Promoted Listings Guide Video # 5

Are you excited? No? You should be!

THE NEXT INSTALLMENT OF MY PROMOTED LISTINGS GUIDE IS AVAILABLE!

I just uploaded it to YouTube so it might still be processing. BUT HERE IS THE LINK!

youtu.be/R_aRwEShDl8 

I'll probably end up shooting my SEO video here in just a few. :)

HAPPY THURSDAY.

Would you attend a live lecture?

Due to popular request I am investigating the possibility of doing a LIVE one to two hour lecture/class/workshop once a week ( probably sundays ) for 30.00 a person up to 10 people. The lectures/class/workshop would ideally run in a similar fashion to my YouTube videos. 

I had looked into udemy in the past but they no longer do live classroom support. But I am finding the SEO subject to be so robust and people have so many individual questions for me that I think those who have asked are probably right: a lecture on the subject where we can interact live is probably best :)

If you are genuinely interested in attending something like that please send me a private message or email so I can gauge people's interest! Thank you!

How to use Etsy's Promoted Listings Part 3

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

Blog: Part 2 http://etsyjewelryfx.blogspot.com/2014/11/how-to-use-etsys-promoted-listings-part.html

Hey guys! I am back with Part 3 of what is quickly becoming a constantly evolving into a series that may not have an end :)

VIDEO WILL BE ADDED TO YOUTUBE SOON

I, and others, have noticed a couple of problems with promoted listings since we started this adventure and we've reported the problem to the admin team. You can find that discussion HERE. Please feel free to join the discussion and report the issue if you're seeing it as well.

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I'm going to start off with a comparison of last months stats ( October ) and this months stats so far ( November ). This month is going much, much better as far as my promoted listings go. I'm at almost 71k impressions, 701 clicks, spent 12.80, and 332.75 in revenue! Of my total revenue, about 20-25% of my Revenue is coming from promoted listings. Of the promoted listing Revenue I am spending around 3-4% on the promotions themselves. I've more than doubled my impressions from last month to this so far, haven't even spent half the cost of last month, and my Revenue so far is off the charts.

This exact approach isn't going to work for everyone. I cannot stress enough that every store is different, every market is different, and depending on the competition in your market, what works for me may not work for you. As an example some of the feedback I have seen from people selling in the traditional jewelry market, some are using a max CPC somewhere between .12c-.20c and it seem to be generating a decent number of impressions. I do not recommend setting manual bids, Etsy is going to bid that amount every single time. Where if you sent the Max CPC in the advanced settings ( covered in previous videos and blog posts ) it will bid up to that amount.

Below is a screen shot of my stats from yesterday. As you can see I am still not maxing out my daily budget, because my Max CPC is set between .02 and .03 so it only bids up to that amount. On AVERAGE I am paying 1-2c per click, it just depends what I am competing with. You can also see when the shoppers started getting to get online, after 12pm. 

I want to talk about a new feature that was added to promoted listings. It's an area where you can see what item a person clicked on, and which item actually sold. There are also some cool stats to check out on the page as well. You can find the link noted below.

This is what you'll find once you get to the next page. We're going to talk about a lot of things on this page. The first thing that I really like about this new breakout is the "Average time to Order". My average is 1 day 8 hours right now, it's just nice to be able to see these stats in detail. You can also see the exact number of orders that were a result of Promoted Listings and the Revenue is listed here. Below the break down you can see exactly which ads someone clicked on in the "Promoted Listing" column. The next column is "Click Date" this is the date the user clicked on the listing. The next, "Sold Listings", shows which is the item that sold. It's important to note that the item that sells is not necessarily the item they clicked on, these columns can show different things! Then you'll see "Order" which is the date and the order number, and the "Revenue" column. There are a lot of quick links on this page to get more detailed information from this page. You can also check out the stats from different time periods, like "last month" for example.

I did notice a problem with this page, which I have reported to the admin team HERE

What I noticed, the Revenue Column, is that the amount of the Revenue for the sold item can be incorrect. If you see my Snowflake Cookie plugs, it's showing the Revenue at 8.00 which isn't right. I have variations set up on my listings where the size of the item sold has a specific cost. The 8.00 cost is for traditional studs, which I did not sell. I sold a pair of plugs for 12.00. I'm hoping to hear from the team this week on what is going on with this issue - but check the link above and add your input if you're seeing the same problem!

Once you're done looking at this page you can click on "Campaign Overview" again to get back to the main page, otherwise you can click on your store link and go back to "Promote"

Figuring out the "sweet spot" for promoted listings is not an overnight process. I strongly recommend using promoted listings for about two months before deciding if you are going to keep using them. If you are unable or unwilling to commit to that kind of time I would wait to try them until you can. Because there can be up to a 30 day lag between a click and a purchase, this time frame is absolutely necessary for a complete evaluation.

Another topic we need to go over is SEO ( Search Engine Optimization ). Without your store and listings being in shape as far as SEO goes - Promoted Listings will not work very well for you! The ads on Etsy are displayed at the top and middle of search results on every page. You can identify which items are a promoted listing from the "Ad" in the top left corner.  So if your items are not being found in the search by users without the ads isn't not very likely they will with the ads. 

