 And welcome back to the next episode of Your Thoughts and Comments. This is the second one for 2024 and following on from some of the content around the eBay traffic and how to try and draw more traffic to your listings and store, etc. So let's get straight into it and get straight into the comments. So the first one up today is from Patricia. Nice to have you here, Patricia. And it was around the ultimate eBay traffic hack to boost sales. So let's have a look. So she put the first comment on there was that your link in the pinned comment will work. YouTube says that video is unavailable. And also is there somewhere to explain how to drive prospects to my store categories. My response simply was thanks for the update on the link. Patricia are looking to get in that fix today as it turned out it was where I copy pasted it into the pinned comment. I missed some of the string of the URL to the link. So we'd updated that and that's all sorted. But thanks for bringing it to my attention. These things could be overlooked, you know, it's easy to miss it and not know unless somebody points it out. And it's great that someone in the community felt the need to reach out and let me know so they could carry on with that link. So that's great. Thanks, Patricia. So she's also put, sorry, I've also put as for how to drive the prospects, you basically promote whether it's by Google, social media, or some other form of traffic promotion to your store or to category URL instead of the listing URL. There are many ways to do this, whether it be paid or free, each and everyone that wants to spend the time doing so needs to decide for themselves which avenue they wish to go down in order to do this. And I hope that this helps at this stage. Patricia's response was thanks. I imagined you were using off using off eBay means to promote to your store categories, but wanted to check out whether I had missed some arcane eBay promotion option. Yes, that would have been great, wouldn't it? If there was something already on the platform that was like an old system that was still running that people had forgotten about or not seen much attention on and it would have helped us not directly, not directly. I think it is literally a case of other avenues to draw into the site around the mechanics of what the platform already has. She's just responded thanks. I imagine you were using off they means. Also, we've done that bit. My response back was, yeah, 100% off the eBay promotion for the traffic. Sarah C has responded on that string. Hi, thanks for the info. I agree with Patricia. I was a little confused. You explained the why promote the store categories very well, but the practical how signed was a bit more vague. I wasn't sure if you meant to promote within an eBay campaign. They have so many options now. It can be a bit confusing or if you meant off eBay, how to go about that. Sorry if that seems stupid, but I've never promoted my store off eBay. So don't really know how to go about it. I find it really helpful if you could include a video on methods, your use or have previously used your thoughts on what works or didn't work for you and how you go about setting up off site ads and strategies. Thanks. Well, my initial response simply was, hi, Sarah, thanks for the input. And in all honesty, it was intentionally vague due to there being so many different options off site or away from eBay. And some of these I do intend to cover in another video showing how some pros and cons of each, some pros and cons of each. The main purpose of the video, though, was to show how much eBay are stifling us and the platform from making money and being more successful than they are allowing us to be and that they are there are many ways to regain some momentum in our sales without giving it to eBay in unwarranted fees. And this is the point I think that intentionally or unintentionally, they are basically sacrificing the level of sales they were getting because they want to funnel us and they want to consciously or subconsciously make us feel that the only way we can get back to where we were is to corral us through these gates of promotion. And the only way to do that is through their choices and their choices cost. They cost us more of our money. Now, from their perspective, I can see that this is a very devious way of doing it and it works. There are people that will panic and they will try and get more traffic and they will pay for it because they need to get back to those sales. And if they don't work out the the costing from their margin, they're just literally looking at I need the sales as opposed to how much am I making. And that's a worry. That is a worry. And I think they really are being very devious with the way they're doing it. But they're a business. You know, I mean, if this is the the angle they're going down, then we just have to choose and we have to look at other avenues and then decide what's best for our business. So the next comment up, let's have a look. So again, on the traffic hack and boost for more sales and traffic. Not sure if I should try and pronounce the name, but I'm going to give it a shot. Dravko Vaglarsky says, hello, thanks for the great video. You explained it really well. I would love if you can make a video on how to make an ad campaign outside of eBay and where to advertise, such as Google, Facebook, etc. I've simply put great suggestion. I will look into the options and get back to everyone on this, whether or not I'm going to go through all the specifics of a Google ad campaign. I'm not sure, but I will certainly point you in the right directions as to the options available. Some of the benefits and some of the negatives of how that goes about, but we will get some content out definitely over the course of the next couple of weeks. I'll just check my schedules and see where we can get those in. Polish Pete's in the house and his response to this particular thread was, I think with Facebook, I would create a Facebook page, which I have suggested as well. That's absolutely right. I've done that and mentioned that in a few