As of today, May 1st, eBay Stores owners can save money by changing to the new everyday rate plans. Get from up to 150 to 2,500 FREE listings* per month - no insertion fees, auction-style or fixed price with your eBay Stores subscription. Not certain which plan is best for you? Check out the Fee Illustrator to help you decide which plan you want. Read the announcement on eBay.
Personalized eBay
In the Fall eBay announced they were enhancing the site. One of those enhancements is a personalized eBay Homepage. You can set yours up now. By adding interests you will generate a constantly updating personalized homepage.
Check it out now to -
- create a feed of the things you love on your homepage.
- add your favorite interests, brands and trends.
- get inspired by fresh, new additions to your collection of items.
- see new discoveries each time you visit.
- edit and update your feed any time to reflect you.
A New eBay
eBay is launching some changes to their site. In an article released by eBay, entitled Welcome to the New eBay, the company talks about why they are coming out with some new features and enhancements. eBay wants to put forth a cleaner and more contemporary feel to the site, and provide a more convenient and intuitive browsing and buying experience. To go along with these changes eBay is also introducing a newly redesigned logo.
Here are some stats about eBay, from the article. You can read the full article here.
- 1,000,000,000 customers signed up for new eBay mobile accounts during the 1st half of 2012.
- There are 25,000,000,000 sellers world-wide.
- Over 100,000,000,000 people have downloaded the eBay mobile app.
- There are 105,000,000,000 active eBay users from 190 different countries.
- As of October 2012 there are 350,000,000,000 listings on eBay.
- 20% of eBay purchases are made from buyers outside their own country.
Important Update – USPS Ban
Starting on Wednesday, May 16 2012, U.S. sellers will no longer be allowed to ship lithium batteries, or any items that contain the batteries, with the U.S. Postal Service to other locations outside the U.S. You can still mail lithium batteries and products that contain them outside the U.S. via FedEx, UPS, DHL and other mailing services.
Read an article about how this can affect you as an eBay seller here:
USPS Bans Lithium Shipments Outside US
Fire, explosion hazard sparked the unexpected policy change.
Pictures on eBay Listings Will Soon Be Free
One of the best ways to get buyers to pick your listing over the rest, is by including lots of great pictures of your item. By providing lots of quality pictures you are reinforcing to buyers that eBay is a great place to shop. To help you provide those pictures, starting July 2, pictures will be FREE for all sellers on eBay. eBay is doing this to help you sell and to encourage you to provide more pictures with your listings. The best part is that more pictures means that you will get more sales, and save money doing so. Think about it this way, if you’re paying for pictures now, this change can mean significant savings. For example, on Auction-style listings with 8 pictures, free pictures can mean a savings of 16% on an item that sells for $60.
So start getting ready to upload more pictures to showcase your item and show it from all angles. Buyers make faster purchase decisions when listings have more photos. Later this year, all eBay listings will be required to have at least one picture. Just remember the more quality pictures of an item the better chance it has to sell well.
eBay Category and Other Seller Updates
- Standard Auction-style listing have a new maximum fee. Taking effect May 1, the maximum final value fee for Standard Auction-style listings will be $250. Note – this will only impact transactions of more than $1,111 for sellers who don’t have an eBay Stores subscription.
- Electronics & Technology: This update is to help make sure your listings get found by interested buyers, by listing with the eBay catalog. This will be required in more of the consumer electronics categories including DVD & Blu-ray Players, Home Theater Systems, Home Theater Receivers, Home Theater Projectors, and Home Speakers & Subwoofers.
- Parts & Accessories: Some of the listing features will be retired to allow focus on listing relevance

- Motors Vehicles: You can now list vehicles the easy way with Vehicle Identification Numbers (VIN).
- Category and Item Specific updates – consolidated with the rest of the seller updates to save you time and effort:
- Clothing, Shoes & Accessories
- Coins
- Computers & Networking
- Consumer Electronics
- eBay Motors
- Jewelry & Watches
- Home & Garden
- Tickets
- Toys
Check out the links in this post to get more information on eBay’s updates. Keep yourself up to date on eBay’s features and know the best and most effective ways to sell on eBay.






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