Do you think that GTC works against you?

[musicyouneed]

Sales have been slow, so I have been checking out my competition. 

One seller doesn't have a store, has over 500 listed on .ca, doesn't used GTC, I assume just 30 days and he/she has a 32% sell through rate over 3 months, which is excellent, mine is about 5%.   We are selling a lot of the same CD's and he/she sold one for $10 CDN and I have mine listed at $5.99 US which is about $8.20 Cdn, mine is still for sale.  Shipping within Canada and international the same as mine but to the US his/her is double mine.  

So not having a store and not listing GTC this seller is selling way more than me.  Maybe I have it all wrong.  I might consider setting up another ID, no store not GTC and see what happens, couldn't be worse than now. 

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

In my personal view, eBay in their rush to implement this change did not consider the ramifications to the number of sellers it was going to affect and the ways it was going to affect them. Before it is actually implemented it needs to be tweaked to satisfy the concerns of those sellers either monetarily or for scheduling purposes.

-Lotz

[pocomocomputing]

What I would like to see in GTC is the ability to end the listing automatically after a certain number of relists. I suggested this many times in the past but eBay staff said that using fixed price with durations of 30 days or less and automation rules already offered this option.

I would like the benefits of GTC auto relisting and having the same item number and watchers kept. But if I have an OOAK (one of a kind) item and want to just list it for 3 relists then end, I can evaluate the listing and modify accordingly or not relist at all. I know some sellers do this on Fixed Price 30 day BIN but I feel the time period is too short.

Obviously, eBay would have to limit the relists in such a way as to not defeat their new GTC policy. I would think that having the option of 3, 6, 9, 12 or forever auto relists and then ending would be fair to all. eBay could also restrict it to only listings with a quantity of 1 for OOAK (One of a kind) items.

[pocomocomputing]

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@femmefan1946 wrote:

That the first day of each listing would change calendar date every month, I would regard as a feature not a bug. It moves slow items along, and perhaps finds the customer who only buys on payday, itself a moveable date. *

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Having the listing restart on the same day of the month does not mean it is the same day of the week. So payday for those who get paid weekly or bi-weekly on the same day of week will still have listings end at different day of week potentially matching a payday.

For those workers who get paid on a certain day of the month like the 1st and 15, then there will not be any movement in the listing renewal day of month or payday.

But how often would this happen where a buyer is waiting for a payday to buy something on eBay? I think the feature of of moving day of month and payday scenario is not so often for eBay buyers and this scenario  is overblown.

[amcdc79]

This is from October 29 2014,

• Updates to the automatic relist feature, currently available to some sellers:
• Starting November 24, items relisted via the automatic relist feature available to some sellers will count towards your monthly allotment of free listings*. Once your allotment of free listings is used up—or if the relisted item does not qualify for free listing—the standard insertion fee of 30¢ per listing will apply, as well as any optional feature fees.
• Starting later this year, the automatic relist feature will no longer be available for 1- and 3-day duration listings.
• The automatic relist feature currently relists an unsold item once. Starting November 24, if you are opted-in to this feature, your item will automatically be relisted up to two times.

Note: You will be credited—either via your free listings allotment or on your invoice—for insertion fees for these relistings where the free automatic relist feature was selected prior to November 24. The manual relisting policy will still apply.

• When listing an item, be sure that the automatic relist option is either checked or unchecked, depending on your preference. Note that before choosing this option, you may want to check the Selling section of My eBay for any personalized recommendations to improve your listings.

We used to be able to choose how many times we wanted a listing to relist by itself. If ebay could offer us one or two times, I'm sure they could allow whatever we wanted.

[tyler@ebay]

Hi @pocomocomputing - I don't have any further information to provide other than what Harry indicated in his post (i.e. it's still being looked into). 

Shipscript is really great at providing accurate and supportive information - so their relist calendar is one I would consider to be useful in determining when to list fixed price items to minimize the recurrence of 2 renewals within a single calendar month. 

I'm hoping that we'll see some additional information from Harry on this in the near future. 

Thanks!

[esclyons]

quick question  tyler@ebay.. you have stated again and again that with going to good until cancelled, we get the newly listed title when items roll over after 30 days..  but when i search for anything coin related as that is what i sell.., i type in what i am looking for then i click on newly listed.. everything newly listed in the last 30 days shows up first, anything listed with good until cancelled shows up below that, i am seeing dates of Dec. Nov. July, etc..   So how can we be getting new exposure, every 30 days.. when all the gtc listings are on the bottom of the pile??

[esclyons]

just to follow up as well. approximately 99.9% of my sales come from ebay directly, not from an external search engine like google or bing, etc..  people buy my items by going to ebay and then searching for what they want..  eBay really need to reconsider this change to gtc listings..

Let the people who have lots of the same item use it, for people like us who only have one or two of an item it is not required to list an item indefinitely..  I know there has been a lot of push back on this topic, but the bottom line is good till cancelled is not right for every seller.. So it should not be pushed onto every seller.. Unique sellers, have made ebay what it is, we have items you can't get at walmart and target, etc..  So ebay needs to treat us as unique sellers, and stop trying to group us in with the same groups who sell refurbished items, and asian dollar store  type items..

