How to use Etsy's Promoted Listings Part 2

Part 2 is now available on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkkfreee_dg

Blog: Part 1 http://etsyjewelryfx.blogspot.com/2014/11/etsy-promoted-listing-guide.html

Blog: Part 3 http://etsyjewelryfx.blogspot.com/2014/11/how-to-use-etsys-promoted-listings-part_22.html

Hey guys, welcome back for part two of my little guide on promoted listings. Some things have been added to promoted listings and I have acquired new information on some of the stats; so I made a youtube video and I also wanted to write an accompanying blog post.

First lets look at my comparison of stats from last month and this month so far. For the month of October you can see a clear pattern of low impressions, and low clicks. Then when we get to October 28th, the day I changed my promoted listings last month, everything skyrocketed, but I still spent a decent chunk of my budget on promoted listings. The only reason I didn't max the budget out for the entire month ( 31.00 ) was the last couple of days where I changed the cost per click to .02c.

Lets look at these two screen shots together. October Impressions: 19297 - November so far 23227. Look at the difference! Because I am not maxing out my daily budget first thing in the morning my ads are available to the shoppers during prime time hours ( afternoon / evening ). Remember, if you max the budget out, Etsy stops showing your ads until the day rolls over. October Clicks: 190 - November so far 206! I am on track this month to likely triple Octobers number of clicks. October Cost: 26.86 - November so far 4.00. This is probably the most telling difference there is! My cost is a fraction of what I spent last month and I am already surpassing ALL of the numbers in November.  

Now you have to remember, what works for me may not work the best for your store. You will need to find the formula. This series of blog posts and videos is just meant to show you how to find the formula, and show you how successful promoted listings can be! Maybe your budget needs to be 4.00 a day and your cost per click needs to be .08c? It just depends on your market and what your willing to spend. Because your only paying for the number of times someone actually clicks on your ad to investigate it, it is much more affordable than the old Search Ads.

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Additionally, Etsy added a new feature since my last blog post / video. They added a Revenue column. The revenue column is designed to show you where the money is coming from in your promoted listings. This is a useful tool because you can track which ads are the most popular and perhaps make a better decision as to what kinds of items your going to promote ( or make ). Personally, I like to promote everything. Shoppers don't always know what they are looking for when they start searching Etsy - why not just promote everything? That's my line of thought. 

There are a coupe of things I learned about how the Revenue number is calculated. The Revenue your getting from promoted listings isn't always going to be completely accurate. When a user clicks on your ad - Etsy gives them 24 hours to purchase anything in your store to be counted as promoted listing revenue, OR they have 30 days to purchase the exact ad they clicked on. Say for example I favorited or put an item into my cart to wait two weeks for payday, then decide, 'well I like this other item in their store better' - Etsy isn't going to count that sale as promoted listing revenue. It must either be any item(s) in 24 hours or the exact item in 30 days - regardless if they favorited it or put it in their cart, that part doesn't matter.

Because of how revenue is calculated - the revenue shown next to a listing may not actually mean that listing was the one that sold. It just means that because the user clicked on that ad specifically, you made x.xx revenue. I have an example below. You may also be making more money off promoted listings than Etsy is telling you.

( here is the link to my discussion with the Etsy admin who gave me this info ) 

Looking at the screen shot above, you can see how many impressions, clicks, my average cost per click, total cost, and any revenue that was generated from this listing. You should note I have 9 clicks, my average cost is .01c but the total cost ( so far this month ) is .11c. How did that happen? Well I have my maximum bid set to .02c - this means I may not always pay the total .02c. .02c is just the cap on the bid so Etsy won't make me pay more than that.

Check out the screen shot above. Here you can see I made 25.00 - I did actually sell that listing, but again you can see my average cost per click is .01 but my cost is .31. This just means I had some bids in there that hit .02c  

Lets take a look at an example where a user clicked on my ad but bought something else. Here you can see where my OOAK ( one of a kind ) item is showing revenue, but it's not sold and the revenue of 38.00 doesn't match the cost of the item 54.00. What happened here is that the user saw my ad for the 5/8 plugs and were interested enough to check out my store - found the size they needed, the 7/16, and bought them instead. This is an example of how this can look. So if someone clicks your ad they have 24 hours to purchase any item(s) from your store and it will show up in the revenue column so that you can kind of see where the money came from.

That's it for now. :) I may do another blog / video on this topic - if you have any requests please don't hesitate to contact me!