Is There A Way to Download Drafts to a File?

[greatpricesyep]

It is very convenient to click on someone else's listings and create your own listing draft, but of course drafts are limited (which is dumb but that's another story).  So I have Sparklister.  I'd like to download drafts and store them there, but don't know of a way to do that.  You seem to only be able to download active listings.

[Anonymous]

Hi @greatpricesyep,

Thanks for posting.

We don't have any eBay tools that are able to download drafts, nor have I heard of a third party tool that has this capability.

With other sellers I've worked with, a solid work-around for most tools would be to complete the drafts and schedule them for a later date, download the scheduled listings into your tool, then cancel the listings. This, of course, depends heavily on how complete your drafts are, and how much would need to be done to get them fit enough to be listed; So, that may or may not be viable for your drafts, but it is an option that I've seen work in the past.

[greatpricesyep]

How to you schedule a listing?  I've never done that.

[Anonymous]

Hi @greatpricesyep,

Thanks for replying.

The option to schedule a listing a listing is in the Selling Details > Duration section if you're using the business tool, or in the Pricing section of the Quick Listing Tool or eBay App. All you have to do is toggle the option, then set a time/date that you want the listing to go live. You can schedule listings up to 3 weeks out.

I've attached screenshots of where this shows in our tools, for your convenience.

[jpwest13]

I love this workaround. But since there's a $.10 fee for a scheduled listing, am I stuck paying that just for scheduling the listings? Or is it not charged until the scheduled listing actually goes live?

[shipscript]

@jpwest13 

Scheduling is not charged until the listing goes live. So if you cancel the listing, or simply change from scheduled to post now, the fee is not charged.

[jpwest13]

Thanks for confirming. Here's the wrinkle: I changed all of my drafts to scheduled, then realized that I still couldn't export them. They have to be either Active listings or Ended listings. Can't export Drafts or Scheduled.

So I thought I'd end them and export from there. Nope, can't end a scheduled listing. 

Then I thought I'd change them to Start Immediately. I could do that one at a time, but not in bulk (in bulk, all you can do is Reschedule, which would mean I'd still get charged for scheduling a listing).

So my only options are: change them manually to start immediately, then end them all. Or delete them all and start over.

Shouldn't be this hard, right?

[shipscript]

@jpwest13 

You can delete your scheduled listings in bulk in Seller Hub.

It's called "Delete" because they are not started, so can't be ended.

Thus, you can kill the experiment, and not be charged, but you would lose the work that went into creating the drafts.

You can reschedule in bulk, but can not choose to go live in bulk. I'll do some testing to see if there is a way to remove the schedule in bulk and go live using a spreadsheet.  You would have to turn on the item number on the scheduled listings screen so that you can capture the item numbers for a spreadsheet. But then I have a feeling there would be more work involved in capturing the item numbers. I'll be back after testing.

[shipscript]

@jpwest13 

I just did some spreadsheet testing and there is no value to undo the ScheduleTime, and the DeleteFields command will not delete ScheduleTime. So we are out of luck with a spreadsheet removal of scheduling.