[tyler@ebay]

Hi @esclyons - apologies for any confusion or misinformation on my part! I want to clarify a few things as it pertains to GTC and search. 

****Your GTC listing gets a boost in search when first listed, and near its renewal time ('ending soonest'). Buyers watching your item are given reminders that GTC items are 'ending soon' as the item approaches its renewal date as well. 

Once renewed, the item does not get another boost in search results, as it is not a 'newly listed' item. However, it will get the 'ending soonest' boost as it gets close to the renewal date, as well as notifying any watchers.  ****

We want to maximize your items' exposure - and one aspect of that is positioning all fixed price items in such a way that external search engines are more likely to feature them. Over the last year and a half we've worked with them to minimize any penalties to search results on their sites. We rolled out the 'This item has ended, so here's a related item' pages to that end.

In addition to the other work we do with them to make your listings appear, the shift to fixed price GTC duration is one we believe will allow you to see that 'external traffic' bar in Seller Hub grow. 

*** 

I want to clarify a few things as it pertains to the Best Match algorithm, and correct incomplete or incorrect information I have given previously:

• There is no ‘boost’ applied to an item for being either newly listed, or ending shortly.
• There is no such thing as a ‘boost’ to search placement. More information about optimizing for Best Match can be found here.  

Good ‘Til Cancelled listings renew every 30 days, keeping their watcher count, sales history and item number. If a buyer is watching your item they will be alerted when a GTC listing is approaching its renewal date.

[femmefan1946]

@pocomocomputing 

But how often would this happen where a buyer is waiting for a payday to buy something on eBay?

I agree. The emergence of the credit card makes the "payday wait" for anything that is not a cash purchase (like groceries) much less important.

I do see a lot more utility bills being paid in my bank when the OAP  arrives around the 25-27. But we old folks are set in our ways.

(My community has an average age of 71 according to the census.)

[2nd-time-around-jewelry]

If eBay is going to force us to change to GTC whether we like it or not, then they should be the ones making sure that none of us are double charged for fees. They should implement a program to monitor that & make sure we are compensated.  We should not have to waste our time constantly checking our listings.  I see no benefit in GTC except to make more work for sellers & causing them worry.  Also eBay claims we will see increased sales from this change. What if the exact opposite is true & we lose sales or have very little traffic?  Will we be compensated & would the powers that be admit they made a terrible mistake.  I just see this as a no win situation for everyone.

[zee-chan-jpn-books]

Honestly, people who made such change to the Spring Seller Updates are probably people who never tried selling in eBay themselves.

I'm hating this change more and more by the day. Even more so than having to pay tax on our fees or losing the ability to list USD on dotCA. I can accept paying tax because it's a government thing, but everything else that eBay changes is just for the sake of making a change. It feels like with every Seller Update, eBay is trying to take something away from Sellers instead of making the selling experience better.

The loss of 30 days FP is probably gonna be the hardest change for me to adapt to, since it'll require a continued efforts for me to keep track of every 29 days and end the listings. I guess the idea is so that we get burned out, discouraged from having to end the listings ourselves all the time, and then quit eBay altogether. It seems to be eBay's biggest move to weed out small sellers like us.

[forester_studios]

Sadly I have to agree with your observations. The more I've thought about this change since it was announced the less I can see any kind of actual benefit. It will just create more work and stress for smaller sellers. Medium and larger sellers likely already use GTC and won't notice the change. This is like the move a few years ago to forcing us to list in Canadian currency. When that occurred I did see an increase in sales to Canadians as ebay predicted, but there was also a noticeable and sizable decrease in USA sales. The net benefit never materialized as overall income from sales remained similar to before the change. We will all now pay for the privilege yet again of being Guinea pigs in ebays GTC experiment.

[desertvalleyauctions]

I don't use GTC anymore and here is why

Most of my sales will happen when I relist an item or when any item is about to end

Conclusion...Buyers search out new listings or/and listing that are ending soon.

[femmefan1946]

@desertvalleyauctions 

tyler@ebay has said that while GTC items don't/won't get the Newly Listed boost, the About to Close boost will remain.

Some sellers have decided to review their listings daily and End those that are about to close.

They then go to the Unsold List where they will stay for up to 90 days.

Or five minutes if the seller decides to relist immediately to get the Newly Listed boost by using Sell Similar.

[luv4orphans]

If not paying attention to our listings when we go over the 50 allowed in a month we will be charge an insertion fee on anything over the 50 if not cancelled. Is that the point of all that. Rather annoying.

[reallynicestamps]

It would ease the pain if eBay moved away from "monthly" fees to 30 day fees.

My erratic arithmetic tells me that from January to May, with monthly fee periods, we would pay five times, but with 30 days fee periods, we would pay only four times.

Downside, we'd have a hard time knowing when the fees would be charged. (Now I believe it varies from seller to seller, but I pay on the 15th of each month on all my IDs.)