eBay have just announced 50,000 free auction listings per seller and the Buy It Now option can be added to these listings for free. Yes that wasn’t a typo, you can list up to fifty thousand auction style listings with Buy It Now with no insertion fees to pay.

Far be it from me to suggest this as a good idea, but it’s pretty likely that if you have an eBay.com store subscription that you’ll take advantage of this offer by listing on one of your other eBay accounts.

There are a few restrictions so check the announcement page for full details.

There’s a long thread on the eBay Business Seller Board and there are many more discussions about the matter. A TameBay reader even pointed out that when they searched for my own auction listings on eBay they too were dumped at the bottom of search results.

TameBay reader Robin has been doing some investigation and tested where his auctions appear in search and used two different eBay accounts to do some a-b testing. He’s captured his findings in video which makes for interesting watching and if you currently sell on eBay you need to be aware of this information.

eBay auctions (even in Best Match) are supposed to be sorted by Time Ending Soonest, the only sellers listings dumped to the bottom of search results should be those who are below standard. Why are good sellers listings being demoted? There’s been much discussion of this and some sellers have had answers from eBay support suggesting that their listings are being demoted due to their sell through rates. If you don’t have a high proportion of auctions closing with multiple bids there’s a pretty good chance that your auctions will be hidden from potential buyers regardless of your seller standards.

If your auctions are being demoted in search by eBay it’s not just your slow selling items that will be demoted though, it’s every eBay auction that you have running on the site.

The best advice we can currently offer if your listings are being lowered in search results is to cancel all of your auctions. Relist your products on fixed price listings and trust to eBay Best Match to enable buyers to find them. Start relisting auctions at low prices to encourage multiple bidders – eBay like auctions with lots of bidding activity. Try to avoid listing auctions which will end without sales – we know that this has been a valid selling strategy in the past but it will no longer ensure visibility but is now likely to lead to your auctions being blacklisted and demoted to the bottom of search results.

The most striking feature of catalogued items is that auctions are not being sorted by “Time Ending Soonest”, even if that’s what you’d normally expect. In many categories such as Televisions, or Computer Monitors half of the first page of search results are Catalogued listings. I’ve just been re-checking live listings and currently I’ve found a catalogued auction with just 24 minutes left to run on page 7 of search results. In the past all auctions about to end would have risen to the top of page 1 of search results!

Click to see more search results

So what appears to be happening here is that your fixed price listings are no longer sorted by Best Match and your auctions are no longer sorted by Time Ending Soonest. Your listings are sorted according to the eBay catalogue entry sort order.

Previously if you had a fixed price listing attracting a large number of sales then in eBay’s eyes it would have a high “popularity” sales score and would appear at the top of Best Match search results. Now it appears that your high performing listing may be being dragged down in search results by other sellers under performing listings. It’s the order that the catalogue products are presented, not how well your individual listing sells that counts. Worse still your auctions about to end are also being dragged down in search results and may never even reach page 1.

In some Tech and Electronics categories this might not matter – for instance if you’re searching for a White, 64GB, Wifi and 3G iPad 2, then (apart from eBay insisting on showing you Black ones) there are only a couple of options to choose from (SIM free, Vodafone etc). This means your listing will be found by interested buyers.

In other Tech and Electronics categories it’s much more disturbing for sellers. A buyer looking for a new LED TV or a Flat Screen Computer Monitor is probably not being as specific as in the case of an iPad. They may not mind which brand or model TV they purchase, but be more interested in particular features. In this case catalogue’d listings which hide bargains about to end on the 7th page of search results aren’t a great solution. Not displaying the most popular listings at the top of search results but instead amalgamating popular listings with overpriced under performing listings into a single catalogue entry dumped way down in search results isn’t a great buying and selling experience.

Currently there is no information apart from empirical data as to how search is sorted. If you can figure out what the sort criteria is for Catalogue Listings we’d love to hear from you. If you can’t figure out how they’re being ordered just bear in mind that the auctions you’re paying for may never make the first page of search results so you’re not likely to get great sale prices.

The one thing we can tell you that eBay haven’t, is that your auctions in catalogue categories are not being sorted by Time Ending Soonest regardless of what you thought your insertion fees were paying for.

This promotion is open on August 30th for sellers without an eBay store as well as those with an eBay store subscription. There’s no limit on your start price so if you have items languishing on fixed price listings it’s worth considering ending and relisting as auctions to take advantage of the increased visibility.

Check the full one cent auction listing promotion details on eBay.com for the full rules of the promotion.