comments and guide traffic from ads to that page where I would have some of my eBay listings. That would work, yes. That would get you to the listings, but again, I'll continue with that comment in just a moment, but my concern straight off the bat there is the point of where I was going with the traffic. The traffic was to get more traffic to the store, which would make eBay think or feel that you're getting more attention and then they are going to within the algorithm reward you with a larger share of the portion of traffic that's available and push more traffic to your store. What you're suggesting Pete does the same thing, but it's putting another step in between. So what you're doing is you're promoting to your Facebook page, which yes, it will build up your Facebook presence. And then from there, you're then relying on them to browse through the posts on the Facebook page and click into the eBay site through your listing. It risks, I mean, it works, but I think it then takes on the additional risk of people just either one, staying on Facebook and not actually going to the listing or two, losing interest because they're having to make another click. And three, once they're on your listing, if they don't buy, yes, it's increasing your click-through rate, but it's reducing your sell-through rate. And that was the point of the video was that the traffic takes you to the store, which already gets you where you need them to be, which is a focused group looking at a focused amount of items. And then you have that step more control of keeping them where you want them. But yes, what you're saying does work. So continuing on, then you could browse that and if something interests them, they could click and go to my eBay listing. Yes, as I say, that would save me empty impressions and empty views on eBay. I would have them on Facebook instead, if that makes sense. So I see where you're going. Yes. So what you're basically saying is if there is just throwing promotions of people looking at your ad and then if they're not particularly interested, they don't go any further. So that would just be irrelevant on Facebook, not an issue, won't affect yourself through rate on eBay. And then you're only trickling in those are more likely to buy. So again, yeah, it's that scale, isn't it? It's understanding one side of the coin. You only want those that are truly interested so that you don't have empty impression, shall we say, as you stated. But at the same time, there's nothing wrong with the empty impressions if it's at a store level. The store level is not the issue. It's the listing that's the issue. So in the form that what you're saying there, yes, that works. That definitely works because it's not making an empty impression to the listing. But if you're moving that traffic to the store or a store link, so even if you, let's just say another variation of what you're saying there is if you had the Facebook page and instead of the listings you were taken to store categories, then again, it's an extra step that's not needed. And if it goes to the store, it doesn't matter because it's not affecting the sell-through rate and that empty impression, even if it is an empty impression as far as they're not fully committed to buying something yet, that's fine because they're only in your store, which doesn't affect any of the statistics of sell-through rate or click-through rate. But it is gaining interest on your store. So it depends. I mean, if you went down your road, yes, what you're saying makes sense. If you were sticking to the promote to the store or the category side, you wouldn't need the Facebook middle step. Unless you were looking to increase your social media presence, then yes, that could be another way of doing it. Or you could promote to both. You could have one promoting to Facebook, one promoting to the store. And then you're increasing the traffic to the Facebook, which you could possibly do the listings if that's what you wanted and try that one that way. And then you could do the other one to the store so that you're gaining momentum that way as well. Okay, next up, let's have a look. This was again round more traffic, more sales. Polish Pete again. So let's just go into that one. So it says, good input, mate. Lots have changed in Google ads since last time I used it 15 years ago. One thing that has popped up immediately was categories. It is the way to go and Google gives us good way to do it. So he's agreeing in that sense. So that's good. That's good as you could see that that way of it as well. So fairly easy and straightforward. Way much easier as it was years ago. Although I must admit, I do find the Google ads set up for the campaigns excruciatingly painful, especially if you've never done it before. As back then you needed separate campaigns. Now you can do everything in one, saving tons of time. I'll need a week or two to start it, but I will 100%. So the responses are also, I think, a good idea when using external traffic is to concentrate on getting followers for your shop, not necessarily sales itself agreed. Our response was, thought you might like this idea. Hope it works for you. Just be careful on expenditure. A Polish Peach response. Yes, definitely a massively good idea goal. If you are in a niche, followers are key and followers definitely are key. This response, you know me, I'll pay for garbage clicks with tons of keywords. I would say three pence max per click. Sounds about right. I just need keywords. It's going to take me some hours, may look for some online generator. Now, as I have mentioned in a few of my other comments, Pete there, you can look at Z-Kanalytics title builder. Now the link I'll pop in the description. You can have, I think it's a trial period for $1, which gives you access to the whole site. Sounds like I'm promoting it for myself, but it's not. But I strongly suggest having a look for $1, have a look, you know. If you don't want it, don't forget to unsubscribe. You don't sign into the monthly package unless that's where you want to keep. There's definitely a lot of benefits