In other words, eBay is encouraging eBay sellers to do their own advertising on other social media sites, rather than EBay buying advertising space.
More important, and overlooked by most sellers is that eBay is finally paying dividends.
EBay has always been profitable but the stockholders could only make money when they bought it low and sold it high. So management played with statistics (and with sellers) by encouraging high listing numbers just before the Quarterly Reports every three months. They do this with Free Listing promotions, whether the sellers had better sales or not.
Now the stockholders will buy and hold, but will demand those profits be handed over as dividends.
Look for fewer Free Listing Promotions and a cut back in the number of Free Listings for non-Store sellers.
The first sign was the mini-Store that gives 100 listings for $7.95-- eight cents each rather than 35 cents.
The second was the move to GTC/Fixed Price listings, which give a stable number of monthly listings and which encourage sellers to subscribe to Stores of various levels. And of course, if you are not listing, you are not selling.
After Christmas, I would not be surprised to see the Fifty Free cut back to 25 -- and remember most newbies cannot list more than ten items monthly (and also have restrictions on the value of their listings).
Basically the end of freeloading for sellers who don't want to pay a listing fee.
