eBay

fabulous-marty · ‎08-09-2013

I'm about to re-open the eBay store for winter, how do these "free" listings work? Are they like the current 50 "REALLY FREE" listings you have when you don't pay for a store? The number refresh on the first of the month? If so, the best thing to do is to list all my items at the end of the month so this way I'll never have to pay for GTC items? (first month they're listed on the 30, next month they refresh on the 29th... then 28th... ) ?

So yeah, my question is : Do the count of free listings refresh on the 1st of each month?

reallynicestamps · ‎08-09-2013

Apparently they do.

I have noticed when adding new items that some are Free and others are charged. I have assumed that this is because my new items plus the most recent relists have not yet reached to magic 50 listings.

But I don't think it has much to do with the date. I believe these are monthly listings rather than 30 day listings. If I am right, then you can start your listings any old time.

pocomocomputing · ‎08-09-2013

Yes, the count restarts on the 1st of the month.

Using GTC can get tricky because GTC is 30 days and the actual months are 28/29 days, 30 and 31 days. It is possible to have a GTC list on the 1st and 31st in a month taking 2 free. And for February, the entire month can be missed on a GTC for the 28/29 days.

If you spread your GTC over the month days, then there will only be a few listings having a relist twice in a month or skipping February. If you have say a basic store with 150 free and list at most 130 GTC, then you will have 20 to buffer the ups and down of the months. At then end of a month, use up the balance of the free since you will know what is relisting then. Or use the 150 free and just pay the insertion fee for the few that would go over the 150 in a month.

By the way, you get 150 free on each eBay site (eBay.com and eBay.ca) like you do for the 50 free.

fabulous-marty · ‎08-09-2013

Ok so best thing to do like I said is to list everything at the end of the month, this way I'll go worry-free on those GTC listings for 30 months straight (which won't happen, I always close for summer ... ). Sneaky way from eBay to pull in some cash on those "free" GTC listings ...

Thanks !

fabulous-marty · ‎08-09-2013

"By the way, you get 150 free on each eBay site (eBay.com and eBay.ca) like you do for the 50 free."

While we're at it, is there an easy way to convert a .ca listing to .com or de we need to go from scratch on the .com site? Through Turbo Lister maybe? Does it mess up the listing?

pocomocomputing · ‎08-09-2013

There is nothing sneaky about GTC being 30 days and the calendar months being 28/29, 30 and 31 days. Both existed before free store listings did. Just a quirk of using a 30 day duration for GTC listings. It was happening before free store listings and sellers just paid twice for double listing months and none for February.

(I am always surprised that some sellers think that eBay is trying to cheat buyers and sellers with insignificant details like this.)

As for starting listings at the end of the month (say 21st to 31st), it is true that you would miss a double listing month (1st and 31st) and use 2 free. February would have a few free not used because of the 28/29 days so you would be able to use them up.

Overall, it makes no real difference using GTC and what day of the month you use. Just do not have too many starting on the same day of the month. Spread them out over the days of the month so then you will only have a few (under 5 for 150 having a double listing on the 1st and the 31st). As mentioned, do not go over 130 or 140 free a month in GTC of the 150 and use up the 10-20 free at the end of the month. Or just use the 150 free and pay 20 cents per listings for the few that go over the 150 (about $1 to $2 a month). If you are selling and making money, then the few listing that you pay for are not a large expense.

PS If you do go store, think carefully about the monthly and yearly plan. Yearly is cheaper but there is an early termination fee that can wipe out the saving that the yearly plan has. Since you mentioned being closed in the summer, this might be important to you.

pocomocomputing · ‎08-09-2013

@bijix-marty wrote:
"By the way, you get 150 free on each eBay site (eBay.com and eBay.ca) like you do for the 50 free."

While we're at it, is there an easy way to convert a .ca listing to .com or do we need to go from scratch on the .com site? Through Turbo Lister maybe? Does it mess up the listing?

I use TL just for backing up my listings. I list online using the SYI form. I usually copy and past the description from eBay.ca to eBay.com and upload the photos again and fill in the other site specific information to move a listing from one site to the other. Most information is filled in since I have a saved prefilled template on both eBay.ca and eBay.com. The SYI form allows up to 10 saved templates on each site.

I think you can convert a listing in TL and the pictures and description are intact but other site specific details have to be input (shipping, etcetera). You would have to try it out.

fabulous-marty · ‎08-09-2013

I see that you don't have a store, I'm not sure if you did have one in the past or not but yes, the new premise of those "free" listings is sneaky when it concerns GTC listings (which is almost mandatory for stores)

When you have a store, you have to list GTC listings if you want to benefit from the extra exposure in best match from collecting watchers on your items (because all of this is scraped if listing actually ends and you relist) and the SEO side of things as your item gets better indexed in search engines like Google over time since it's always the same URL.

