I recently disabled promotions on all of my inventory to test whether I could go without them and still make sales.

I often hear from YouTubers that they do not use promoted sales, and I was always curious if this would work. On Reddit, the consensus opinion seems to be that promotions are obligatory.

I turned off the promotions for around a week. There were a few sales on days one and two, but these were from promoted listings. Likely, someone still had the tracking cookies in their browser when they made the purchase.

From October 20th through the 29th, I saw my analytics drop considerably. The biggest change was in organic page views, which really surprised me. After the third day, it was just silence. That happy ca-ching sound was not heard again until I turned promotions back on on the 30th.

Within 1 hour of enabling promotions, I received an offer on a shirt. And 20 minutes later, I had two sales at full price on a jacket and a pair of shorts. The orders have continued consistently through to today, when I am posting this.

I have had 10 orders in 5 days. The statistics are fairly consistent, and I even saw a drop in page views, but I have seen a whole lot more offers on my items. And many offers have led to completed sales.

I was disappointed to find that I will not be able to limit or eliminate the cost of promoted listings, but I am much happier having sales.

I have bills to pay, and I can’t afford to have my sales stop.

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