BREAK-EVEN PROMOTED LISTINGS RATE CALCULATOR

BREAK-EVEN PROMOTED LISTINGS RATE Calculator

Promoted Listings charges nothing per click, which makes it look risk free. Since the attribution change it also charges for sales you were getting anyway. This works out what that costs.

Free tool

Break-Even Promoted Listings Rate

Promoted Listings Standard costs nothing per click and charges your ad rate on the whole sale when a promoted item sells. That makes it look risk free. It is not, because eBay charges you for sales you were going to make anyway, so the real question is how many extra ones the promotion has to bring in.

The sale
£
£
The ad fee is charged on this too.
%
20 if registered, 0 if not.
What eBay charges anyway
%
Mostly 9.9 to 14.9.
£
30p up to £10, 40p above.
%
What it costs you
£
£
£
The promotion
%
eBay allows 2 to 100. Most sellers start at 2 to 4.
%
Seller Hub, Promoted Listings report: units attributed divided by units sold. This is the number the answer turns on.
Break-even ad rate

Fill in an item price to see the answer.

The buyer pays

Contribution before advertising


Ad fee at your rate, as invoiced

After reclaiming the VAT on it

What a promoted sale leaves

Headroom to the ceiling


Advertising takes this much of your contribution

Extra sales needed to stand still

If every sale were attributed

The ceiling is the rate above which a promoted sale loses money. It is not a target, because it assumes every sale you pay for is one you would not otherwise have made.

Why a small ad rate is not a small cost

Promoted Listings Standard charges nothing for impressions or clicks. The fee lands when a promoted item sells within 30 days of a click, and it is a percentage of the whole sale, postage and VAT included.

Since the attribution model changed, any click on any of your promoted listings makes any purchase from you in the next 30 days an attributed sale. UK sellers reported the attributed share going from roughly 30 to 40 per cent to 80 to 90 per cent, with no matching rise in sales.

Multi-quantity listings take it worst. One click on the ad can attach the fee to every unit of that item you sell for the following month.

So the extra sales figure above is the one to read. It is the ad bill as a share of what is left after it: a quarter of your contribution needs 33 per cent more sales, a third needs 50 per cent more, half means selling twice as many.

Take it further

Every ad rate, in Excel

The workbook runs your listing against twelve ad rates at once and adds a grid of ad rate against attribution share, so you can see what the attribution change did to the numbers rather than take anyone's word for it.

Download the workbook Free · no signup required · Excel or Google Sheets Working out the rest of what eBay takes? Try the eBay Fee Calculator.

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