The future of eBay commerce

My take on what's coming after 20 years navigating eBay.

The lag between goods-in and live

Every operation has a gap between stock arriving and stock earning. Yours got wider, and the listing form is why.

One blank title, one blank page, every time

The keyword research you are never going to do by hand is the cheapest conversion work on the platform.

You already typed this product once

Your catalogue exists in structured form somewhere. Retyping it into eBay is the most expensive habit in the business.

The category decides which fields you are asked for

Category looks like a filing decision. It is actually three commercial decisions wearing one dropdown, and getting it wrong is invisible until a buyer filters you out.

From spreadsheet to hundreds of live listings

Listing capacity is not an admin problem. It is a commercial one, and it decides which deals you are able to say yes to.

Better photos, without a photo studio

A photo problem is usually filed as a presentation issue. It is also a returns issue, and returns got more expensive.

Keeping stale inventory moving, on a schedule

Refreshing stale inventory is a job every seller knows they should do. Almost none do it consistently, and the reason is arithmetic, not neglect.

Not every stale listing should just go back up as-is

Automatic and unattended is right for some stale inventory. For the rest, the listing does not need repeating — it needs a decision.

You list Wednesday, they shop Sunday

The newest, most visible moment in a listing's life usually happens while nobody is shopping. Nobody planned it that way. Nobody tested the alternative either.

Finding the specifics your catalogue is missing

A buyer filtering by size, brand or compatibility does not see your listing ranked lower for a blank field. They do not see it at all.

eBay checks your top ten categories. What about the rest?

eBay's own Listing Quality Report is a genuinely good tool. It is also only ever looking at ten of your categories.

Change one thing, update every listing that needs it

A change that only reaches the listings you remember to update was never really one change to begin with.

Change it once, not 1,600 times

A policy that lives in every listing separately is not really one policy. It is however many copies of it you remembered to keep in sync.

Your unsold stock is getting older

Relisting fixes a listing that has gone quiet. It does not check whether the price was ever right to begin with.

Where does your template actually live

A template you cannot reach once the tool holding it disappears was never really under your control to begin with.

A store banner that looks like your brand, not eBay’s default

For sellers with a store: eBay hands every one of them the same banner layout. Nothing about that layout says whose store it actually is.

Whose products are on your product page

Every listing carries a related-items strip. It is worth checking whose products are actually sitting in it.

The code hiding your listings probably isn’t yours

eBay's active-content ban is nine years old. It is still finding things nobody currently using the account ever actually put there.

Car part buyers search by vehicle, not part number

A part number printed on the box is not what most buyers actually type into eBay's search bar.

The ‘item not received’ case that wasn’t actually late

Most 'item not received' cases are not really about a late parcel. They are about a record that did not keep up with what already happened.

One subscription covers up to five eBay accounts

Most tools price by account. Running more than one store usually means paying more than once for the same subscription.

The sale you lost never shows up in your reports

A missed buyer message does not get logged as a missed message. It just quietly becomes a sale that never happened.

Running several eBay accounts from one screen

Five accounts, run well, should not mean five separate versions of the same working day.

What happens when a seller wants to leave eBay

eBay is a genuinely good channel to sell on. It is a considerably worse idea as the only one.