Preparing listings while store is "on vacation"

[rose-dee]

Given the uncertainty around the postal dispute (i.e. who knows what kinds of delays will be involved), I'm considering putting my store "on vacation" again for a while.   I thought I'd get busy in the background drafting listings, and have them ready to go live when this postal mess is resolved. 

I think this question came up a few years ago, but I can't recall the answer:  If listings are prepared in the background, while a store is on vacation, how long will they be held?  I assume they'll go into "Drafts", but I don't want to lose all my work if eBay only retains drafts for a short period of time. 

Thanks in advance to anyone who may know the answer (or have a link to the info).  Failing that, I'll ask next Wednesday.  

[cumos55]

I use Auctiva to prepare my listings.    You also use Auctiva.

My store is on vacation.    New listings have been added to my store on eBay......  People cannot view the new listings  and cannot buy them

Listings with watchers can be viewed by the person that added the watch to the listing... but.. they cannot buy the item listed.

Putting my store on vacation has allowed me to cleanup and list my new inventory. 

Keeps me busy... busy... busy...

Over the past month I have been to several charity books sales.....     and I am busy preparing listings and uploading them.

and ..... Without worrying about parcels getting lost in the mail system.

[cumos55]

Putting my store on vacation has given me a lot of free time...

To examine why I should continue to sell on eBay.

To determine which books  I should continue to sell on eBay.

Many people lay back and count the bumps on the ceiling....  It my choice to count the books ... the new inventory..... I plan to sell on eBay.

I  will make it happen!

[ricarmic]

Hi Rose, I'm assuming you're using the hidden vacation.

As far as I know, you can create and actually list new items whilst the store is on vacation (BINs only of course) no problems. You'll still pay the fees if any for doing that. You'll also lose the visibility increase when they are first listed though, but you'll get some anyway when the store is reopened (at least I do).

I don't use drafts so I can't say how long they are kept, at least 30 days, I'd be surprised if you'd need to wait that long....

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

!For anyone that uses DRAFTS for saving listings for future use, you may want to try a test to make sure your saved listings are actually working. From the point in time that a number of sellers were receiving bad eBay links during the save process to now, it appears DRAFTS were not actually saving. I just tried to open one that was created late last month and I get the following message.

Looks like something's wrong. Please try again. Clicking on OK brings you back to your draft list

According to Tyler, they thought this was resolved. Apparently not. You may have no choice but to resort to either an additional paid selling tool or Turbo lister if you can get that to co-operate. Unsure if these are Browser specific issues or a random glitch affecting some and not all. If your drafts are working properly, a bonus for you!

-CM

[pocomocomputing]

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@rose-dee wrote:

Given the uncertainty around the postal dispute (i.e. who knows what kinds of delays will be involved), I'm considering putting my store "on vacation" again for a while.   I thought I'd get busy in the background drafting listings, and have them ready to go live when this postal mess is resolved. 

I think this question came up a few years ago, but I can't recall the answer:  If listings are prepared in the background, while a store is on vacation, how long will they be held?  I assume they'll go into "Drafts", but I don't want to lose all my work if eBay only retains drafts for a short period of time. 

Thanks in advance to anyone who may know the answer (or have a link to the info).  Failing that, I'll ask next Wednesday.  

---

I never trusted Drafts as I read enough posts in the USA forums about losing drafts.

Instead create the listings as you normally do on eBay but use the eBay scheduled start feature instead of drafts. You can schedule the listing to start up to 21 days in the future. When ready to list, bulk edit the start time to start immediately.

For non-store sellers, the schedule feature is free. For store owners, the scheduled feature is 10 cents per listing. But the fee is only charged if you let eBay list the item using scheduled start time. If you manually change from Scheduled start time to Start Immediately, no schedule fee is charged. If you need to hold them longer in the Scheduled queue, there should be an option to change all the listings selected to a new date in the future (up to 3 weeks). I say should because I used to do this in the old My eBay All Selling or in the old Selling Manager. There was a simple option at the bottom of the scheduled listing page to change the start date easily. I don't know if the Seller Hub has the simple feature or if you have use the bulk editor to change to a later date.

You can check the schedule date regularly like once a week to set the date back another week and theoretically hold listings ready to list in the scheduled queue indefinitely.

Before drafts this was they way sellers held listing temporarily while working on them. Also to hold completed listing and then start them manually as a desired start date and time like Sunday night for auction start/end at say 10 pm Eastern Time (7 PM Pacific Time).

I also used scheduled listings to test listings where I used some fancy HTML in the description to make sure it looked okay across browsers and smartphones before going live. I also used scheduled listing to check out shipping options to make sure they worked as I planned. A scheduled listing is as live a listing you can get on eBay without actually running and is great for testing/checking things the way they will look and run. Much better than Preview when creating a listing.

Just don't forget about listings you have scheduled. They will start as scheduled if you forget about them and you will get charged the scheduled fee. And an unfinished listing not meant to be listed yet may sell before you notice with an incomplete description or incorrect shipping locations or whatever you forgot to finish. I have made both this mistakes over the years.

[tyler@ebay]

Hi @rose-dee!

You've been given some great advice. I think that @ricarmic's suggestion is probably the easiest to implement with the least amount of follow-up. 

@pocomocomputing's suggestion would also work, though it would mean you'd need to set reminders and keep-up on your listings to ensure they didn't incur a scheduled listing fee. 

