Business Sellers and PowerSellers are specifically excluded from the promotion, as are a couple of categories including parts of the motors, property and mobile phones categories.

If you need to have a clear out get your items ready to list, if you’re a business be prepared for a lot of private seller items to be on the site for the next 10 days.

On March 16th, sellers listing auctions on eBay.com, eBay.ca and eBay Motors will save 50% on insertion fees regardless of start price. Sellers will need to have DSRs of 4.5 or higher to qualify. Other fees apply as normal. There are exclusions so please read the small print before you list.

As with previous promotions you’ll need to have 12 month Detailed Seller Rating of 4.5 or higher on all criteria, or be a new seller yet to have received the minimum 10 DSRs needed for the stars to display.

There are a few restricted categories including Motors and some business and industrial subcategories so check before you list.

eBay France has a one-day promotion on 18th February. Private sellers will be charged no insertion fees for auction listings regardless of start price: you’ll need to be French-resident to qualify.

eBay Germany has two days of free listings: the 18th and 19th of February. Again, private sellers can list auctions with no insertion fee: you’ll need to have a German address and be registered on eBay.de to qualify.

Thanks to the lovely Magnum Opus for the link.

To qualify for the promotion sellers will have to have 12 month detailed seller rating of 4.5 or higher on all four criteria, or be new sellers without a DSR score. Normal insertion fees for fixed price items is 35¢. From March 30th insertion fees will be 50¢, 20¢, 5¢ or 3¢ for no store, a basic store, a featured store or an anchor store respectively.

10¢ looks like a pretty good deal in the interim, and will give sellers the opportunity to test core site fixed price listings prior to the new pricing structure coming into effect.

• list auctions starting at £4.99 or lower,
• in Media categories (Music; Books, Comics and Magazines; Video Games (not including items listed in the following Video Games sub-categories: Coin-Operated, Consoles & Systems and Vintage & Retro Gaming); or DVD, Film & TV),
• before Sunday 7th February 2010

will pay no insertion fees. Other fees apply and as usual there is a bunch of small print so read before you list.

Were I a gambling woman, I would wager a bob or two on this being the forerunner of a more permanent pricing feature. Are we going to see free auction listings for all private sellers soon? Watch this space.

Firstly the free listing only applies to auctions, but also “professional tools, such as, Turbo Lister” are banned – use a listing tool and you have to pay for the insertion fee and that even includes relisting unsold items in bulk. To qualify you pretty much have to use the Sell Your Item form and do every listing by hand on the day. There are also some category restrictions so check before listing if you want your free insertion fees.

For starters cheap listing days are irrelevant to business sellers. Any seller who has an eBay shop is on a permanent cheap listing day paying as little as 1p to list fixed price items, most are paying 5p with a featured shop or at worst 20 with a basic shop. There really isn’t much more eBay can do to incentivise businesses to list more on the site.

Private sellers also have permanent free listings for auctions with a start price of 99p or less. Being as that’s the best listing format to attract the highest end price again there are few incentives eBay can offer to attract more listings.

It seems a shame though – free or cheap listing days do more than simply bump the number of listings on the site. The very fact that an email arrives in users inbox with a promotion reminds casual sellers that eBay is here and that they should be selling. The bump in listings (although often a pain for businesses) means that there are some great bargains for buyers – I know I’ve often had a browse after a cheap listing day just to see what deals that have attracted few bids I can snap up.

Is this the end of cheap or free listing days in the UK? Or do you think price promotions can still play a part on eBay? Are you relieved that the annual post Christmas listing promotion didn’t happen or would you like to see it revived next year?

The same promotion is running for vehicle tyres, and for both tyres and media the 20% discounts will now apply until 31st March 2010. As usual there’s some terms and conditions (for tyres and media) which need to be met.

This offer has been running since September 2008, so honestly we think it’s about time eBay made it a permanent price change instead of teasing sellers with the threat of taking it away every few months.

There’s a ton of small print, but in a nutshell any media listed on auction with a start price of up to £4.99 qualifies for free listing in Music; Books; Comics and Magazines; Video Games (not including items listed in the following Video Games sub-categories: Coin-Operated, Consoles & Systems and Vintage & Retro Gaming) and DVD, Film & TV.

So if you’re a genuine private seller with some unwanted books or games sitting you your shelf it’s time to clear them out, but watch for the kicker, there’s free post in these categories so unless your auction attracts bids don’t forget to allow for carriage costs.

The usual category exclusions (vehicles, industrial equipment and so on) apply, and please read the small print before you list.

eBay have also created an “eBay House” where consumers can browse for some ideas of what to sell along with average sale guide prices. It’s again worth remembering that buyers that sell the odd item tend to buy more in the future. With that in mind the eBay House isn’t a bad idea for giving buyers some prompts of what they could sell. If nothing else once they’ve got some money in their PayPal account they’re just as likely to spend it as to withdraw a few quid to their bank account.

The promotion is only available to users based in Australia, but it should result in a significant increase in listings from the antipodes over the next couple of days.

Australian eBay users are also waking up to the introduction of the new buyer communication emails recently rolled back in the UK and Europe. If we’ve got any Australian readers that could share the text of the emails and let us know if it’s friendly than the UK version it would be good to know!

Anyone listing today is advised to run 5-day duration listings to take advantage of “cyber Monday” – traditionally one of the busiest online shopping days of the year. With this weekend’s site outage blamed on a spike in listing numbers, I only hope the ship can take it…

More info from eBay UK and eBay Ireland respectively.

There’s a bunch more small print, so do read it before you list. I’m all in favour of eBay Giving Works – as well as the UK’s eBay for Charity – but I can’t help feeling this promo is more complicated than it needed to be. Why not just waive all the fees for charity listings for the holiday season altogether? And why do we have to see those horrible fee credits, which always, always cause problems for sellers, running over Christmas?

Of course, for the majority of those categories, one free domestic delivery option is compulsory, so most sellers are seeing this as a quid pro quo for having FVFs charged on their included shipping costs. And while any reduction in eBay fees is always welcome, having this as a *promotional* price gives eBay the option to increase fees again whenever they feel like it. With sellers’ margins squeezed tighter and tighter at the moment, this doesn’t make for a feeling of long-term stability on eBay.

I know our comments will be full of two issues which I’ll try to cover: Why no free listings for Business sellers, well for them listings can be as little as a penny for multiple quantity 30 BIN listings anyway so any discount is pretty much irrelevant.

The second issue is that the site will be flooded with listings from “private” sellers who aren’t really private sellers. This is really something that eBay do need to address and perhaps start to implement realistic restrictions on how many listings “private” sellers can list in a particular time frame.

And another eBay UK promo announced today, multiple BIN items in the Tyres category listed by business sellers from 20th August to 31st December will receive 20% off the normal FVF rate.

Firstly, there’s a reminder from eBay UK that sellers in the Music, Books, Video games and DVD, Film & TV categories can get 20% off their FVFs when they offer free domestic P&P. This offer runs from 20th August to 30th September. This is of course in preparation for all sellers in media categories having to offer a free postage option by 19th October.

eBay.com, Motors and eBay Canada are offering up to 12 eBay-hosted photographs for just 25c from today until September 18th, saving sellers 50c-75c per listing. (I feel compelled to say at this point, if you regularly pay a dollar for picture pack, please please get your own image hosting or at least sign up for a free Photobucket account.)