for it. It's a lot of research, a lot of competitor research. But there is a title builder link on there. And what you can do is not only is it great for building your keywords for your title, making it more fluid to read and optimizing the titles, but the generator will come up with keywords. There are massive pages of data there for you to see. Long tail keyword phrases, short tail keywords, how many searches come up from those keywords on eBay, as well as how many sales are generated from that listing with that in the title. And from there, you could certainly get a massive list of high powering keyword, long tail and short tail, but worth a look. Worth a look, Pete. So yeah, so it sounds like a plan. As mentioned, I would suggest using the analytics site as an awesome title builder. They can show the highest online sales results and keywords and long tail keywords, which you could use to generate traffic. Yep, the link is in the description. You can get the trial for $1, might not be for you, but there is so much you can do with the site to check it out. It says, haha, it won't be as easy to set up the campaign. Account suspended for suspicious payment, probably because I'm trying to pay with UK card while being in Poland, 14 days to process appeal. Awesome. Okay, so next up, let's have a look. Not sure, I don't think it's just a bit of a spammy response there. You're nice. Can you pin me please? Okay, Adam Hawker, not sure what you're on about, but you might just need to expand on that at some point. Anyway, moving on, moving on. So I think we're almost there. Let's have a look. What else we got? Okay, another one. So this is around the follow on, like the update from the previous video that was on there. And this one is have I cracked eBay traffic algorithm, which has given more solid response and results to what I've been doing and showing how it's actually working on the site. So Polish Peace response was very interesting, mate. I need to work on social media. That's for sure. I'm empty there except Pinterest board with zero followers. At the moment, I'm in the flat line more in terms of impressions, which is what I'm saying. You can build that up. Flat since early August, when they went down. Excuse me. Then from October, it started to replace promoted listing impressions with organic. Overall number went down a bit. What I have noticed though is that this traffic is better quality. It gives me much more views from the same number of impressions. So I've just put great to hear that organic is replacing the promoted listing for you. I think this is a very important metric to keep track of going forward. Every penny we can save and put back in our pockets instead of eBay is better. Peace response is, can you clear one more thing for me, please? Do I understand it correctly? So eBay somehow blocks Google ads pointing directly to item page. Is this what it is? I've watched the other video but it didn't grasp it. But you can do it on social media, can't you? Even via eBay social. Okay. So I'll go through my response to these and then I'll just explain it in a little bit more detail again if that helps. So my response back was from my understanding and I like, and like I say, I could be wrong. But eBay seemed to be blocking Google ads from crawling the eBay platform on listings but seem to be allowing only the listings that are promoted from within eBay through the off-site ads option, which would make sense. Yes, you can promote listings through either the on-platform option social tab, but I think this, I think it's very, very likely they are tracking the link to whichever platform you are sending it. Most likely gathering data for future options that will be chargeable. You can also promote from your social platform and add a link. There is currently no blocking from social sites to crawl the listings. Peter says, thanks mate. Bottle ascent. Hey, Carl, can you have, Hey, Carl, you have made this video so technical and coded for the average person that there's barely any information in it of how to try similar paths as yours, at least from my understanding anyway. So I've responded, thanks for the input. Sorry that it gets a bit so techy. Unfortunately, due to the nature of it, it gets unavoidable, but I did try it. As for the path to take to try it, I did cover several areas to try. Social media, niche community boards, Reddit threads, etc. You can, if you wanted, aim at long tail keywords for Google ads promotion, etc. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you can head into the realm of backlinks. For the length of the video, it would have been too much information to crime in. Possibly I could look into doing a series of videos covering each section in greater detail to make it easier, but at the end of the day, you can't rely on just one piece of content. Everyone will need to do further research depending on the choices they make. They may wish to try or have further interest in. Thanks for the feedback though, greatly appreciated. So basically, unfortunately, there is no full-on idiot's guide way of doing it. The basics are literally this simple. If you want to drive traffic to your store or your listings from off-site, if you want eBay to do it, it's off-site ads and you're paying for it. If you want to do it yourself, if you use Google ads without using the direct way channel through eBay, it's not going to drive the traffic very well because eBay have introduced coding into every listing that won't allow the off-site ad campaigns to drive the traffic to the store. So simply put, it's like a secret password. So within your listing, behind the scenes in the coding, it'll have a secret password. Now, Google can crawl the site and if somebody searches your exact title, they could possibly find it in a Google search, is able for them to crawl it that way. But to drive traffic through the ads campaign, it has to have that password to get into your listing. If it doesn't know the password, which it doesn't because you haven't used the off-site ad so it hasn't whispered that password to the Google