Comments on: eBay.com abandon new links policy

By: Sue Bailey

Sue Bailey — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:29:04 +0000

#11 Yep, Steve, won’t argue with you there. Support for more than one ID would be good too.

By: Steve H

Steve H — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:26:10 +0000

#7 This is possible with Spoonfeeder using their “templates”. I can edit one text file and any future listings will take on those changes.

The main problem with SF (as I’m sure Sue will testify) is the speed, or lack of, with which they update the software to accommodate new eBay features, item specifics etc.

By: Gill

Gill — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:33:17 +0000

Thanks Sue, for fixing the pig’s ear I made of my original post!

By: Whirly

Whirly — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:27:29 +0000

#6 lol

By: Chris Dawson

Chris Dawson — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:26:46 +0000

#6 You know what Eddie, I spoke to Sue about that and meant to mention it and forgot

Very funny – the FAQs are the old ones from May

By: Chris Dawson

Chris Dawson — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:24:13 +0000

#5 There is a really big hole in the listing tool market for a tool that reliably takes raw data – listing/price/title/item specifics etc and injects them into a master template which is then editable and will edit all stored listings.

Nothing really does that, and sadly the more complex your template (hopefully leading to a better buyer experience and more sales!) the harder it is to easily edit

Sadly no third party tool (and quite often in the past not even TurboLister) has been able to keep up to date with eBay changes. Until they can every time there’s a major change they’re next to useless

By: AuctionChex

AuctionChex — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:21:07 +0000

eBay posted the announcement about no changes to the links policy at 1:21 pm.

At 4:00 pm, they posted this Identical Items and Finding Update announcement:

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200807311600062.html

The Frequently Asked Questions that they linked to in the 4 pm announcement ( http://pages.ebay.com/sell/May2008Update/FAQ/ ) includes the Links policy changes that they revoked in the 1:21 pm announcement.

By: Sue Bailey

Sue Bailey — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:11:49 +0000

I will never forget the weekend I spent removing Nochex links from my listings… only for eBay to reverse the policy on Monday. eBay really need to work on making listings more easily editable (and make SIF editable even when the listing has had sales).

Spoonfeeder as a listing tool has many faults, but one thing I did like about it was the “listing footer”, a file which you could include in every listing template, so that changing one file changed every single item you had saved.

By: Sean Mewse

Sean Mewse — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:07:10 +0000

I don’t think eBay always appreciate how much time is taken implementing all the changes. All our listings now just contain a description, no returns policy, no links it makes life far easier. I even removed a link to our website on our about us page, personally I prefer to promote my site away from my eBay sales, Sean

By: Chris Dawson

Chris Dawson — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 09:31:56 +0000

The only advice I can give any seller is that item descriptions should be just that and no more.

Editing listings is a nightmare and much as I value template design building anything else in such as shipping/return/warranty/contact details etc means that they’re incredibly time intensive to edit.

If you want to include other information I’d strongly recommend it be limited to the shipping/returns policy/additional payment instruction/business seller info sections as they are at least editable in bulk.

eBay still don’t seem to realise that most sellers use TurboLister, SMP or a third party tool and store every item they list as a template. It’s not the ending, editing and relisting all live items and SIFs, it’s the editing of the 1000′s of stored templates that is the huge investment in time to make changes.