30 day listings – I’m interested to know what others think

[5kazam]

Yesterday I cancelled a few of my auction listings and re-listed them BIN for 30 days, incl. the 3 auto re-lists, thinking this is great, 120 days, yeah!!  I didn’t have any views at all in the next 24 hours.

Then I thought this morning, that as a lot of buyers sort by ‘ending soonest’, my listings are only going to get a foot in the door in the last week of each month.

So I popped in to revise those listings back to 7 days (incl auto re-lists).  Went out for a couple of hours, and when I came back all of those items had views on them.

The way I see it (now) is that no-one is going to scroll through hundreds of pages to finally get to something that is going to end in (say) 26 days.  And unless buyers type in a specific line in the search bar, those listings are not going to show up any time soon.

The 30 day listings may be great for some sellers, depending on what they sell and in which category, but this little black duck won’t be going down that track again.

Interested in others opinions on the 30 day listings.

[5kazam]

So by your theory that's the lights off throttling in play.

[englishrosegardens]

I'm not actually sure I subscribe to the throttling theory.  A seller in the US told me about five years ago that ebay used to do rolling blackouts over there and I believe that to be true because there were two sellers whose new items I looked at religiously every morning, but there were a few items that I didn't see the first time I looked.  But that's a slightly different thing, plus it could be different in the US because their site has a lot more items on it than the AU site.  This may have changed since the default here now shows a lot more overseas items now, usually in categories where there aren't huge numbers of Aussie listings.

I think there's only one certainty when it comes to ebay searches, and that's the uncertainty of it all! 

[davewil1964]

eBay and ex-employees have admitted they throttle. So it not a theory, but a fact

i can get 3 sales to different buyers, in the middle of the day, than nothing until at least the next day. When it might be late evening.

I look at books (by title and author) and there are 2 UK sellers constantly showing. The rest, even though I know there are Australian sellers, is subject to eBay.

[5kazam]

On this one we agree to disagree.  I  totally believe in the lights out/throttling scenario.

And if what I saw this morning is an indication of how eBay does things, that only reinforces it.

[5kazam]

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@englishrosegardens wrote:
I think the order of the listings changes after you've looked at a few pages in best match, so if one item gets seen more it means something else doesn't get seen at all.      

I don't agree with the order of listings changing.....dah, dah.  I still think it's an eBay thing to artificially inflate the number of listings in a category, which in turn makes it harder for sellers in general.

If I had the time I would go through that category with a fine tooth comb, and I guarantee I would be able to prove it.

I have no idea why this is posting as one para.  Hopefully you can see where the quote leaves and reply begins

[mbselections00]

This thread has been playing on my mind for days so am going to add my feeble comments.

After several days of lights out (yes, I definitely believe it happens) I had sales over the weekend - 8 orders posted yesterday - 7 of those to NSW - definitely no coincidence there either IMO.

On my other ID which is about 10 months old, sales have always been slow but consistent and steady until the 30 day 3 relists became available.  I had been using the 3 free relists, which seemed to work fine, but once I read and realised you could have 30 days I revised all my listings.  At the same time, I also changed all my handling times from 1 to 2 days.  I have not had a single sale since !  It's been a month since I revised to 30 days, so it will be interesting to see if when they re-list now things pick up.  Am really experimenting with it, and after this re-list which hopefully will give fresh exposure, I will change back.  Not going to sit out another month for the same dead-end result, but with no sales I'm guessing it will take time to work my way back up

I have changed from 1 to 2 days handling on this account (have never had 3 free relists on this one), and sales have been slower, but I think that's been the case for many sellers of late.  The fact the other account just stopped completely, to me, points to the 30 day re-lists.

Just my thoughts though

[5kazam]

I said I'd come back and report on the 30 day listings.  In the end I only left 2 listings at 30 days.  Both Australian pottery dinner sets.

Both sold on around day 14 (coincidentally within 2 hours of each other).  The buyers actually did a search for 'Australian Pottery Dinner Sets', which is how they found my listings.  (And there went my Anzac weekend packaging 50 pieces of pottery!!!  lol)

BUT, I could have used 7days plus 3 relists and they still would have sold.

Therefore, I'm back to my original thinking of - there is no advantage in using 30 days, UNLESS a seller has a squillion items to list (which would take a long, long time to get up and running on 40 a month), or as newdeals said, don't care whether they sell in a hurry or not.  Also potential buyers would need to do a keyword search to spot those listings.  

So, I did give it a go as I said I would, however, not going to bother with it again.

[davewil1964]

Horses for courses.

I list on another ID for 120 days before they go live in my store so, for me, it provides more exposure than 40 days. And what I sell seems to go either in a few days (4 1/2 hours this morning! From when I listed, including indexing time) or towards the end of the 120.