eBay

dutchman48 · ‎03-04-2016

It appears there is a listing special floating around for 600,000 free listings on the .com site. No one has posted a link yet, but here is a link to the thread.

Apparently it is a funny looking promotion and some people thought Ebay had been hacked again.

http://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Fake-promotion-eBay-hacked/td-p/25268000/page/2

Some people have tried it and says it worked. Shows up under selling manager Summary.

higgswtop12 · ‎03-04-2016

And it goes until March 31...I wonder if the rest of us will get anything else this month.

mmmcross · ‎03-04-2016

My God. This is getting ridiculous. I'm trying to be patient since promotions always seem to come around again eventually, but I'm almost tempted to ask those lucky sellers if they would be willing to partner up and let a less fortunate seller use those excess free listings for a fee.

widgetc · ‎03-04-2016

The last listing special here was much more widespread and only for 1000. Also the previous 100 free listings for non-store sellers was reduced to 50. I think the writing is on the wall...much more targeted specials and not so often.

mmmcross · ‎03-04-2016

I'm not going to panic yet since we had two in October, three in November, two in December and two in January, and our holiday period promotions were roughly equivalent to that big 10000 listing promotion that US sellers were offered late last year. It's just unsettling (and hard on the bottom line) that it's been about 6 weeks since the last one. Maybe they're gearing up to offer something new or better than the usual promotions alongside the spring seller update. I won't put too much stock in that but you never know.

widgetc · ‎03-04-2016

My bet is they are reconsidering the value eBay of widespread promotions. I am guessing that the loss in fees from those who would have listed anyway but got do so free cancels the gain in fvf from sellers who put stuff up only when free. Those who only list when free often have items with very low sell through rates, not what eBay prefers. They may be finding that non-targeted free listings is drawing sellers offering items that tie up eBay resources but don't produce a lot of sales these sellers are very unlikely to ever become paying listers.

My bet is they will compare the situation with and without a major free listing offer for a few months and decide what to do in the future. Over the years it has varied from a general free listing offer perhaps once a year, to lots of free listings offers, to more targeted offers. Time will tell.

higgswtop12 · ‎03-09-2016

I just read this at ecommercebytes:

After reading the article, a dedicated eBay buyer named Richard left a comment on the InfoWorld site in response. Here's an excerpt:

"As a collector-buyer I have stopped running 80% of my weekly eBay searches. I faithfully ran these searches since 1997. Two years ago I had to stop when John Donahoe gave us the nearly unlimited free listings, and free listings allow a seller to set unrealistically high prices on items because if there is no sale, they just relist it for free."

They may have decided that free listings don'e encourage competitiveness in the market place.

ypdc_dennis · ‎03-09-2016

@widgetc wrote:
The last listing special here was much more widespread and only for 1000. Also the previous 100 free listings for non-store sellers was reduced to 50. I think the writing is on the wall...much more targeted specials and not so often.

You skipped some steps for non-store sellers.

iirc: First it was 0 free, then 100 free, then 20+20 (BIN+selected Auctions) free, then 50 free.

Who knows what the Spring tweaking will bring, I don't. But I do know that I like "free".

ypdc_dennis · ‎03-09-2016

@dutchman48 wrote:
It appears there is a listing special floating around for 600,000 free listings on the .com site

http://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Fake-promotion-eBay-hacked/td-p/25268000/page/2

I notice looking at that thread that this promo supposedly has been running from January 2015 and ends this month (March 31, 2016).