This promotion is aimed at higher priced items as items with a start price of less than $10 would already be paying 25c or 10c. The promotion is available to all sellers – both those with or without a stores subscription. Sellers who do not have an eBay Store are still eligible for 100 free Auction-style insertion fees for listings with a start price of $0.99 or less.

This is an interesting one as many recent promotions have excluded professional sellers in the UK and those with store subscriptions in the US. Auctions are far from dead on eBay, although they’re used less and less by professional sellers in favour of fixed price listings. However auctions still get guaranteed exposure in search results and are unaffected by Best Match.

If you list on eBay.com and haven’t used auction format for a while it’s a good opportunity to list at realistic start prices and experiment with what the increased visibility does to your conversion rates.

Earlier this month, eBay.com made an addition to its search and browse manipulation policy to disallow duplicate auctions with low sell-through rates. Here’s the new bit:

If you have too many duplicate auction-style listings that don’t end in sales, you may be in violation of this policy. If you don’t have a strong record in converting these types of duplicate listings into sales, you’ll need to remove the listings, and you won’t be allowed to list duplicate auction-style listings in the future. If you do, we may remove the listings or give them less visibility in search results. If you continue to list duplicate auction-style listings, you may lose your selling privileges or your account may be suspended.

Note that this doesn’t specify how many “too many” is, or what a “strong record” on sales conversions might be.

There’s been no official announcement of this policy and it doesn’t seem to have been included in the Spring Seller Update either.

Hidden away elsewhere is a little more information:

Before you can have duplicate auction-style listings, you’ll need to achieve and maintain at least a 30% average sell-through rate for all of your duplicate auction–style listings by the deadline indicated in your notification. That means at least 30% of your ended duplicate auction-style listings must sell by your deadline week and you must at least maintain that rate going forward. Otherwise, your duplicate auction-style listings may be subject to removal. Continuing to list duplicate auction-style listings while your sell-through rate is less than 30% could lead to selling restrictions or account suspension.

So there we go: 30% it is.

I’ve got to say, I’m broadly in favour of this policy. As a buyer, duplicate listings are a pain to scroll through whether they’re in auction format or buy-it-now. As a seller… well, if it isn’t selling, don’t waste your time and shoppers’ listing and listing and listing: liquidate the stock and move on to something that *will* sell.

What I’m not in favour of is the way this policy appears to be being implemented. With no general announcement, the first (it seems) a seller is going to know is when they get a call to say they’re violating the policy. This is no way to treat your customers. eBay, yet again, appear to forget that sellers invest in their eBay businesses: time, to create listings, and money, in stock. If they’re going to change the way that stock can be sold, the very least they should do is give a decent notice period so sellers can work out other strategies (and other channels).

For the avoidance of doubt, this policy is in place only on eBay.com. It does not (yet) affect sellers on eBay UK, where the duplicate listing policy allows up to 15 identical auctions.

There are the normal restrictions with some excluded categories and of course if your start price is below a dollar you’ll pay the normal 10¢ instead of the 25¢ promotion price.

This promo makes a lot of sense – getting as much inventory on eBay in the final selling days before the Christmas holidays should maximise returns. If you’ve got all your items on fixed price listing it’s probably well worth starting some auctions between the 7th and 10th December as auctions will rise to the top of search results unlike fixed price listings which are dependent on Best Match.

This is rapidly becoming a regular promotion on eBay UK running almost every other weekend. As for the last few promotions business sellers and the use of professional selling tools is excluded as are relisted items – if you want to qualify you need to create your listings from scratch using the Sell Your Item form or the Quick Sell listing flow.

Full terms and conditions here.

It’s worth remembering that the first 100 auctions starting at 99¢ or less are free anyway, so it’s a great time to list items for which you want to have a higher starting price. There is also a limit of 100 auctions for this promotion and as normal there are a few excluded categories so check the details before listing.

Steve Yankovich, eBay’s vice president for mobile, says they are intending to release a new app every 5 weeks: he told SFGate “we pick and choose what will move the needle, and then we do it fast.” Picking the right platform also has a huge effect on the bottom line: users of the iPad typically spend three or four times more in a shopping spree than iPhone users.

Perhaps most interestingly for sellers, mobile use might be the saviour of auctions: last year when eBay released a mobile app alerting bidders on the state of auctions they were watching or bidding on, “sales shot up.” Yankovich says, “it was instant money.”

