Got hundreds or even thousands of products on eBay? Some of them might be collecting dust. They haven’t sold in months, or they used to sell well but no longer get the attention they once did.
Going through a large catalog to find these listings can take hours. And simply leaving them untouched won’t help.
The good news? No need to start over. A better description, an updated price, or a well-timed promotion may be all a product needs.
In this guide, we’ll explain how to spot old and stale eBay listings, find out why they’re underperforming, and choose the best way to improve them.
What Are Old or Stale eBay Listings?
Let’s say you listed 10k products on eBay six months ago. Some bring in orders every week. Others sell once in a while. And some haven’t generated a single order in months.
Should you treat all of them as old or underperforming listings? Not really.
Before making changes, it’s important to understand the difference between three types of listings:
- Old listings are products that have stayed active for months or years. Some still sell well. If a listing continues to bring in orders, its age alone isn’t a reason to make changes.
- Slow-selling listings state for products that sell less often because they appeal to a smaller audience. For example, rare collectibles or specialized auto parts may not attract buyers every day. That doesn’t mean they’re underperforming.
- Stale listings are products that haven’t generated sales for a long time. Some may still attract buyers, while others receive little attention.
💡In M2E, the stale status applies to listings with no sales for 90 days or more. Or can check your listings’ performance by picking custom dates.
When should you review a listing? A good guideline is to look at listings that didn’t sell for 60 to 90 days. But remember, this is just a guideline, not an absolute eBay rule.
There’s another detail that can affect how you evaluate listing age.
eBay’s automatic renewal system makes listing age a less useful performance metric. Good ‘Til Canceled listings renew every month and can remain active for years without any changes to their content or pricing.
A better approach is to review sales patterns alongside market trends. This helps you understand which products still attract buyers and which need updates or a different sales strategy.
Before You Work on Stale Listings, Check These Things
You might have tons of listings on eBay, but certain products may not sell for a long time. What causes this problem?
The answer isn’t necessarily straightforward. Some sellers may price their products too high, while others may have hard-to-find listings.
Continue reading for tips on figuring out what’s wrong without checking every product one by one.
1. Can buyers actually purchase your products?
Start with availability. If a product is inactive or out of stock, it can’t generate sales.
Check:
- Listing status: Are your products active on eBay?
- Available stock: Are the quantities correct? Are the items in stock?
- Listing restrictions: Are there any policy issues or account limits affecting your offers?
2. Are buyers finding, clicking, and purchasing?
eBay performance data can show where and how things are failing.
- Are you getting inadequate impressions? Examine your title, category, and specifics of your products. They should match the searches buyers make.
- Are you receiving not enough clicks? Compare your listing with others. Make sure your titles, images, and prices attract attention.
- Are you being viewed but not sold? Make sure buyers have all the information they need before buying. For instance, shipping costs, delivery times, return policies, and product details.
- Have you experienced a drop in your sales? Check whether demand has dropped, competitors offer lower prices, or recent listing changes have affected your sales.
3. Is the problem affecting more than one listing?
If just one item hasn’t sold well, it isn’t cause for alarm; however, if one item’s poor sales pattern is mirrored across all items, we may need to investigate. Possible reasons for low item sales include:
- Low CTR across an entire category may indicate that your images or prices aren’t competitive.
- Many views but few purchases may point to expensive shipping or unclear product information.
- A sudden drop in impressions may be connected to recent changes in product data.
You should group any items with the same or similar issues by performance issues.
4. Is it really a sales problem?
Not every listing needs urgent action.
For example, seasonal items may have a good sales season but only for a few months. Spare parts can have irregular purchases but remain profitable.
To know whether the listing is indeed losing ground:
- Assess the effectiveness of your sales during an extended period to identify some patterns.
- Recognize sporadic declines in the sales process instead of tracking their progress over time.
- Check whether demand for your goods changes by season.
- Compare your offers and prices with competitors’ ones.
Use the analysis to identify which problems to address. Focus on issues that affect more listings, and address root causes rather than making minor changes.
How to Find Old eBay Listings Without Hassle
Let’s start with the basics – there’s no need to check listings one by one to find which have stopped selling. If you have thousands of SKUs, that approach takes too much time and effort.
Start with performance data instead. It helps you narrow down your catalog and find listings with declining sales or no recent orders. You can then focus your review on the products that need it most.
We can distinguish two methods – checking your eBay Seller Hub or a marketplace integration tool (like M2E Multichannel Connect) if you’re using one.
Method 1. Check listing performance in eBay Seller Hub
The eBay Seller Hub lets you analyze listing performance using traffic and sales reports. From this, you can also identify products that are performing differently.
To get started:
- Go to Seller Hub > Performance > Traffic.
- Set the reporting interval you need, for example, 90 days.
