If you had a decent amount of single items that you could list, it wouldn't be too bad (saving up to $200), you'd just have to make sure every new listing in your chosen category was for 30 days, then relist everything that hadn't sold as GTC. Not much good for multi-quantity listings, though.

Funny thing is, eBay don't seem to have any trouble recognising when a GTC listing ticks over and charging that 20c every 30 days, so not sure why it'd be so hard to waive it for the first 30... ?:|