This blog post was originally published by Deliverr, which is now Flexport. The content has been adjusted to fit the Flexport brand voice and tone, but all other information remains unchanged. With the merging of Deliverr’s services (DTC fulfillment, B2B distribution, and Last Mile delivery) into Flexport’s existing international freight and technology services, we’re now able to provide merchants with true end-to-end logistics solutions spanning from the factory floor to the customer’s door.

Ebay Promoted Listings, also known as sponsored products, are ads with a twist that can help you increase sales and exposure by up to 30%. Sponsored products also support your organic listings without too much up-front investment.

Ecommerce sellers can use eBay’s Promoted Listings to reach more customers affordably, since you only pay when someone makes a purchase.

On the surface, it looks a lot like Google pay-per-click or Amazon product ads. Sponsored products appear in the 4th and 5th product listing spaces on the page and look just like a typical eBay listing.

The only difference is the "sponsored," "promoted" or "ad" tag that appears in the left-hand corner just above the product title. They show up in both desktop and mobile search results.

When eBay first launched Promoted Listings, it was available for sellers based in the US, UK, Germany, and Australia. Today, “Promoted listings is currently available to all active eBay Stores subscribers in the US, CA, UK, DE, AU, and FRITES. It is also available to US or Global Top Rated Sellers who sell on the US site.” (Promoted Listings)

They only show up in the country where you are registered and you can only promote fixed-price listings. Unlike PPC ads, eBay doesn’t charge you anything for the listing. Instead, they take a percentage of the sale. Much like a traditional commission or an affiliate promotion, you only pay when someone who clicks on your ad buys the product within 30 days.

Who Is Eligible for eBay Promoted Listings?

Promoted listings are reserved for top rated sellers and eBay store subscribers.

If you use eBay's quick listing tool, you get access to Promoted Listings Lite, a slightly less powerful version of sponsored listings. It only works for fixed-priced products in any category, except for Motor, Real Estate, or Travel, sold though quick listings.

Method 1: Become a Top-Rated Seller

This is the cheapest way to get access to eBay promoted listings. Being a top-rated seller lets buyers know that you are reliable and known for exceptional customer service. So how do you win the title and get access to Promoted Listings on eBay?

Ebay assesses your performance on the 20th of each month. They look at service quality and your sales history for the month. If you qualify, they’ll automatically make you a top-rated seller.

In order to become a top-rated seller, you need to meet the following requirements:

• Actively sell on eBay for over 90 days
• Over the last year, you need to have made over 100 transactions and sold $1000 worth of products to US customers (or UK, Germany, and Australia if that’s where you are based)
• Adhere to the eBay seller's compliance policy
• Have a transaction defect rate of under 0.5%
• Have a late shipment rate below 3%
• Have a closed sales rate without resolution below 0.3%

Method 2: Choose a Store Subscription

If you have a store subscription, you get access to promoted listings on eBay.

There's a store for every budget and seller type. When you subscribe, you get access to additional benefits like a promotions manager and exclusive tools for optimizing your organic listings.

Setting up a Promoted Listing

Once you get access to eBay sponsored products, here’s how you would set up your Promoted Listing.

1. Pick Your Product

Head over to your sellers dashboard, click on "Marketing" then go to "Promoted Listings." From there, click on "Create new campaign." You can pick products one by one, or you can select listings in bulk.

Select the products you'd like to promote. Choose a product that you'd like to get in front of more customers-- this could be a well performing item, or a new listing you'd like to experiment with. eBay then uses the information for your product to create the ad.

2. Set a Price for Your Ad

Once you've selected the products that you want to promote, you'll see the option to apply ad trending rates. eBay will then automatically pick the ad rate for your category.

You can also set your own rates by checking the current ad rate averages, which vary across departments, product types, and seasons. The rate you choose will affect your ad's placement.

3. Launch and Track Your Campaign

Once your rates are set, you can name your campaign and pick a start and end date. Hit launch and your campaign is ready to go.

It can take a few hours for your ad to go live so don’t worry if you don’t see it immediately. You can edit your campaigns and turn them on and off at any time.

Use eBay's analytics to track performance. You can track the number of click-throughs, items sold, ad fees, and sales within a 30 day period.

Taking Advantage of Sponsored Products

Now that you are ready to launch your first campaign, let’s take a look at some of the benefits of using eBay Promoted Listings.

1. Increase Sales of Your Most Popular Products

Want to sell more of your best-performing products? Promoted listings can work alongside your organic listings to help you reach more people.