Drafts stay saved for up to 30 days, but it's important to note that they are static saves - meaning they will not update with the rest of the site, so if there are listing form changes, etc you could run into situations like @lotzofuniquegoodies describes.

My fingers are crossed that you won't need to do anything, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. 🙂

[cumos55]

Rose-dee   uses Auctiva  to prepare listings... just like I do.

I went to her listings to confirm what I already knew.

Go back to my message ... Message 1 ... and that is my experience while the store has been on vacation

[femmefan1946]

You don’t have to worry about losses if you write your description in word or text and save it on your desk top. And save your pictures on a desktop file at the same time.
You will have to add title,item specific s etc when you do upload but writing description s and taking pictures is the most time consuming part and they wom’t Get lost if you don’ttrust Them to some random website

[rose-dee]

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@cumos55 wrote:

Rose-dee   uses Auctiva  to prepare listings... just like I do.

I went to her listings to confirm what I already knew.

Go back to my message ... Message 1 ... and that is my experience while the store has been on vacation

---

Yes, I do use Auctiva, and that always solves the problem for my more important listings.  I just leave them on Auctiva and upload them to eBay whenever I'm ready.  As you know, Auctiva has over the years been outstanding at keeping up with eBay policies, so even long-saved "draft" listings on Auctiva will update (or warn about errors) before the listing goes over to eBay. 

Unfortunately I'm trying to seriously restrict my costs, and I only have a basic Auctiva account,  limited to 15 uploaded listings per month.  So I use Auctiva for important items, or for making a "template" for lesser items -- I then upload the template and use "sell similar" to clone it for other similar listings.  This way I'm able to stretch Auctiva's services without paying extra.  In over 10 years of using Auctiva, I've never had a "saved listing" there disappear or be retired without my deliberately doing so.   I've found Auctiva completely reliable. 

I suppose I could use 'ricarmic's' suggestion and just upload all  my proposed listings while my store is on vacation.  However my understanding was that there is a maximum time limit for vacations in stores.  Also -- if they're being held while the store is on vacation, will they be deleted by eBay if (as with Drafts) there is new policy that may be violated by those listings?  Perhaps tyler@ebay could confirm how long a single vacation period can be, and whether listings held in an offline "vacation" might be removed for policy issues as with Drafts.   

Given some of the comments above, I think I'm going to avoid loading my prospective listings into "Drafts".   It just seems too uncertain an outcome, and I don't want to put days of work into listings that might disappear due to policy changes (we all know how often that happens). 

Although 'poco's' suggestion of holding prospective listings in a sort of renewal rotation using scheduled start is a good one, I don't think I'd trust myself to keep on top of the updated renewals.  I can't afford any  unnecessary costs right now, even if it's just $0.10 a piece (and Auctiva includes scheduled starts for free --- with my paid account, of course, so I wouldn't want to accidentally end up paying additionally).  

Thank you everyone for your input -- very much appreciated! 

[ricarmic]

Hi Rose!

I don't know the official time limit, but my store is in hidden vacation mode for 1 month each year whilst I am on August "ebay holiday", so I know a hidden vacation for a month (31 days) is no problem.

If you load new items (just to be clear this is listing the item), you'll see them from "my ebay" as normal, but you won't be able to see them outside my ebay, same as everyone else.

Fees for the newly listed items will be assigned as normal despite the fact people can't see the listings, same as your monthly store fees which continue.

[rose-dee]

Hi again!  Yes, I think this strategy will work for me.  Since I'm paying for a store, the listing fees are covered up to 250 items per month anyway, and another 250 auctions if I want them.  I don't expect I'll get anywhere near the limit, even with the new items. 

I suppose if worse came to worst, and I had to let the vacation expire due to lapsed time, I could always leave the store open for a few days then put it back on vacation again -- I'm just hoping this postal dispute doesn't go on and on in a state of suspense for weeks like it did the last time! 

I remember your mentioning a while ago about the slight sales boost you got when your store went live again after a vacation.  It probably isn't as much as a whole batch of new listings being put up normally, but I'll take anything I can get.  I may hold back my allotment of 15 listings on Auctiva and upload them a day or two after I end the store vacation, to try and increase the effect a little.  

At this point, I really don't know which is worse -- upsetting my U.S. buyers with likely delays in delivery, or forfeiting potential sales in order to avoid that scenario.   Since I'm not selling much these days anyway, it may be better to do what 'cumos'  does, and just try to update, review, refresh and re-tool my store during a forced "vacation".   

Ughhh, why can't they just settle this dispute! 

[ricarmic]

Hopefully soon, I'm running the store in "coast" mode (trolling speed for fisherman) for now.

[tyler@ebay]

Hi @rose-dee! 

There is not a limit to the length of time that your store can be on vacation mode. It will continue to accrue the monthly subscription charge while you're out, as well as any insertion fees that are applicable to the items that are listed. 

The plus side of this plan is that the listings are not in a holding pattern or draft location - they are considered live and active listings, they are just made invisible at your request (un-indexed from search) and purchases of the items are blocked. 

Fingers crossed that it won't have to be for long!

[rose-dee]

Thank you Tyler, that's what I needed to know!  I thought I had seen someone comment (probably a couple of years ago) that 45 days was the time limit, per store vacation, so I wanted to be sure. 

As you say, let's hope this postal dispute gets resolved asap, it's really a killer for those of us who ship to the U.S., as I doubt most Americans know, or will care, that Canada Post has work stoppage issues.   They're used to fast, efficient shipping.  How I wish... 🙂