And there’s a whole bunch more small print, notably that these free auctions still count towards your 100 listings a month limit for auctions starting at 1p-99p. If you’re a private seller, on 6th June you should list items starting at more than 99p: they’ll still be free and you won’t have used up any of your private seller limit. Then we have this little gem:

If the item is listed in 2 categories, the Insertion Fee will be 0 pence (£0.00) times 2 i.e. 0 pence (£0.00).

Glad we cleared that one up.

For what it’s worth, my money’s on “free auctions for private sellers” becoming a permanent state of affairs somewhere around September this year. I know eBay have data that say that a buyer who’s sold a few things is a much more loyal buyer; I’m betting these FLDs show more of that. And much as business sellers hate the tat-fest the site turns into for a day or two, it’s probably something up with which we will have to put.

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.

You are bidding on this Cold War nuclear bunker, complete with panoramic view over the Derbyshire Dales as well as desk, chair, siren box, enamel bucket, rope for hauling heavy items up the shaft, sump grill and sump pump, cupboard with some domestic items. Access is via a metal hatch and 15ft ladder, which lead to two rooms: one for the chemical toilet. The other is a 15 ft x 7½ ft room formerly intended to be used as a monitoring post in the event of a nuclear attack. Best of all, there is no Council Tax to pay on this property.

In all seriousness, this is a wonderful bit of history. The bunker was opened in 1959, and was fully operational until 1991, run by three personnel working in shifts. It comes with a small piece of land and its own stile for access. I can’t imagine who’ll buy it or what they’ll do with it – the seller suggests “limited living accommodation for short periods or adventure holidays” – but if the eventual winner is reading, please do get in touch!

The BBC estimates it could go for £25,000, but with seven days left, bidding is already up to £17,389, so I’d guess this could go a lot higher.

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.

• 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.

click to embiggen

Some categories – basically, all the vehicles’ categories – are excluded, so do check before you list.

eBay France has been on a mission recently to attract more private sellers. The newest redesign of their home page has lost the colourful burst of shopping that most other eBay sites have, in favour of a dull and cheap-looking push of their free classified ads. eBay has always struggled a little in France compared to the UK or Germany, perhaps because the country already has a very well-established network of “depots ventes” – second-hand warehouses where people can sell unwanted items for a commission. I’m not convinced that trying to look like a classified ads newspaper is really going to bring the buyers flooding in, though I’d love to be proved wrong.

* For completeness’ sake, I’ll record that FVFs were
6.5% of the sale price up to €50
4.5% of the sale price between €50 and €500
2.5% of the sale price over €500

eBay say this is open to all sellers, but that’s not quite true. To qualify you have to use either the Sell Your Item (SYI) form or Simple listing form, you can “opt out” by using an eBay tool or third-party listing solution. Quite frankly not many pro-sellers will want to use the SYI form so simply won’t be eligible, which is probably a good thing if you expect your item to sell for a high price (More than $62.00 final value and you’re cheaper “opting out”.

Also if you’re going to list an item with a Start/BIN/Reserve price of $18 million or higher you’ll sadly be excluded from the promotion. I’d suggest starting your item at $17,999,999.99 as then your final value fee will be just $20

No doubt those who think that shill bidding is still eBay’s biggest ever problem won’t like this. We’ve rehearsed those arguments often enough round here: those of us on the other side think that stopping people paying out money to receive absolutely nothing at all should be a higher priorty. The twain shall ne’er meet. But what’s really bugging me about today’s announcement is this sentence:

Feedback pages will show the same information as now – buyers and seller IDs, with comments visible to all.

Comments – and item numbers. If I want to see what you’ve bought on eBay, I can.

I seem to be saying this a lot recently, but eBay is the only ecommerce site where this happens. It’s the only ecommerce site with a “search by bidder” list – which also shows Buy It Now purchases, and means that I can go stalk you, check out what you’ve bought me for Christmas and how much you paid for it. It means that my mother can see the risque underwear I bought, my Labour-supporting friends can see I got Margaret Thatcher’s autobiography, my nephews can see what they’re getting for their birthdays, my partner can see that my shoe and camera lens collections have been augmented *again*… a whole bunch of people can see a whole bunch of stuff that is frankly none of their business.

There are ways to make all this more difficult: sellers can make their listings private, which means that buyer IDs don’t show up on individual listings. Buyers can make their feedback private: though if you search by bidder, though, you can still see what they’ve bought. And of course, you can always get a buying ID, or a series of secret buying IDs, so that the right things stay private from the right people.