ads, it ain't going to get it. With that said, when you use the internal social media tab, there will be coding in the background for them to track the data and the path that that link makes to wherever onto the social platforms so it can see the interest and the information coming. And additionally, if you were to copy paste a URL of your listing, go to a social platform, slap it in, it can still view it and track the data. Another way of looking at it is really, really simple is Facebook. Now, I don't want to get too technical, but if you remember the way Facebook worked, or works, shall I say, you look at your feed. If you click on something, you'll get a random ad for, I don't know, car washing shampoo, sacred conversation. And then suddenly within a day or two, your feed is bombarded with other ads of other types of shampoos for cars and car related products because the algorithm in the background of the social media on Facebook, it's gathering data. Anything you hover over on your screen, it knows you're looking at it and you're hovering. If you click on it, if you read something on it, it knows you've shown some sort of interest and it's going to throw more at you because there is coding continuously on everything. It knows you're hovering, it knows you're scrolling speed, it knows what you're clicking on. You go to any site, any page, anywhere on the internet and there will be a share or like button to send it to Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, whatever. The fact that that website allows those share buttons, they've given the rights to Facebook to crawl data from their site. So they have massive amounts of technical data. This is what we keep seeing in the news where they're selling our data on. They're not just selling our name address and bank details, they're sending where we go, what we look at, what we search for. All that information is gathered from these sites and the same happens here. If you throw a listing onto Facebook, eBay is tracking that information. So you can share to the social platforms and it just tracks the data. It doesn't block it because I guarantee they will in future look at other information along this. Okay, moving along with a couple of Benny Stratton comments, let's have a look. So Pinterest is a good one to promote the platforms you sell on. I use it to promote my website, same with Facebook. Use it to promote my website and I do Google ads for my website as well. I also use the platforms as free advertising as well to my website by adding my business card to the package. Very, very good approach and this is exactly what I mean. There's a lot of advertising capability and it's free to drive traffic to your store. FYI, promoted listing standard items are being included in the daily feed, eBay is sending to Google for now. We will see if this changes in the future, but if your Google promoted listing standard, it states that these listings are included free of charge offsite to Google, but not really free because you make the sale from them sending your items to Google shopping, then they get whatever you're promoting at it. If it's 5%, they get 5% of the sale they came from Google shopping. I'm okay with that. I'd rather do that than pay PPC fees every day or day percentage always wins compared to PPC, which is always a losing battle. Yes, I agree with what you're saying there, but you don't get offsite advertising anymore through Google from promoted listings standard. It's just not part of it. They've confirmed it now. It's gone. But the rest of it, absolutely, every other aspect on the site when you're promoting, there is on the page side, there are options. It's optionally available. There are additional avenues that you're getting your promotion out there through those other options of promoting. I think we're almost there. The last one was Vendu is coming to the UK. Now, this is going to be in beta mode and quite restricted at the moment, but certainly as long as it works out, a good option for a lot of people to start cross-promoting and PICS on again. I love that PICS follows me so much. It's great. Now we need the platform to cross post to Vinted Depop and Etsy, which is the ones they're saying they're drawing from and eBay, obviously, but I'm not sure if that means that's the only ones we can promote to as well, because there is a large list. But check out the video for the full list of what's currently available on the US Vendu, whether that will change for UK. Again, beta mode, so we'll see. It's not released yet either, but it's coming very, very soon. Not much to choose from. Start banging them on Vinted in hundreds and account will be suspended due to commercial selling in no time. The only thing that would be good is taking items down when they sell Facebook marketplace. Yeah, that's definitely an option if they give it to us. If they'll add it, then maybe. And to be fair, that would have been where I'd have been going. Poshmark may have shot themselves in the foot as well with this. They would have thousands of listings quickly, but they fold it in UK. Yeah, it's a massive shame. I think Vendu has come out because there is nothing on the UK side for cross posting. We can't use any of the sites that you can use in the US. There's a couple of Chrome extensions, but they're not very good, but absolutely perfect. I'm really excited about this one. I think it's perfect. And if we can get, excuse me, if we can get Vendu and if they give us Facebook marketplace, amazing. If Poshmark ever came back over the freaking moon, but we'll have to see from there, we'll have to see. So that's it for the moment. We'll catch up with some more comments in the following couple of weeks. I hope this has been of interest and there's been some information in there. Anything that you're not sure on, drop it in the comments. If there's anything that you're wanting to ask, anything you don't agree with, get it in the comments, you know, because that's what this community is for. That's what this comments are for is sharing that information. So, okay, guys, keep it real.