After using eBay Promoted Listings, TekReplay saw a 3x increase in sales and a 175% increase in the number of products sold.

Go through your product roster, pick your best ones, promote them for a set period of time, and measure the results.

2. Stand Out in Seasonal Listings

Seasonal promotions can get pretty crowded as sellers compete for top spots and customer attention. Everyone is battling with over sales price and search results, but you can stand out in the category by using promoted products.

VMInnovations used promoted listings in the April to June period to sell spring/summer products like pools accessories and gardening tools. They saw a 30 to 1 return on every dollar spent.

3. Start off a Listing on the Right Foot

Do you have a new product that you suspect will do really well with your target audience? You can give it a boost to immediately get in front of more people by promoting it.

This is a great way to test its performance-- you only have to pay if the item sells.

Make the Most of Sponsored Products

The right ad can support organic listings and help you increase sales.

One of the great advantages of eBay Promoted Listings is that you don't have to make an initial investment. This makes sponsored products the perfect ad type to experiment with-- you can try different products, categories, and types to see which ones bring in the highest ROI.

Experiment with the percentage you give to eBay and see what the lowest viable cost for the highest potential gain is. Try different strategies that work for your business. If you want to reach more people and increase sales, sponsored posts should rank highly in your eBay strategy.

Don’t Want To Do Sponsored Products? Here’s How To Get On eBay Deals Instead

eBay began offering Daily Deals as part of the site's format fairly early on, paving the way for other sites like Groupon. eBay daily and weekly deals are heavily discounted products with a "Buy It Now" price, ranging anywhere from 20-90% off the recommended list price with free shipping included.

In exchange for these discounts, sellers are featured on the dedicated eBay Deals page, sometimes on the home page, and many products go to the top of generic search on the site. This can greatly increase sales and exposure for sellers, but with no published information on how to get on eBay Deals, many sellers don't know how to get featured.

However, qualifying for eBay Deals isn't as simple as using an algorithm or discounting products enough. Deals is a select program that only a few high-volume sellers qualify for.

What Are eBay Deals and How Do They Work?

While many similar programs are based on algorithms such as lowest price and fastest shipping for sellers with certain account health, eBay deals are invite-only. According to Channel Advisor, only select approved sellers are eligible to get on eBay Deals (weekly and daily).

If your account meets certain qualifications, you can discuss joining eBay Deals with your account representative. For certain countries, such as Australia, you can submit your deals to be reviewed by a team. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like this is an option for American sellers.

• Ebay Deals sellers are Top Rated Sellers that have access to plenty of inventory, so they can support demand that can exceed several thousand products in one day
• Ebay Deals are often seasonal, trending products, or standard necessities (think duvets in the autumn or kitchen sets)
• Ebay negotiates Daily Deals individually, including the total volume of available products, total cost including shipping, etc

In addition to being featured on the eBay Deals page, most eBay Deals products go to the top of generic product search. However, the search results improvement does not typically last longer than the deal.

Another thing to note is that the program focuses on enterprise-level sellers. Most eBay Deals accounts are outlets, factory retailers, and high-level accounts which have a proven track record of selling thousands of products per day.

Ebay Daily Deals vs Weekly Deals

eBay publishes four new deals every day at 8 a.m. Pacific Time. They publish an undisclosed amount of additional deals throughout the day depending on original product availability and other factors. These deals remain online for 24 hours or until sold out.

Weekly deals are published at an undisclosed rate and remain for the week or until sold out.

How To Qualify Your Account for eBay Deals

Getting on eBay and qualifying for eBay Deals can help increase reviews, sales velocity, and move unwanted inventory out of your warehouse. However, eBay's policies make it difficult to qualify for the program, since most featured products are listed by Top Rated Sellers.

Become an eBay Top Rated Seller

Ebay's Top-Rated Seller program replaced their Enterprise and Power Seller programs in the United States using a simple algorithm centered around both sales and account health. Your seller level is assessed and adjusted on the 20th of each month based on sales, ratings, and other factors such as your order defect rate.

