UID for Auctions with Links to Other Stores

[clarry100]

We already operate two eBay stores. Just trying to think of ways to optimise sales.

We rarely list anything as auction because of the $1.50 insertion fees. We do use the ebay free listings when they come along from time to time.

The fail to sell or non-payment rate is too high for us to be able to recover the insertion fees from the ones that do sell.

Since our items average around the $10 each mark the listing fee averages about 15% of the item sale price. 

We are thinking of opening a 3rd UID as a non-store ID just to take advantage of the 40 FREE auctions each month.

Do others do something like this?

Another thought....

In the decsription field you can embed HTML clickable links. Of course I understand these cannot lead to off-ebay web sites.

But... if these clickable links were to our two other ebay stores so that ppl can jump to one or other of our stores from the FREE auction listing would this be considered a violation of policy?

I would have thought not since the links are not off-ebay???

They would still register a legitimate ebay sale if a buyer followed one of the links and bought a BIN item from one of our stores.

[clarry100]

Just doing a bit more reading on this...

Links Policy

Allowed

Links to other eBay pages 

It looks like from this that we would be OK to do what I am asking above.

[chameleon54]

I have two stores like you and use a seperate third ID for the 40 free auctions. I mainly use this to sell private items or surplus store stock which I regard as having no commercial value. Works very well when you get 100-200 free listings now and then. I try to use all the freebies and get a few nice suprises sometimes. It does make packing days rather busy if you sell a large number of cheap items at auction on top of normal store BINs. I also run a few $1.50 auctions through the stores when things are a bit slow. ( I auction better, rarer "window dressing" items with reasonable start price through the stores )  I find this tends to generate traffic and boosts store sales all round. I delibrately keep my stores completely seperate on ebay, without any links as an online security measure. If someone wants to play games with your store, or ebay put restrictions on the account for one of thier non-sensical decisions, its best if the accounts are seperate. ( I have experienced both problems ) Very cheap online insurance and it does give peace of mind. I still think auctions have a place and are another handy tool in the tool box.

[clarry100]

Thanks for the input Chameleon.

Yeah we don't link the stores together normally either. To the point where if the same buyer buys from both our stores we will mail them out in two separate packages on the same day. I'm sure they would guess as when they get them the envelopes and labels will be identical. We use large letter mostly for our stuff as its small, squishy and relatively cheap to replace if an order does not arrive.

We have had cases too where a non-payer pays on one store but not on the other and ends up in a UIC being rasied. So we can clearly see in such cases the non-payment is quite calculated and deliberate. Still we have our strike blocks in place.

We just wondered if there would be any negatives (ebay policy or otherwise) about putting links into both stores from the auction listings on the 3rd UID. The thought is to drive a few more sales into the BIN stores from the auctions which do bubble to the top of the search as they near the end.

One down side is that people rarely read the descriptions and therfore won't see the links. We can tell that from the questions we get that are clearly answered in the descriptions if they bothered to read them.

[jensmanchester-australia]

A long time ago you used to be able to crosslink your stores but it is now against ebay policy.

[clarry100]

Hi Jensmanchester,

I wonder if you might post the policy link here please.

I have been unable to find anything that says that.

All I could find about Links Policy I posted above.

[jensmanchester-australia]

Clarry - I think it comes under this part of the policy.

In general, when listing items on eBay, you can include links that are solely intended to provide additional details about the items. That means links should only be used when that information can't be included in the listing itself.

I think you can put a link to another ebay store in your store home page but not on a listing page.

Several years ago I wanted to do the same thing and when I spoke to my Account Manager they said it was not allowed in the listing.