When it comes to auctions you are allowed to have as many auctions for the same product as you like. Supposedly, according to eBay only one of those auctions will actually rank in search, however you are allowed to put up as many as you like and buyers browsing your Store or your listings will be able to see all of them. Some buyers may choose to bid on an open listing as opposed to a listing which already has bids so there's no harm in putting up duplicate auction listings, and it actually can help you sell more.
However when it comes to Buy It Now listings you are only allowed one listing per product. The reasoning behind this I'm guessing, is so eBay doesn't become flooded with the same buyers products and it gives buyers a chance to see items from a variety of sellers without the searches becomming flooded with one sellers listings.
I see this policy violated regularly by small-time and big-time eBay sellers alike. Majority of the time it's not strictly enforced as I have reported listings and even gone as far as to call eBay on the phone and report these but rarely if ever is anything done. That said if they do catch you and issue a violation it will tank your eBay business and I speak from personal experience.
About a year back I received an eBay duplicate listing violation. It wasn't intentional, however when you have hundreds of items listed and many items on auto-relist, it's easy to accidentally wind up with a duplicate listing. Now since then eBay has improved their system and typically you will get a warning if not get outright stopped trying to put up a duplicate listing, however at the time eBay did not seem to function this way.
As soon as I was notified I immediately pulled down the duplicate lisitng but it was too late, I'd already been issued a violation. Shortly after this my eBay items would not rank in searches, no matter what I did. I went from doing 50+ sales a day to nothing at all. My items were buried on page 27 of searches if not even hundreds of pages deep. Repeated calls and emails to eBay didn't help, I was told there was some period of time that must pass before the violation would no longer affect my account. It was probably about three months of not ranking in search and as I mentioned, in that time I went from selling 50+ items a day to maybe selling 4-6 items over a 3 month period.
Now fortunately for me I have an e-commerce store outside of eBay like any wise e-commerce seller should have, however eBay definately pads my regular sales a bit and it's also a way to drive eBayers off ebay to my own shop where I don't have to pay eBay fees. None the less it definately hurt my business which is why I'm warning you guys.
Don't try to cheat eBay, their algorithyms and such are smarter than 99.9% of you out there. Yeah you may pickup a few sales by cheating the system but the risk is not worth that small reward as your eBay business will be tanked for months and even after that it's a slow crawl back to the top of searches. Play by the rules and rank by putting together quality listings with great pictures and descriptions as well as by filling in as many eBay specifics as possible. You also want to offer returns and free shipping to give yourself an added boost in eBay search.
For more information please watch the accompanying Youtube video below...
Thanks for taking a minute to read this post and if you found it helpful please share with your friends and family who sell on eBay as well.
Lastly, for those of you who don't know me I'm an eBay Power Seller and Top Rated Seller who sold over 1.5 Million on eBay last year. If you're looking for coaching or consulting on getting started on eBay or improving your eBay store feel free to contact me!!!
@RulesForRebels
RulesForRebels@Gmail.Com
No comments:
Post a Comment