Do Listing Drafts Ever Expire?

[byto253]

Just wondering if draft listings ever expire or auto delete?  Looking at doing some prep for items to list in the spring and early summer and was wondering about this. 

[flipistics]

I've seen people on YouTube talking about them randomly expiring, so I would suggest not doing that. You could probably use the bulk listing template to save all the details except pictures, then upload them when the time comes. That assumes eBay doesn't change the format between now and then.

[byto253]

I actually want them as draft for the pictures - small high volme that I take the picture directly from the listing app.  I like to do that then fill in the details on the computer. 

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@byto253 wrote:

I actually want them as draft for the pictures - small high volme that I take the picture directly from the listing app.  I like to do that then fill in the details on the computer. 

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@byto253 

They are supposed to live for 3 months. What you can do is just open and re-save and that extends their life before they go poof in the night. I try not to let them run down to the wire before refreshing.

-Lotz

[byto253]

Thanks Lotz, 3 months is plenty. 

[msau4301]

They definetely expire as I had it happen to me! I thought it was 60 days but lotz may be right it could be 90 and do try his suggestion of opening them, making a small change to re-fresh update.

In my case near the start of the pandemic when we had lockdowns here in Ontario where we were only supposed to leave the house for food, medical or emergency situations (and I wasn't sure if shipping out a collectible qualified, though it should have...people needed to be happy too!) I ended all my listings for a while (months) and kind of waited to see what was going to happen. I got restless in the meantime and started doing up a bunch of drafts for new stuff (with photos) and had them all sitting and waiting until things seemed like they might be getting a little better. Now I did wait longer than I originally anticipated and I feared the drafts being lost so I did make changes and such BUT when I finally wanted to get them up and running, even though I could see them all sitting there in drafts they would not work!! It was so frustrating because I could see them right there, so close and yet so far. In my case it had gone past the time frame (I can't say for sure how long) but I had been persistant in trying to update them (because it showed the updated date and that was within the 60 days) so don't trust that alone, try to remember the original date. I had to re-do all of mine from scratch since it was too long to even use "sell similar" (but at least there were only about 40, I know most of you guys have tons of listings). Just wanted to warn you that just because you can still see them there, they may not work, so don't wait too long! (Speaking from my own bad experience anyways!)

[mrdutch1001]

I do not know what the status is on drafts these days, but I do know in years past my drafts became unusable after 30 days(some even before the 30 days).  and the pictures would disappear after about 2 weeks...

I got into the habit of saving drafts for up to  2 weeks,and either used them or created copies to save for an additional 2 weeks, so have no current experiences to pass on...

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@byto253 wrote:

Thanks Lotz, 3 months is plenty. 

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@byto253 

Now thinking back, 3 months can be pushing your luck. Especially when you never know ebay has done some tinkering that could be potentially corrupting them. Along with a minor edit (as others suggested) when you are in your draft list you can sort oldest to newest each time you go in. (Updating that does not always stay until the next time you return.) Same 3 months or less applies to your ended folder. I've had those magically go poof on me numerous times before the 3 months.

-Lotz

[byto253]

Thanks for the feedback.   I don't think I will push it more than a month without a tinker.  

[doc_scribe]

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@msau4301 wrote:

They definetely expire as I had it happen to me! I thought it was 60 days but lotz may be right it could be 90 and do try his suggestion of opening them, making a small change to re-fresh update.

In my case near the start of the pandemic when we had lockdowns here in Ontario where we were only supposed to leave the house for food, medical or emergency situations (and I wasn't sure if shipping out a collectible qualified, though it should have...people needed to be happy too!) I ended all my listings for a while (months) and kind of waited to see what was going to happen. I got restless in the meantime and started doing up a bunch of drafts for new stuff (with photos) and had them all sitting and waiting until things seemed like they might be getting a little better. Now I did wait longer than I originally anticipated and I feared the drafts being lost so I did make changes and such BUT when I finally wanted to get them up and running, even though I could see them all sitting there in drafts they would not work!! It was so frustrating because I could see them right there, so close and yet so far. In my case it had gone past the time frame (I can't say for sure how long) but I had been persistant in trying to update them (because it showed the updated date and that was within the 60 days) so don't trust that alone, try to remember the original date. I had to re-do all of mine from scratch since it was too long to even use "sell similar" (but at least there were only about 40, I know most of you guys have tons of listings). Just wanted to warn you that just because you can still see them there, they may not work, so don't wait too long! (Speaking from my own bad experience anyways!)

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Ditto for me too @msau4301 .

A year or so ago, I manually ended well over a hundred single item listings without recent sales and/or watchers, with the intent of reworking them via Sell Similar into more targeted 2 to 3 title Custom Bundles.  That subsequent work-in-progress was intermittent but fairly routine...none of those Drafts sat without some kind of update for even a month. 

Then suddenly, over the course of mere days, I watched my Draft totals drop from 130+ listings, to around 90, then 64 or so,  falling to under 40, until all of those Drafts had rolled past the 90 day mark since original end date - not when I had commited them to a new Draft - regardless of the amount of interim rework I had done on them.  It seemed that their previous life as an Ended Listing had permanently cursed them among the 'Bots.

As we all well know, fine tuning Item Specs into bullet-proof metadata, to create a fully vetted listing ready to go whenever we spot a good opportunity for it in the marketplace, is a huge chunk of our slug work. So sitting there dumbfounded, unable to stop all of that work from simply vanishing without warning, clear pattern, or recovery option, can be a very frustrating, even dispiriting experience.

Since then, I have never trusted anything in Drafts. If I am not ready to complete a listing or series of listings within say 1 or 2 weeks, I leave everything in *.HTML and *.JPG form locally, safely backed up on a couple of external drives.

Life is too short...

[msau4301]

Yes, it scared me into not leaving them in there for very long, though I still do drafts for sure, generally in for a couple of weeks. I also had "Ended listings" that I had waited on for a while (during start of pandemic also), those disappeared too, there were a portion of my "drafts" that were ended listings I tweeked in the hopes they would be extending the date (that did NOT work!)

I often stop my listings for a large part of the summer and December and so far (knock on wood) those have always stayed safe even if sitting dormant for 2 months. 

[recped]

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@byto253 wrote:

Thanks for the feedback.   I don't think I will push it more than a month without a tinker.  

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To be safe I would create them as Scheduled Listings, schedule them out as far as you can and then go back in a month or so and re-schedule for another later date.

There have been many reports in recent years of drafts going up in smoke when eBay makes significant changes to the Seller Hub (something they are constantly doing).

If you have unsed free listings available you could turn on the Out Of Stock option, list them with zero quantity (you would have to start them with quantity of 1 and then edit when active to reduce the quantity to zero). Out Of Stock listings will continue to run for (almost) exactly 6 months before eBay will touch them (could be off by +/- an hour or two).

I have OOS turned on for my deep inventory, for my one-offs when they go out of stock I let them sit and have monitored them to see how long they sit. In the early days of OOS there wasn't much of a consistant pattern but in the past couple of years it's been a steady 6 months when eBay ends them.