The primary considerations are:

• Your account must be 90 days old or older
• You must have processed 100+ transactions valued at $1,000+ in the previous 12 months or 400 transactions in the previous 90 days depending on lookback period
• Meet a maximum transaction defect rate of 0.5% with a maximum of 3 unique buyers affected
• Meet a maximum of 0.3% of cases closed without seller resolution with a minimum of 2 transactions effected
• Meet a maximum of 3% total late transactions affecting a maximum of 6 transactions
• Same to 1-day business handling
• 30-Day + Return Period

Your lookback period is also important. If you've made fewer than 400 sales in the preceding 3 months, eBay will use your total sales and reviews over the preceding 12 months. If you've made more, they will use the past 90 days. Check further eBay requirements here.

Keep Sales Up

While the biggest factor in being selected for eBay Deals seems to be your ability to provide free shipping and a discount of at least 20% on a large volume of products, all sellers also maintain a high level of sales.

For example, if you were to click on any eBay Deal, you'd be hard pressed to find any sellers with fewer than 10,000 reviews (the lowest we found was 11,008). eBay doesn't publish this metric, but since some eBay Deals products sell more than 3,000 in a 24-hour period, it makes sense the company wants proof you can handle a spike in sales and continue to deliver a consistent and positive experience.

Manage Account Metrics

eBay doesn't publish the specific requirements to be an eBay Deals seller, but all sellers have a few things in common. Feedback is always at 97% or higher, Detailed Seller Ratings (DSR) tend to be 4.6/5 in each category or higher, and must meet the Top-Rated Seller qualifications.

Discount Products

eBay uses Daily and Weekly Deals to promote low-priced products with free shipping to millions of people across networks like Facebook. To qualify, you'll have to be able to offer a high quantity of products (typically anywhere from a few hundred to 3,000 +) at a 20-90% discount from recommended list price, taking the average sale price into account.

Since eBay negotiates eBay Deals on an individual basis, you'll be able to determine how much you want to discount the product, how many you can sell at that price, and quantity that one customer can buy (most are limited to 5 or fewer per customer).

Ship and Deliver Quickly

eBay's Top Rated and Top Rated Plus Programs require same or 1-day business handling for products. Cost-effective next-day fulfillment requires careful optimization to ensure you protect your margins. You should have a bird’s eye view of inventory, pipeline, lead times, reorder points, all on top of an efficient pick and pack operation.

For most, the best practice should be to work smarter not harder here, to avoid out-of-hand costs and having to add temporary employees to meet sudden increases in demand.

Outsourcing some or all of your fulfillment operation to third-party logistics will enable you to meet the order processing and shipping requirements to get on eBay Deals.

How Flexport Can Fulfill eBay Orders Seamlessly

If you want to improve your seller rating with faster and cheaper fulfillment, Flexport can help. We're pre-integrated into eBay's fast shipping program, eBay Fast 'N Free, offer rates competitive with FBA, and can get you set up in a matter of minutes.

Our easy onboarding means you can start fulfilling your eBay orders quickly in just a few clicks. Once we receive your inventory, we will sync with your sales channels so that orders automatically start flowing in.

With Flexport, fulfillment shouldn’t be something you constantly have to worry about. It just works. Much like how Fulfillment by Amazon integrates seamlessly with Amazon Prime, Flexport integrates with eBay Guaranteed Delivery.

Overall, getting on eBay Deals is a great way to boost sales and get those conversion rates up. eBay Deals products are meant to sell; they are tried-and-true basics, trends, seasonal, or other popular items. When you find the intersection between a product that you can sell and ship in high quantities, and one that will help eBay hit sales targets, you’ll have a great formula for an eBay Deal.

The contents of this blog are made available for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any legal, business, or financial decisions. We do not guarantee, represent, or warrant the accuracy or reliability of any of the contents of this blog because they are based on Flexport’s current beliefs, expectations, and assumptions, about which there can be no assurance due to various anticipated and unanticipated events that may occur. This blog has been prepared to the best of Flexport’s knowledge and research; however, the information presented in this blog herein may not reflect the most current regulatory or industry developments. Neither Flexport nor its advisors or affiliates shall be liable for any losses that arise in any way due to the reliance on the contents contained in this blog.

The contents of this blog are made available for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any legal, business, or financial decisions. We do not guarantee, represent, or warrant the accuracy or reliability of any of the contents of this blog because they are based on Flexport’s current beliefs, expectations, and assumptions, about which there can be no assurance due to various anticipated and unanticipated events that may occur. This blog has been prepared to the best of Flexport’s knowledge and research; however, the information presented in this blog herein may not reflect the most current regulatory or industry developments. Neither Flexport nor its advisors or affiliates shall be liable for any losses that arise in any way due to the reliance on the contents contained in this blog.