Ebay give 40 free listings a month to keep sellers listing so they can keep on ripping sellers off. Anyway, if the 40 listings weren't free many sellers could not afford to keep going.

Exactly my point. If they were trying to get rid of sellers, especially smaller volume ones they wouldn't give 40 free listings a month.

I much prefer the 40 free listings to paying a listing fee as was the norm 10 or so years ago. I would not list 40 things at once at $1.50 each for listing fee.

eBay didn't have much, if any, competition 10 years ago from other online retailers it has a huge amount now in Aust and overseas.