Ebay Changes Listing Choices

For a view of the storm regarding this change, go to this ebay chat board, where you can also read posts by ebay's hired monkeys attempting to explain why this change is "good for sellers:"

https://community.ebay.com/t5/2019-...d-p/29543352

So the BIN listing change to "Good Till Cancelled" only has gone global?

in the ebay Community forum sellers have gone postal:




@Brian_Burke_99 replies:




My response to Brian:

I am not convinced that eliminating fixed-duration Fixed Price listings will simplify my listing process or increase my conversion rate. I sell one-of-a-kind collectibles in two categories. After watching GTC listings of stamps sit month after month with declining views and sales, I switched to 30-day listings, repricing unsold items monthly with some success. in the Railroad Slides category, auctions have effectively attracted viewers, sometimes hundreds, and multiple bids.

I depend on 7-day auctions and 30-day fixed price listings. I sometimes run 5-day auctions to if submission deadlines are missed. I don't use 1-day or 3-day listings. Why not make 6-day auctions available to supplement 7-day auctions or add "flex auctions" to enable sellers to specify ending days and times? Auction buyers seem to be creatures of habit, expecting auctions to end specific days of the week within specific time slots.

Except for pricing anomalies on the ebay site, I don't see much difference between shorter fixed-price listings and auctions. For those who don't use Best Offer, auctions have an upside compared to fixed-price. I wouldn't mind seeing a Best Offer feature for auctions allowing the seller to agree to make the and accepted best offer the starting bid.

I do not use the ebay web site for listing or order fulfilment. The SixBit eCommerce Solution is more effective for most tasks and saves significant time listing because I have my own catalog and can use Excel as the starting point. SixBit is based on Microsoft SQL Server, a relational database, making it possible to retain Items, Listings, Sales and Orders in a secure database that can be backed up off-site. The only web page I regularly on ebay is the classic My ebay All Selling page to track active auctions. I am not comfortable with the ebay Seller's Hub and rarely use it. Attempts to use ebay pages for one-off tasks sometimes expose missing links and work-flow gaps that would not be tolerated in many workplaces.

While I can develop an automated solution for repricing GTC listings, I would prefer to focus on creating better listings and images more efficiently. Getting rid of 30-day fixed price listings will be an unwanted distraction from other objectives.

I believe that every seller has unique requirements and may not find a place at ebay if a "one size fits all" cookie cutter solution is imposed. Innovation often comes from thinking out of the box, not from making the box smaller.

My approach, since I don't do auctions, just FP listings, will be to every few months, manually cancel all my store on the 29th or 30th of the month and then start them all new again on 1st of the next month. Presumably then I won't be double-hit on listing allotment or fees. It will take several cycles to determine whether the "renewed" listing appearance is worth the effort.

You may also try to work with what is discussed in the link below. Starting listings near the middle of the month can be advantageous

https://community.ebay.com/t5/2019-...9545219#M372

Without getting long winded about it, it takes away our control and flexibility.

Which is why many sellers are so against it

IMO the 30 day BIN listing was a waste of time as the listing would only come to near the front page or if it appeared for the 1st time a couple of days before the listing ends.

So if I list BIN now for good till cancelled where is that listing going to be for buyer to see?

Trying to formulate a business strategy out of a BIN listing now is not looking good at any level!

Late to the party here but count me as another seller not happy with a transition to GTC. I like to periodically take unsolds out of rotation, or to relist them as auctions after a listing as a BIN expires. Going to all GTC makes this much more difficult. Yet another money grab by ebay, though maybe one they'll reverse when their listing numbers go down.

So I pay for an ebay anchor store for 2 months and list 5,000 listings as BIN and after I list them I cancel the store payment. Still would have to pay for 2 months of store cost but the listing would still be GTC.

ebay, like any public company, listens to their shareholders
ebay stock price in 2009 = $4.59
ebay stock close yesterday = $37.49

A decline in the number of listings is acceptable if the listings that are lost are those which are higher cost and do not support the direction of the company.

There are reasons that few companies try to establish an international auction site that supports millions of low value transactions of used items. Online commerce for new, consumer items has exploded; companies like ebay are looking at Amazon and drooling. Shareholders and other investors want their company to be efficient and profitable.
Don

As a buyer, I think the change is good. I always use sort by newly listed. Now, instead of seeing the same lot get relisted each week, I see it once and don't have to see it clutter up my search week after week. I wish there were a way to have e-bay return only true newly listed lots and ignore relists. If I were interested in the item, it would be on my watch list the first time I saw it. If not, why do I need to keep seeing it?

Well, in my case because I reduce the starting price of the item if it hasn't sold within its 7 or 10-day auction period.

KGV,



It will appear in searches. So someone looking for the specific item you have will find it in a search return. But I agree, a majority of "action" occurs in the last few minutes of an item, but I find that is more the case with auction items than "store BIN/Best Offer" listings. (I have 0 up at the moment, but in the past I've had more than 1,000 items in my store at any given moment). Stepped away from ebay for a while, but will be reentering at some point soon.

I prefer the auction format myself, but usually use BIN for unsold auction items - it's a way to use that 1,000 fixed price listings you get with the one store subscription.
As others have noted, most of the selling activity usually happens when items are new or just about to end. With this change from 30 days to GTC then that end of sale surge will be missing. I guess I'll have to add a comment to the description that fixed priced listing will only be listed for 30 days and then removed. Don't expect them to be automatically relisted.