The problem with private listings is that they’re forever tainted with the thought that “something dodgy” is going on. They’re not the norm on eBay, and even when they’re for a buy it now so shill bidding can’t be happening, there’s still that hint in some people’s minds. And really, why should I have to have a series of different IDs, with all the verification hassle that now is? I just want to shop, and I don’t want anyone else – not my sellers, not my family – to be able to nosey at that.

It’s time to dump the ability to track buyers across eBay once and for all. Shopping should not be public domain information. Get rid of search by bidder. Get rid of buyer visibility on BIN items. Get rid of any item number or other transaction record in buyers’ feedback. Make – I’ll say it again – shopping on eBay like shopping on every other ecommerce site out there.

There are a few restrictions, sellers must have DSRs of 4.5 and above (or be new sellers yet to gain DSR ratings) and some categories (including Media, Motors, Real Estate and Business and Industrial categories) are excluded.

There have been many incentives to list long duration fixed price multiple quantity listings on eBay recently, so it’s interesting to see a promotion aimed at the exact opposite behaviour.

This promotion is likely to fill the site with items ending soonest (which will climb to the top of search results), doubtless many of which will be listed at prices close to the desired final sale price.

Auctions are a selling tactic well worth pursuing, if you sell on eBay.com and routinely list fixed price items only I’d recommend trying some auctions.

Some experimentation over the last week has revealed some great strategies to ensure your listing is at, or near, the top of search results. Best of all many of the tactics won’t cost you a penny to implement.

Recent sales are the surest way to gain exposure for your listing. The big question is how do you kick start sales to get to the top, especially if other seller’s listings have had sales already? Here are my 7 top tips to gain Recent Sales including two ways auctions can be used to boost a BIN listing’s visibility in search results:

1) Featured First

Featured First is the only sure fire way to the top of search results but it’s going to cost you (£44.95 for up to ten days, £134.95 for up to 30 days). Featured First is a great way to buy exposure but, as it’s success starts to be seen, more and more sellers are starting to use the listing enhancement.

If you’re one of just two sellers to use Featured First in a category then you’ll always be at the top, but as more sellers start to use the feature you listing will appear in a rotation and the exposure starts to fall.

This is a feature that should only ever be used once on a listing with good run rate, and then recent sales should be keeping you at the top of search. However, for slower sell through rate, high value items, Featured First is definitely worth considering on an ongoing basis.

2) Auctions to drive sales

Yes auctions are old hat, as a seller you probably prefer to know you’ll get the price you want and many buyers want to buy instantly rather than bid. Well that might be the case but auctions are still sorted using Ending Soonest and are still a great route to getting your listings to the top of search results.

Auctions at an attractive start prices will get buyers looking, strong links from auctions are a great way to kick start some sales on your main BIN listings. Look at the auction as a loss leader to gain attention and drive traffic from the auction to your BIN. Also consider trying an auction with a BIN price for an instant sale because….

3) Auction to Recent Sales Advantaged BIN

… It’s possible to gain a Recent Sales advantage in Best Match from an auction and this is the main reason sellers should be experimenting with the listing format. If your auction sells at a final value price that you’d be willing to sell at (or below), relist it but convert it to a BIN.

In testing it appears that Recent Sales advantage is transferred from a sold auction to a new BIN listing and can propel the BIN towards the top of Best Match at best, and above an identical BIN listing with no sales at worst. Auctions can be used to actively gain a head start for a multi-quantity BIN.

4) Best Offer

On your first listing of a new product always add Best Offer. It only takes a few sales to make a huge difference in search results standings. Some experimentation with this tactic has thrown up some interesting trends, the most significant of which is that early sales will tend to be Best Offers, but once an item reaches the top of search results buyers start to buy at the full price rather than making further Best Offers.

It’s well worth accepting the first one or two offers at less than you’d normally consider, in order to boost your listing in search results. Offers are worth accepting even if you make a slight loss on a couple of sales – it’s still probably still cheaper than paying for Featured First, to get to the top of the page.

5) Email Marketing

Get smart about your email marketing, use it to drive traffic to the listings you want to sell. Use emails to highlight new listings that you need to gain Recent Sales to increase Best Match placement.

Combine email marketing with your other initiatives such as Best Offers. Tactics such as “We’ll accept best offers of just £x.xx from email subscribers” for a particular item work really well – giving an exclusive deal (even if it’s not) is a great way to get some quick sales and boost your search standing.

