eBay have invited private sellers to list an almost unlimited number of items for free for the next three months. Private sellers selected to participate in the promotion can list up to 100 items per day, every day of the promotion.
100 free listings per day for three months is one hell of a lot. The promotion runs from the 1st of October right through to the 31st of December so private sellers can practically clear out their whole house as well as listing any Christmas presents they get which they’d rather turn into cash than keep.
Items listed on eBay UK using the auction style (but not 1 & 3 days duration) or fixed price (excluding 3 days duration) format in an eligible category are included. Motors also aren’t included although motor parts and accessories are.
We know that there are a few dodgy business sellers out there who will be overjoyed at the prospect of free listings and will promptly shift their stock onto their private accounts. We also know that for other sellers there will be much gnashing of teeth as they see their categories flooded by private seller listings. The good news is that all the genuine private sellers who list under this promotion will be engaged with eBay and have money in their PayPal accounts which hopefully will be respent on eBay on your products.
9 Responses
I’ve had more or less this very every month since, oh, November last year maybe-ish? I can’t recall exactly, it’s been ‘on’ for so long now. They just keep offering it on the 1st of each month – 100 listings per day, every day, every month. Private seller, auctions and fixed price listings.
Listing fees are reducing the choice by offering these zero fee listings it does not matter if a unique item takes a few months to find a buyer and might bring a few buyers back that the cheap Chinese tat swamping the site have driven away.
I think it’s brilliant that some sellers can plan ahead and perhaps list stuff for let’s say ten days at a time and benefit from the extra exposure that ‘newly listed’ and ‘ending soonest’ buyers bring – 30 day listings seem to vanish in the middle of the period, unless you’re a business with fast selling multiple quantity listings which get boosted up every day or two from sales.
The other point which has been mentioned is that any extra money going into private sellers’ paypal accounts has a good chance of being spent on ebay, so with Christmas coming it’s possible that business sellers will benefit from a private seller promo.
Any ‘dodgy’ sellers who don’t declare earnings for tax, will have to keep the money in paypal and spend it from there, so it doesn’t show up in their bank accounts – if they spend it with you then so much the better surely ?
They have had free listing like this every month for a year on my personal account. my buying account sell 10 things for nothing on their the other day.
Like every multinational they take the long standing business customers for granted now.
I actually went over my limit on a featured shop last month and paid 2 listing fees.
There are no incentives for business customers, how about a reduction in these shop fees for a change. Overpriced for a featured shop anyway they get plenty in fees. Same with Amazon their fees are huge for using FBA and still want an extra £30 a month on that.
overall retail esales may be on the rise again but parts of the market look well & truly mature
is this ebay ‘offer’ evidence of that?
We have both a business account and a private account. When we retired, we wanted to change our business account to a private, but eBay claimed that we “would not provide the service to buyers that would be expected” ???? Hence opening the private account which we now use to list items on auction – and have taken advantage of the free listings. This is our own private collection we are selling – so it is not a business. So we are not “dodgy” sellers, as some on here would believe!
It’s interesting to compare ‘promo strategy’ of the .co.uk and .com sites, as until a year ago, .com were getting shed loads of listings several times a year, up to around 5,000 at a time if I remember correctly, whilst we were getting the usual 100 twice a month for private and infrequent promos for businesses.
Now it seems as if we’ve swapped places, with .com sellers complaining about a lack of promos whilst our private sellers are getting as much as they can handle really.
Despite all our complaints, ebay cannot be totally useless at everything, so there must be a reason behind this apparent change of policy……. any sensible ideas anyone ?
In the meantime eBay pays £1.1m UK tax on UK revenues of £1.1bn.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/oct/08/ebay-pays-11m-uk-tax-on-revenues-it-told-us-investors-were-11bn