The way stores now works, you can't have a GTC listing as a "pure" single listing because of this "one free a month" crap when we're talking about a listing that has to be renewed every 30 days (NOT once a month). You'll tell me I can pay for the listing, and you're right... but eBay just raised by 100% the fees for that (while raising the fee for the store by $10, unless I sign for a year ( YEAH RIGHT LOL ! ). So a seller getting back to a store like me, who is used to list his GTC items, will think he gets 500 listings a month ... then bang, all of a sudden I'm charged when they AUTOMATICALLY RENEW because of a freak month not starting after the 30 days ...

And that, is sneaky. Because that's NOT how it used to work. You paid GTC listings when they renewed, it's understood they run "about a month", and then you're under this new system where you DOUBLE PAY your GTC listing because they actually can take 2 listings out of those 500 frees ... Sneaky sneaky sneaky .......

Multply all this by the millions of listings that fall into this double-dip category and eBay gets a mint out of all this for sure ... all the while making people believe that "it's ok, that's how it always worked" ... No, it's not.

pierrelebel · ‎08-09-2013

"When you have a store, you have to list GTC listings"

???

I have closed my store a year ago when I retired but I have some experience selling store items (over 105,000 transactions on eBay in fourteen years).

GTC is great if you offer multiple quantities in a listing as it relist the unsold quantity every 30 days. For listing with single quantity, 30 days may be doing a better job for most sellers. It only takes a few seconds to bulk relist unsold items.

The "watchers" on GTC fixed price listings are largely meaningless. If buyers wanted to buy, they would have. Generally, watchers are either competitors, would be competitors or window shoppers.

Do not waste your time trying to nickel and dime on fees. List a few items daily and it will all average out.

Good Luck

pocomocomputing · ‎08-09-2013

Nothing has changed with the 30 day period with GTC. In the past, sellers would pay for two insertion fees in the months that had 31 days (1st and 31st) which is for 7 months of the year with 31 days.

Assuming a seller has an even distribution of listings renewing per day of month, then 1 day (the 1st) in a 31 day month would relist twice. So 1 of 31 or 3.22% would list twice in the 31 day months only. February would be the reverse because it has 28 days. A seller would have 2/30 days or 6.67% of listing skip the month and have no insertion fee.

As for a deliberate attempt to cheat sellers with a 30 day period on GTC, I do not think so. It was probably easier to program 30 days way back when a 30 day period was introduced. I think you are reading far too much into what amounts to the way the Gregorian calendar was divided up in how many days were in a month centuries ago. Next you will be blaming eBay for leap year with February having 29 days every 4 years and cheating you because that month has only 1/30 days that listing can skip the listing fees!

eBay is just a venue to sell your items. Looking for eBay conspiracy theories in everything eBay does is so tiring in these forums.

As for when to list, it is better to list GTC after the 15th of the month to the end of the month. A double listing month (1st and 31st) will not happen for years. Listing on the 1st to the 7th is bad because you will have a double listing month (sometimes 2) within 12-14 months. So if you have a lot of listing to list, avoid starting them all on the same day of the month, especially the start of the month. Spread them out if you are listings at the start of the month to minimize double listing months. If you list past the 15th, then is does not matter as much. Eventually they will be a double listing month in 3-4 years but hopefully you will have sold the items buy then.

PS I made a spreadsheet to study the effects of GTC and double listing months with the start day of month you use and when a double listing month will occur. Quite interesting.

fabulous-marty · ‎08-13-2013

Pierre, you definitely missed the SEO side of GTC listings ... Since they keep the same URL, they tend to be indexed pretty good in the long run. I've had mutliple times a sudden influx of viewers on my items listed for 6+ months, and they sold. Where did these viewers came from? Not eBay.

Also, if you fill up all the necessary things they request to have a better match in best match, getting a few more viewers than someone else make a HUGE difference in ranking... and I mean HUGE, sometime you get mixed in with the guys with auction ending in less than 24 hours, and you have 20 days to go on the listing ! I really have no idea where you come from with your "largely meaningless" ... maybe they're meaningless if you don't fill up the other prerequisites for best match, but if you do, the watchers are the killer here.

