Seasonal listings needlessly difficult - no templates, no access to drafts / auctions from a year ag

[ketr]

At one point I had a punch of my recurring sales saved as templates. I sell poultry hatching eggs, which is a strictly seasonal business — spring and summer only. Now I find that all my photos and painstakingly written descriptions from last year are gone. Even Craigslist lets people save drafts!! What is eBay thinking? Why not let people have access to selected past listings if they want it?

I went to relist, and could not see any of my templates on offer. When I searched for a way to save my new listing as a template, there was none. I tried the business listing form,  nothing there either. It seems drafts are deleted after 30 days, so that's no help at all. None of my listings from last summer are visible in my sold items and there's no option to go back further than 90 fays. I find this very frustrating.

I've been selling on eBay since the late 1990s, off and on, and I know I'm not asking for a lot... as fun as it would be to see that listing for that thing I bought in 2001, surely eBay could manage to keep the previous calendar year's listings around, for sellers to see their own listings. One previous calendar year. That's not asking a lot. Or, please, PLEASE bring back templates.

[luckythewinner]

---

@ketr wrote:

 Now I find that all my photos and painstakingly written descriptions from last year are gone.

---

I would never rely on eBay to preserve my photos and descriptions. I always store them outside eBay. 

[d-k_treasures]

I used Wonderlister here, and for 5 bucks a month, you can't beat it. It's pretty close to how TurboLister was, and you work offline, store everything offline, and keep it all for years. The basic is 2 users - I believe Lucky said they use 6-bit, but they have more selling ID's(I only had 1).

[cstpos · Accepted solution]

@ketr  You can try:

https://bulksell.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ListingTemplate&mode=Create&returnUrl=https://bulksell.eb... 

On my Seller hub page, I clicked Listings, Create a listing, then it showed Create a Template or Manage Templates.

You could look for your old listings that you are trying to find by searching for sold listings (Top right page - Advanced - exact title - scroll down and click Sold - then search. Or look at your feedback, seller history, payments then All Transactions... I'm not sure how long ebay keeps that info. I have found some of my sold listings, clicked on the link, then copied and pasted the description and photos onto a Word document. Then click Create similar and paste the description. You could save the photos and upload them,

Make sure all the details and item specifics are accurate. You can't assume that ebay has not made some weird changes to details, shipping preferences, etc.

Best of Luck!

[cstpos]

@ketrYou can set your account preferences to allow you to make the Quantity Available on an item 0 "zero" and it remains on your active listings page. I'm not sure if it matters if you have a store subscription or not.

[onefootflipper]

I keep my seasonal listings up all year, I just raise the prices to the point they won't sell during the off-season. If someone is willing to pay triple then I have no problem fetching their item out of storage.

[ketr]

Thank you!  Starting at bulksell.ebay.com seems to be the key to seeing a template option. This was so helpful!  I wonder if there is a time limit for templates,I was sure that I already had several templates but I am only seeing the new template I created to test the feature just now.

Thanks again. If templates stay around, this will be just what I need!

[luckythewinner]

---

@d-k_treasures wrote:

I used Wonderlister here, and for 5 bucks a month, you can't beat it. It's pretty close to how TurboLister was, and you work offline, store everything offline, and keep it all for years. The basic is 2 users - I believe Lucky said they use 6-bit, but they have more selling ID's(I only had 1).

---

I do not use any third-party listing tools.

I foolishly believed eBay when they claimed they would add functionality equivalent to Turbo Lister to the seller hub. 

[jda05121]

I certainly don't remember them saying it that way.