6) MarkDown Manager

Have a sale! What better way to boost your search rank than to give a discount. However this is getting harder to implement in the UK as only GTC BINs will ever qualify. If you’re almost anywhere bar the UK you’ll find it much easier to hold a MarkDown Manager sale (listings in the UK have to be 28 days or older before they can be included in a MarkDown sale).

This is a tactic that can also be used on older listings which have fallen from the top of Best Match as a way to regain recent sales.

7) Listing Enhancements

So you’re seeing some success but you can’t get right to the top of search results. All is not lost as, once you’ve got to the first page, you can add some enhancements to make your listing stand out.

Featured Plus will get you to the top of the page (£14.95 for up to 10 days, £44.95 for up to 30 days), but there are other low cost enhancements such as Bold, Highlight and Subtitle which are also good value. They might not get you to the top of the page but they’ll catch the eye of any buyer who scrolls down looking for a good deal.

It should be remembered that Recent Sales is just a part of Best Match. You should also be using best listing practices including optimising your listing titles, using item specifics, listing in appropriate categories and consider pricing strategies for both the item and postage costs.

If you’ve found some other ways to get to or near the top of Best Match with Recent Sales, tell us in comments below.

The big question is how will it affect your listings and in particular for the categories you trade in which selling format is most effective?

I’ve done a few searches of my favorite categories for buying and selling and the blend of auctions to BINs varies greatly. In Pottery Vases every fifth item is a fixed price listing, out of a page of 50 listings just 10 are fixed price. Switching to a search for AA Battery it’s a 50/50 mix of auctions and BIN but search for a Dell PA-6 laptop power supply this drops to just 13 BINs out of 50 listings on the page.

With the sort order now being Best Match and recent sales coming into play, auctions may be a great way to gain exposure especially if few of your competitors are using the listing format.

How are your categories affected? Do they have more fixed price listings or greater exposure of auctions? How will this affect your listing strategy for the future?

For BINs, Best Match is now the default search sorting. Auctions will continue to be sorted by ending soonest by default, with sellers with a DSR of 4.3 or lower “disadvantaged” in search. eBay are coy about exactly what criteria are taken into account with BM and what importance is given to each. The exact algorithm will vary according to category: for one example, many collectables categories are concerned with one-offs, so popularity (i.e. number of items already sold) is not going to be a meaningful criterion. BM criteria are also likely to be fine-tuned over time, so don’t assume that what works for you this week will necessarily work next week.

However, we do know that at the moment, popularity is more important than price, because “a higher-priced popular item will rank better than a lower-priced unpopular one”. Additionally “importance will be placed on good DSRs, recent sales (in categories where multi quantity listing is prevalent), good value and relevant item titles.” As eBay have said that “total cost” is not a factor in BM, it’s not quite clear what “good value” might mean: item price, or distance from category average price, are two possibilities that spring to mind, but these are just my guesses. The matching of keywords between search query and item title is taken into account with Best Match, so well-written titles remain as crucial as ever.

Sellers who list single items can relist a sold listing within seven days in order to benefit from the recent sales rating and so improve their BM ranking. They will need to actually “relist” the same listing to achieve this; “sell similar” will reset their recent sales rating.

We also have a list of what BM does not take into account:

• seller status (private or business)
• seller’s total sold items
• postage costs being specified
• returns policy being specified
• feedback percentage
• item specifics
• total cost
• item description

However, both item specifics and item description are important in ensuring your item is actually picked up by search in the first place, so don’t skimp on either.

eBay UK will not be hiding duplicated items from the same seller, a process known as “deduping” on eBay.com. Now that popularity boosts search ranking, eBay believe that there will be fewer duplicated single item listings, and more multiple items listed together; deduping is therefore unnecessary.

My concern in all this, as ever, is what it’s doing to the buyers. Consider this explanation of how auction and BIN results will finally be sorted together:

Auction and BIN items will be sorted according to two different sets of criteria (time ending soonest and DSR scores for auction, and a mix of trust, value and popularity for BIN). Once the items for each format are sorted, the two separate lists are blended together based on buyer behaviour and can vary for category and query.

Buyers have spent the last decade and more learning to buy at the last minute on eBay: it’s such ingrained behaviour that they do it on BINs even though it makes no sense. And now, at the busiest, spendiest time of the year, we’re asking them to abandon those habits and deal with a new sort order that frankly looks just random. eBay talk a lot about the buyer experience, but when they pile these changes onto them, one after another, tweaking site functionality on a weekly basis, I wonder if they’re thinking of them at all.