This is not my first store on eBay, been here since the beginnings around 98. (and I can see when eBay is sneaky, like all their seller updates in the last 10 years ! lol ! The worst of them all had to be the one where they started charging on the shipping fee, while there was 100 other solutions to prevent gouging on shipping) ... Every year I tend to try to work around the system a bit more, honestly it's not worth the time anymore to sell on eBay so I basically just list free now, and open a store for the "big" season a few months a year (the best time to rack up those neg from christmas US buyers buying on December 22nd and expecting it on the 24th!) ...

And frankly, not sure I'll give it a go this year, I'll settle with the 100 frees I think ... sales are so slow now around here, maybe it has to do with those **bleep** GTC listings not being up and not getting traffic from elsewhere 😉

fabulous-marty · ‎08-13-2013

And Pocomo, not sure why you can't see this as a sneaky method of making more money. Even you agreed that now an item can get twice it's listing fee in a month now (even though it's "free") since you cannot consider anymore your GTC listing as a "monthly" listing since once in a while it will take 2 listings in a month to get it up (and you still waste another listing the following month to relist it, so yeah, it's wasted)

But ok, for the sake of it let's say it's not sneaky and that's how it works, it's a freak incident that suddenly you have to waste one of your monthly listing twice for certain GTC items while earlier you only had to pay for them once every 30 days (aka as a month, for the normal joe). You know what's sneaky then? Raising the fee 100% for listing something when you waste those "free" listing by burning them twice as fast for some GTC listings. And let's not talk about the sudden flat 9% on ALL the amount when it was 4% past $50 before 😛 ... Not sneaky again 😉

I could list 500 items monthly without risking of having to pay 10 cents a listing before, now I get 500 "free" but if I want to list more I now pay 100% more on each listings, and I do lose a few of those 500 to the GTC "glitch" so I have to be careful (as well demonstrated by one of the earlier poster on this thread who had no idea why sometimes they were free, and sometimes not) ...

Whenever I sold something for more than $50 earlier, I only paid 4% on the anything extra, now I pay 9% from $50 all the way to the reasonable top listings of $300 I have ... So they pocket an extra $12 something on those sales that I could keep 3 months ago ...

Oh and, they raised the stores by $10 monthly (at least for my category) ...

All the while being able to make believe everyone that they lowered everything and it would be cheaper to sell on eBay ...

Def not sneaky 😉

And again, I'd be really curious to see these numbers on the GTC items and the cash they rack-up from crunching the extra free listing or most of the time getting the 100% raised listing fee on the renewal because the guy thought he could actually list 500 items per month and get caught with his pants down on GTC listings ... Think about it... millions and millions of listings ... every cents suddenly counts ... and they didn't get this money before they implemented this new system.

Anyway ! Thanks for clearing up all this about the time of renewal of those "free" listings, like I said, you need to put your GTC listings close to the end of the month if you want to be clear of the "not sneaky at all" eBay double-dip charge on GTC items 😉

lady.stark · ‎08-13-2013

@bijix-marty wrote:
Think about it... millions and millions of listings ... every cents suddenly counts ... and they didn't get this money before they implemented this new system.

Well, yes, they did get all that money before. Because your GTC listings were charged TWICE per month if they were listed in the beginning of a month. It's still the same as it was, except now some are free and others aren't. 😉

So, to avoid the others "not free", yes, it's better to list at the end of the month. Or as poco suggested, from the 15th to the last day of the month.

pjcdn2005 · ‎08-13-2013

I could list 500 items monthly without risking of having to pay 10 cents a listing before

I'm sorry but you are mistaken. There has never been such a thing as a monthly listing. A GTC automatically renewed after 30 days just as it does now.

As others pointed out, if you had started a GTC listing on July 1, it would renew on July 31 and you would have been charged both times.

pjcdn2005 · ‎08-13-2013

Whenever I sold something for more than $50 earlier, I only paid 4% on the anything extra, now I pay 9% from $50 all the way to the reasonable top listings of $300 I have ... So they pocket an extra $12 something on those sales that I could keep 3 months ago ...

Yes that did change but it was announced ahead of time. Although I don't like it, I can't say that it was sneaky.

Oh and, they raised the stores by $10 monthly (at least for my category) ..

Yes they did raise the store prices unless you were willing to guarantee that you would pay for a store for a year..

All the while being able to make believe everyone that they lowered everything and it would be cheaper to sell on eBay ...

Def not sneaky

I'll concede that every time they raise the price in one area, they gloss over that and emphasize that they have lowered the price in another area even though the change meant that most sellers would end up paying more. They do seem to try to sneak that by us. But as far as making people believe that it would be cheaper to sell on ebay....I doubt that many fell for that.