Why am I Not Getting Any Views on My Facebook Marketplace Posts?

You posted an item on Facebook Marketplace, you listed it at a reasonable price (which you’ve lowered two times), you have decent photos and have shared it to all your local groups…it’s been a week and not a comment, a click, or even a scammer trying to get you to text them.

What’s the deal? A couple months ago you were having no problem getting attention to your post.

Well, there could be two reasons for this.

First, your items could be complete garbage.

But let’s assume that’s not the case.

Before getting into it, let me share my recent experience with you. About a month ago, I started to realize that I was not getting any inquiries about anything that I posted, no matter what I did. I had multiple items listed at a dollar or two and still couldn’t even get a message about them.

I tried “renewing” the post through the button it gave me to do that, I tried deleting and re-posting, I tried everything. I kept doing this for about a solid three weeks and still nothing.

So I began to do a little research into it, and I found a solution. After implementing this solution, I began to receive messages and started selling again!

Now, let me just clarify, what I am about to share with you- I have no definitive proof that this was the cause. I know nothing about the internal workings of Facebook Marketplace’s algorithms. I am only sharing what I learned from research I did and how I found a solution that WORKED. I could be completely wrong, but it worked- so I’m cool with it.

I think ultimately the problem was that I was posting items, lowering prices, and deleting and re-posting, as a robot and not as a human. I would list multiple items on the same day at the same time (typically I just did this for ease sake). I would renew a bunch of items all at one time. I would delete and re-list 8 items within 5 minutes. Looking back on it, I was essentially spamming Facebook Marketplace and the groups that I was sharing to.

In my opinion, this caused the Facebook algorithms to mark me as a “spammer” and thus not have any of my items show up on people’s feeds or in their marketplace suggestions.

I mean, I can’t really blame it, I was being lazy and it came off as if I had a bot doing all of this instead of being a real human.

But I found a solution that takes a little time but 100% worked for me. When I finished the steps I list below, I believe I essentially re-trained the marketplace algorithm to re-identify me as a person and not a spammer.

So here is what I did:

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SOLUTION

Step 1: I began to remove all my open listings, everything that I had available for sale. However, I didn’t do it all at one time. Over a series of about 12 days I removed an item or two here and there (one in the morning and one in the evening). I figured, if I all the sudden deleted everything, that would still make me look like a bot.

Step 2: Once I had everything removed, I waited another 7 days or so before posting anything. I’m not sure if it mattered that I waited 7 days, or if I could have just waited 5. However, I decided to err on the side of caution and give it a full week.

Step 3: I began to list those same items I deleted- one at a time, every few days.

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Items that I had listed before and were up there for months at even lower prices were now getting messages at the prices I originally listed them at. I started to receive the countless messages of “Is this item still available?” with no follow up response.

I was even getting the spammers messaging me again! Who would have thought I’d be happy to hear from Anita Smith and her 5 accounts with no profile picture again.

I was back in business!

So, if you are having these same issues, try the steps I outlined above and let me know if they worked. Like I said, I can’t say definitively that I re-trained the algorithm, but it worked- and I’m happy about that.

If you’ve figured out any other ways that worked for getting yourself out of marketplace purgatory, send me an email at nooverheadbook@gmail.com and let me know.

If you found these tips helpful, my short 51 page book, No Overhead: A Side Hustle Guide for Turning Free Inventory into Real Money is full of tips and strategies for making money on eBay, Facebook Marketplace and other sites without having to put out any money on your own. It’s available as a paperback, Kindle Book, or on Apple Books.

Happy selling!

-Jeremy