There are a few restricted categories such as motors and heavy equipment, but other than that it’s a free for all to see who can get the most concurrent auctions running on eBay. Seriously if you normally sell one off items in a fixed price model it will be well worth having a punt with some auctions and trying a different format for the rest of the month.

If you’re an eBay.com seller and don’t have an eBay store consider opening one on eBay.com – the cost is as little as $15.95 for the month and then your insertion fees for auctions is free.

Full details of the free auction insertion promotion between the 8th and 31st March are available on eBay.

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.