Investing-Etsy 'Promoted Listings' verses 'Google Shopping'

Thanks jamesp!

captbob- he is referring to finding the info within an etsy account.

I gotcha now! Thanks for the explanation(s).

unclesoska My wife saw a Google deal that offered a free $100 toward ad cost. So the first $100/$2 = 50 days was free.

The google graph starting 9/20/16 for 2016 ramped like a ski slope for impressions till Dec 31 2016.

Clicks cost and revenue ramped immediately in 30 days and stayed at elevated level.

I will discuss the meaning of this with the SEO person I have . Curious to see what she says.

No secret I guess, I am spending $8/day on Promoted Listings, so 4 times as much. For much less 'revenue'.
The $8 was recommended by Etsy to keep me front and center in 'fire pit' category though..
Front and center = a listing on the ad row on every of the first 4 pages for the most part.
The 3 listings that stay on the first 3 pages get by far the most clicks and sales.
I suppose if my competitors were paying $50 per day in Promoted Listings to get similar placements it would up my ad cost to $50 per day.

Interesting stuff jamesp thank you. I've never advertised but I've been teetering on the edge of starting so your info is helpful. I'm aware there is a big difference between fire pits and what I would perceive as minimal artisan competition, and cabochons with an obvious maximum artisan competition (over saturated market?). This leads me to wonder if I would see the same kind of spike.

I'm leaning towards Googly but I've noticed on incoming traffic stats a very low percentage of views come from Googly (searching the internet) vs. Etsy (searching internally) - it's not close.

As you can see below for the given period I have 2400+ views from within Etsy - including direct views from people within Etsy not as a result of a search. I also get more from my casual and inconsistent posting of links on facebook (58) than the 35 from Googly. And what the heck is bigenoff.info and their 54 views?? haha. 

So... to me these stats overwhelmingly suggest Etsy promoted listings vs. Googly but yet I ponder it...

Answer to last question.

Almost certainly. Your e-commerce is very serious and well thought out.

Google rewards that.

jamesp, just another thought but in your scenario you are advertising a repeating product so yes your SEO has time to build and improve and kick ass. For custom artisan products like cabochons it's a completely different story - everything is a one and done. Good inventory is moving inventory - great for sales, horrible SEO but a blessing in disguise. Sell it quickly before Google knows it exists. I tried to create a standalone site to go along with Etsy but the logistics of keeping the inventories in sync got really old in a short amount of time.

As a side note - often when I have an 'old' product that needs renewal and it's been renewed a few times already I will purposely kill the listing and relist it again as new. Sometimes this involves raising the cost (thusly raise the perceived value) and other times changing/improving the photos. I had an SEO optimizer person fuss at me about how bad this behavior is but my point is that a LOT of my sales occur when my new inventory is placed in front of Etsy users who already have favorited my shop. I'm nice to everyone who contacts me on Etsy but repeat customers are solid gold and the more they have spent the more I will kiss their backsides. Most of those same folks are also buying from Roger, and Tela, and many other cab makers - again in a lot of cases they buy what flashes on their screen - or comes in the Etsy "Finds" emails.