Etsy provides some information on SEO optimization, and it is something I am planning on covering in the next video / blog post. Until then, here are some helpful links:

Etsy Article 247 - Shop Improvement and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Etsy Article 166 - Edit Shop Title

Etsy Article 167 - Shop Announcements

Etsy Article 188 - Listing Titles

Etsy Blog - Four Ways to Improve Your SEO

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!

How to use Etsy's Promoted Listings Part 1

Youtube Tutorial Video: http://youtu.be/zXhsyqXBWPM

Blog Part 2: http://etsyjewelryfx.blogspot.com/2014/11/how-to-use-etsys-promoted-listings-part.html

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

There has been a lot of confusion and upset since Etsy replaced Search Ads with Promoted Listings. I am here to try and clear up some of the confusion. "Impressions" are the number of times your ad was shown to a user but they did not click on the ad. The "Clicks" are the number of times someone clicked on your ad. ( Those numbers depend on the way your looking at stats. ) There isn't a lot to understanding promoted listings. It's more about what your willing to pay for each time a user clicks on your ad. You can customize the bid, only feature a couple of items, or you can feature your entire store if you wanted. This gives you a lot more control over the amount of money being spent. You ONLY pay when someone clicks on your ad.

When setting promoted listings to auto bid, Etsy is choosing the maximum cost per click for you. They determine this by the popularity of the keywords that are used on your listing ( among other things), this is why you see a difference in each items maximum bid. They want you to be the most likely person to win the bid. I personally do not recommend using the automated feature, it's going to eat up your budget pretty quickly. 

The most important thing to remember is that you DO NOT want to max out your daily budget. When you max the budget out, Etsy STOPS showing your ads until the day rolls over. 

Above is a screen shot the results of my daily budget set to 1.00 and I allowed the auto bid to handle my cost per click. As you can see I maxed the budget out at 2pm on Monday October 27. I barely had any Impressions and I only gained 5 clicks from the ads. I paid 1.00 for a total of 5 clicks! My budget was maxed out before the highest traffic time ( afternoon / evening ), so I missed out on a lot of potential customers. This is why many people do not see the results they want from promoted listings. Their daily budget is being eaten up with very little return. The likelihood of gaining a sale in just 5 clicks isn't very high.

Above is a screen shot of my results from Tuesday October 28th. Look at the HUGE difference! My impressions are over five times higher than they were the day before! I have over five times the number of clicks, and my cost is BELOW half what I spent the day before! How did I accomplish this? I took my promoted listings off the auto bid. I manually set every single listing I am promoting to .02. Yes, this is low, and .02 might not work for you like it is for me. But you can see a CLEAR difference and positive impact.

If you have your listings set to .20 per click, and your daily budge is only 1.00 your only going to get a maximum of 5 clicks out of your budget before Etsy stops showing them to people. It's possible you can get sales from 5 clicks, but its -more- likely you'll get a sale out of 50 possible clicks than just 5. That is the thing that damages you the most. If your ads are not being shown during the higher trafficked times on Etsy - your losing possible sales and throwing your money away on promotions that are probably not going to do much for you. Changing my maximum cost to .02 on my listings means I am going to get a maximum of 50 clicks out of my daily 1.00 budget before Etsy would shut my ads off. 

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Let's look at some more numbers. Below are two screen shots of my promoted listings. Each of them are for a 7 day period. On the first screenshot I got under 3,000 impressions, only got 38 clicks on my ads, maxed out my budget -every- day and paid the full 7.00. I did manage to get a couple of sales for the first time since Promoted Listings started, which to say the least, I was incredibly surprised to see.

Now let's look at the second screen shot. Over 10,000 impressions, 88 ad clicks, I paid Etsy 2.34, but I did not make any revenue that week from the ads. I am no longer maxing out my daily budget of 1.00 and I gained almost four times the number of impressions doubled the clicks and spent only a fraction of the amount of money from the previous week! Using Promoted listings this way, it is far more likely that I am going to get sales from the ads. I don't know about you, but anything I can do to get the odds in my favor I am willing to do. There is a lot of fierce competition on Etsy and it's tough to stay ahead of the pack sometimes.

How do you set your budget for promoted listings? Well, this is an incredibly personal decision, I wasn't willing to spend more than about 30.00 a month on Ety's ads, which is why my daily MAXIMUM budget is at 1.00. What you decide to pay per click really depends on your market, your budget, and what it is worth to you. 

I hope this at least sheds some light on the subject and helps more people on Etsy understand how promoted listings work.

Steampunk

This next week I plan on adding 20 new pairs of steampunk tunnels to my Etsy Store I have a ton of watch parts on the way to fill these puppies. If you're interested in custom ordering please send me a conversation via Etsy! To see what is currently available click here!

Pairs:

x2 2g
x3 0g
x3 00g
x3 7/16"
x5 1/2"
x3 9/16"
x2 5/8"

Hot off the press! Supplies are limited get 'em before they sell out! :)

#sneekpeek #handmade #halloweenplugs #halloween #mummy #lampwork #gauges #plugs #pluglife #plugsnotdrugs #bodymod #bodymodification #bodyart #girlswithplugs #girlswithgauges #lobes #stretchears #etsy #shopetsy #instalove #instaplug #0g #2g #00g #4g #hellofall #october

https://www.etsy.com/listing/204044814/12-716-00g-0g-2g1-pair-halloween-themed