Promotional Listing Days

[sunraycity]

I have noticed that eBay frequently offers up 10 cents or penny type listing day promotions for insertion fees. The most recent being on Monday the 30th. Has anyone ever tried to compile a calendar of when to expect these promotions?

Feel free to add your 2 cents.

Jan - start of year & end of month promo
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec - generally a promotion two weeks prior to xmas & boxing day

[sunraycity]

10 CENT LISTING DAY + 50% OFF GALLERY tomorrow!!!

[ciderantiques]

Does any one use Vendio image hosting like I do? How do you take advantage of the ebay.ca listing days when vendio will only post on ebay.com. Likewise, I don't get the notices about the ebay.com listing promotions because I am a Canadian seller. - Lose both ways it seems.

[recped]

Most of the recent sale days have applied to Canadian RESIDENT sellers, doesn't matter which site you list on.

Lose both ways it seems

Only if you don't read the offers!
"What else could I do? I had no trade so I became a peddler" - Lazarus Greenberg 1915

[systemagic]

I suspect that, for the most part, discount listing days aren’t very predictable.

It’s been a while since I watched total listing numbers but the discount listing days seem to correlate most strongly to a precipitous drop, in the days immediately preceding a discount, to the total number of eBay auction listings. As such it appears as if the decisions to hold a discount listing day are impromptu and made quite abruptly.

You can find ebay auction count charts here: http://www.quotetracker.com/cgi-bin/cal.exe?EIND though the relevant daily and weekly charts don’t seem to be working for me today. Watching them won’t give you much warning. The listing numbers always seem to (used to) drop somewhat on Mondays (Monday discounts may be a new trend.)

Having stated this there still may be some patterns available to a discerning technical analyst. I notice, for example, that every year, from 2003 on, there appears to a spike in listings close to Valentine’s day that could correspond to discount listing days. It could be that sellers, confused and smitten by the fervent ardor, and passionate fear (the hell to pay if you forget) of the week allow listings to lapse and this is subsequently followed up by a discount listing day to help them regain their senses.

Marty

[sunraycity]

Hmmm, Marty, it seems like you have given this a lot of thought. I was thinking more along the lines of eBay instituting promotional discounts on a seasonal basis when gift giving is common such as xmas and boxing day. The other reason I could think of is a financial one where eBay as a corporation could book the sale of listings for that quarter and improve their financials. Keep in mind if most people actually list more then presumably they will sell more. The timing aspect is very interesting and lucrative to eBay since they only credit you back the discount 45+ days later. This ensures that you pay the full amount in this billing cycle. This strategy can be quite addictive for eBay to use to prop up their sales since they could keep offering up listing discounts each 45 day cycle so in effect your credits earned will always be sometime in the future (hopefully this is making sense to those reading it).

In my view I like to maximize my listings on these promotion days and then throughout the month relist items hoping for a sale and a credit on the insertion fee.