide, discover a bonus 4 pageaddendum on how best to deal with these upcoming March 2023 changes to PLS.

 

The Bottom Line for You and Your Business

eBay sellers have reached a tipping point with regard to Promoted Listings. They’re no longer just a good idea; they’ve become standard operating procedure. So factor in ad rates as part of your COGS (cost of goods sold) and sell, sell, sell!