Ebay Monthly Free Listings Policy Update For May 15th.

Hey All,
I'm sure some of you have seen this already in your email box, but ebay (U.S.) is changing the monthly free listings for those without a store subscription. They are giving sellers 50 free auction listings per month for the stamps and some other categories.

I guess it's a welcome change as long as they still give out the uber amount of free auction listing once per month. The change will happen on May 15th.

Here's the full details:

http://announcements.ebay.com/2014/...ngs-for-you/

Thanks, Battlestamps. I haven't seen that e-mail yet, but it's good to know.

If I can figure out what they're trying to say, I think it's not good for me. I was starting to take advantage of listing fixed-priced items, up to the 50/month. It looks like, in stamps, that will no longer be available -- I would have to offer auction listings instead.

I did do a few auctions with them, and, I think because I'm new again to ebay and do not have a following, took a painful loss, and just did not enjoy that. So that's why I was going with the fixed-price offerings.

A workaround, I suppose, is to set the opening bid to about what I would've asked for the fixed price listing.

But, just speaking personally, it's too bad they're making this change right now.

(And thanks for raising this -- I haven't received this email yet, even though I will be hit by these changes in less than 10 days.)

For those who are interested, here's a link to an article about this change from EcommerceBytes:

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blo...8905767.html

They are doing this on ebay [UK] as well but my email was not very 'up front'.
When I went to the site and chanced upon the small print I realised that I have to start my auctions at 99p !
It is not written too clearly either which is typical.

Londonbus1

LB -- thanks for sharing what you found. I'll pay extra attention to this.

I usually have a few dozen fixed price listings up at any given time, most between one and ten dollars or so. The way I'm reading this is that ebay is now going to charge me 30 cents apiece to list those. For a lot that I might be trying to sell for a buck or two and then have to pay final value fees on top of it? I think not. I agree with others - I'll just have to put everything up at auction at a starting bid around the same price, with a buy it now option.

They're say they're trying to push people to sell at auctions because listings supposedly sell more frequently that way. Personally, when buying, I almost always use buy it now because I don't want to wait a week for the auction to close. I think any seller knows that all their fixed price listings aren't going to sell in a week or two (or even a month or two), so I think that's another ebay smokescreen to push sellers toward opening a store and paying store fees.

It's definitely a push to get sellers to open a store. I'm not going to bite, but for those who like the auction format the change can benefit the smaller seller. I actually prefer auctions myself and have done very well with them, but I sell mostly covers and postcards these days and the auction format works well with items where it's sometimes hard to establish a price point.

"I'll just have to put everything up at auction at a starting bid around the same price, with a buy it now option. "

That Buy it Now option will cost you 30c (or more depending on the price level) per listing.

Either I misread the new policy or they changed it (or I am misreading it now), but it now appears to me as though adding Buy it Now to the free auction listings is still free.

My auction price is the same price as buy it now!