Free Listings. Love it and hate it at the same time.

[cedarridgecompany]

I love saving money on listing fees and I do list more without the fear of a high ebay listing bill at the end of the month. I was very excited when I first heard about it a couple of months ago and I was thinking I was going to be able to increase my sales.

But wait....I forgot that EVERYONE now has free listings and up to 2500 of them for some sellers. My sales have not increased, I feel as though they have dropped.

Has eBay become flooded and listings now lost in the huge crowd??

[recped]

In my Category the listing promo rarely increase the total numbers by more than about 7%.

There are already almost half a BILLION listings on eBay I don't think the promos really have that much of an effect.

I tried an experiment this month, my listings on the last promo ran ended on the 5th, I have a basic store so I figured I would use up my 150 listings in one shot since I'm going away for a couple of weeks.

Instead of what I do during the promos which is list anything I have ready regardless of the "quality" I cherry picked some better stuff......well what a surprise (not really), my sell thru rate went back to what it was like 5 or 6 years ago (35 - 40%) instead of the pitiful 5% I've been seeing in the past year.

Confirms what is really no surprise, if you list quality items they will sell, if you list marginal items the sell thru will be poor, people tend to throw up lots of "crap" when it's free, the results are often poor but it's because it's "crap" not because the site is flooded, the site is ALWAYS flooded now with or without a promo.

[tobyshitzu]

Have you actually looked at listing numbers?  I can't see any evidence there has been any growth in listings from the new fee schedule at all.  And the promos haven't made any material change in ages.  Listings from my Canadian competitors (the only  ones that matter since the USPS change) have fallen over the past month