How to Increase Selling Limits on eBay and Scale Your eCommerce Business Today!

As most of you already know, eBay enforces seller limits. From a seller’s perspective this is a big nuisance but from eBay’s point of view this is completely understandable. Just as with any new relationship it takes time and patience to build up trust. Trust is one of the biggest commodities in the digital age, especially when it comes to eCommerce. The buyer does not personally know the seller and the marketplace (in this case eBay) does not have enough previous interactions with the seller in order to determine trustworthiness. When trust is built slowly and over time, everyone benefits, even those of us with limited levels of patience. 

What Are the Current Selling Limits eBay Has in Place?

The limits eBay sets on new sellers vary and change constantly but a good benchmark to consider is that a new seller is typically limited to listing 10 items and $500 worth of merchandise. This is how eBay caps its risk factor for new sellers. Additionally, there are many bulk listing tools which many high volume sellers use. One such tool is called CrazyLister (please note that I am not provided any monetary incentive to mention them here). 

A big part of being able to meaningfully scale your eBay business is being able to automate or at the very least simplify bulk editing and listing. eBay puts a two-fold restriction on new sellers being able to use bulk editors:

• You need to be an active eBay seller for a minimum of 90 days. 
• You need to have received a minimum of ten positive feedbacks. 

Also, it is important for you to understand that there are three types of eBay seller limits which are not dependent on the type of store subscription you currently have, in fact the type of store subscription you have does not affect your eBay seller limits in any way. The three kinds of seller limits which currently exist include:

• Selling allowances which are account based.
• Listing allowance which are category based.  
• Listing allowances which are item based. 

In the coming sections I will go into detail about these three seller limits as well as what can be done in order to increase these seller limits so that you can scale your eCommerce business with as little friction as possible on the eBay side of things. 

eBay Selling Allowances Which are Account Based

First off, it is important to note that these limits vary based on different sellar criteria so it is a very individual allowance. It is also important to know that they do not apply when it comes to the following categories:

• Property
• Business, Office & Industrial
• Cars, Motorcycles & Vehicles (not including Parts & Accessories)

Identifying your selling limit: If you login to ‘my eBay’ and search under ‘selling’, you will be able to see your selling allowances/limits – a red alert will indicate when you have reached your monthly cap at which point sales will be halted for that given month. Also keep in mind that ‘Good Til Cancelled’ listings are included in this limitation and will not automatically renew if you have already reached your monthly limit. 

How to potentially raise your account based selling allowance ? 

There are a few ways you can go about trying to increase your selling allowances in this scenario:

1. Sellers receive an email from eBay towards the end of the month alerting them that they are soon approaching their selling limit. At this point, you can take the opportunity to respond to this email and flat out ask for an increase in your selling allowance. 
2. Sellers who have more than one seller account may want to consider linking the one with more mileage to the rookie account. Creating this sort of link can greatly benefit the latter’s selling allowances. In order to do this head to ‘my eBay’ > ‘All Selling’> ‘monthly selling limits’> ‘request higher selling limits’.
3. Another great way to lift these allowance is to increase your performance as a seller. The more responsive you are to buyers, the quicker and more efficiently you get items shipped out and the more positive feedback you generate, the greater the chances are that eBay will increase your selling allowances. 
4. Another great way for eBay to ‘trust’ you more as a seller is to increase how relevant your listings are to search queries by adding all relevant item specifics. Just like with Google, eBay uses its own search algorithm called Cassini. This algorithm ‘rewards’ relevant listings in terms of rankings and ‘punishes’ irrelevant listings. 

eBay Listing Allowance Which are Category Based

The logic behind category-based allowances is that a seller who is new to a category doesn’t know the ins and outs of said category. You may be a seasoned seller but when entering a new arena there are new things to learn. Say you usually sell home & garden products and suddenly decide you want to sell clothing. There is a world of difference between the two – from sizes to fabric preferences. 

Warning: Do not try and list products in categories in which they do not belong. This explicitly violates eBay’s policy called ‘search manipulation policy’. Additionally, this will only harm you as chances are you will not be able to reach your target audience when your items are classified in the wrong category. 

How to potentially raise your category based selling allowance ? 

Unfortunately there are no ‘shortcuts’ when it comes to category-based limitations. As with account-based limitations, you need to build up a rapport with customers. The more items you sell, the better service you provide, the better reviews you will get. Consider adding a small free product related ‘surprise’ with your product. For example, if someone buys glasses, consider sending them a free glasses case with their shipment. Another thing you can invest in is overnighting certain items to random customers. When entering a new category you need to wow customers – consider trying one of these out in order to get rave reviews and increase your category-based limitations quickly.     

eBay Listing Allowances Which are Item Based

Many times sellers try and push products which have been illegally copied and infringe on another brand or company’s copyrights. eBay’s answer to this issue is called VERO:

Any seller who sells designer goods may be subject to item-based restrictions as a means of protecting the intellectual property and copyrights of the legal owner of said designs and goods. 

The only way around this is having an official retail licence from the brand whose merchandise you are selling which is hard to come by.

How to potentially raise your Item based selling allowance ? 

Here are a few other tips of things to avoid doing. By steering clear of the following you can actually avoid VERO violations and increase item-based restrictions:

• Don’t sell counterfeit items or replicas. Not only will you have your item based allowances limited but you will most likely be suspended from eBay.
• Do not use photos or text which are protected by a copyright. Very often sellers copy and paste item descriptions from websites as well as illegally using stock images. By avoiding both you can decrease the number of listings which will be ‘blocked’ or taken down by eBay.
• Do not use any brand’s logo. Even if you are selling an Apple iPhone, that does not mean you have their permission to use their logo. People can fully understand that this is an Apple iPhone without illegally using their logo.
• Never lie about being an authorized reseller. Sell as many Adidas products as you want just don’t lie about being authorized!
• Avoid making false claims about an item which is explicitly attributed to a specific brand. For example don’t claim that a Lacoste jacket is waterproof when in fact it is not.

As you may have noticed, lifting item-based restrictions are more about what not to do then what to actively do. 

Summing it up 

When it comes to increasing allowances be sure to be focused on:

• Receiving positive feedback. 
• Be sure to resolve all buyer issues and to never leave anything open-ended.
• Be sure to maintain regular activity on eBay and start selling even in small quantities if you know you have future plans to expand into a specific category.
• Provide excellent customer service.
• Maintain strong sales metrics and selling performance.

And don’t forget, eBay allows you to reapply for increased allowance limitations every 30 days so when at first you fail, try, try again!