- Check the listings’ data to find out the products that have been either unvisited or sold a few times.
- Find specific products by title or item number, or download the Active listings traffic report to review your catalog.
Pay attention to three key metrics:
| Metric | What to check |
| Impressions | How often do your products appear in front of potential buyers? |
| Page views | Are shoppers clicking on your listings? |
| Sales and conversion | Are listing visits turning into orders? |
Look at how your listings performed over time. Are impressions dropping? Your products may be appearing less often in search results. Are page views down? Buyers might be losing interest. And if traffic is stable but sales are falling, something may be stopping shoppers from buying.
These numbers are useful, but there’s more to check. How long has each listing been active? When did it last generate a sale? Finding these answers manually isn’t easy when you’re managing hundreds or thousands of products.
So, here is another option.
Method 2. Find and revive stale eBay listings with M2E Multichannel Connect
Not all old eBay listings face the same issues. Some items used to sell well in the past but now have had no orders for months. Meanwhile, some products have been active for a while without any sales.
M2E Multichannel Connect lets you identify old and stale listings and decide what to do next.
The Stale Items view collects eBay listings with no sales in the past 90 days under one tab. That way, you don’t have to check every product; you can see its age, sales history, and status in one place.
Here is how to use this data to improve your listings:
- Listings that had sales but don’t have new orders: Filter products that had one or more sales, but no orders over the last 90 days. Review prices, descriptions, and item specifics. You can adjust these parameters following M2E policies.
- Old listings that haven’t made any sales: Search for goods listed for at least 90 days with no sold quantity. Try enhancing the pictures, titles, or prices to attract more prospective buyers.
- Listings requiring more active promotion: Utilize the Discount Manager tool from M2E to provide discounts and increase sales.
- Presence of listings that still haven’t improved: Just suspend the listing and re-list 10 items all at once.
M2E also offers automatic synchronization, so you can make changes and make better use of your store.
This will help you evolve your strategy from just identifying stale listings to introducing actions that will facilitate sales.
But what if you have 5,000 old listings on eBay? Don’t fix them all at once. The idea is to work on the products that are more likely to begin selling.
Consider their past performance, customer interest, and seasonal demand. Review your Stale Items every month, so your listings will always be up to date.
💡 Extra feature for M2E Cloud users: Save Stale Items filters, select the listings you want to update, and use policies to manage eBay settings while keeping your store data synchronized.
How to Relist Unsold Items on eBay Automatically
When it comes to relisting items that haven’t sold, you don’t necessarily have to start from scratch. You can modify and enhance your current listings to save time.
Here are some tips to make the process easier.
Tip #1. Update your existing eBay listings
Before you repost the item on eBay, review how well the current listing is doing and whether you can improve it. If the product is one that has had a positive history of sales or has a number of watchers, revamping this listing will allow you to use the same item ID and keep the sales history intact.
The change should come in relation to these five components:
- Title: Update the title to include suitable search phrases, product name, model number, and relevant product information. Use specific titles.
- Category and item specifics: Ensure that the items are in the appropriate categories of the site. Make sure that there are no missing details about the product.
- Photos: Replace any unclear picture with one that shows the important features of the product before the sale.
- Cost: Check other similar products to get an idea of how much you should charge.
- Shipping conditions: Check if the delivery period and shipping costs are correct and acceptable.
💡Extra feature for M2E Cloud users: Change your eBay listings without canceling them.
- Modify the titles, descriptions, and images of your items in the store catalog, or change eBay-related information using the Description Policy.
- Update categories and item specifics by means of the Category Policy.
- Change eBay prices regardless of store prices using the Selling Policy.
- Remove or update the details of shipping and return policies in the Shipping and Return Policies.
This lets you improve your existing eBay listings while keeping your store items consistent with your marketplace listings.
Tip #2. Run promotions to attract buyers
If you’re getting traffic to your eBay listings but not making many sales, try applying discounts to motivate potential buyers to purchase.
Promos can also help clear older inventory and make your offers more competitive. Consider the following approaches:
- offer percentage discounts – e.g., 10% or 15% off certain products;
- offer monetary discounts – e.g., $5 off;
- conduct limited-time promotions.
💡Extra feature for M2E Cloud users: Promote products from your ecommerce platform on eBay. Apply various eBay promotion options and craft enticing offers that drive customers to add more items to their carts.
You can also take advantage of the Discounts Manager. For large inventories, start with a selection of poorly sold products instead of discounting everything. Always check your profit margins before running promotions.
Tip #3. Stop and relist items that remain unsold
What happens when updating your listings and advertising promotions aren’t successful?
If you notice minimal interest from buyers in your old listing, you might want to think about closing that listing and creating a new one instead. Unfortunately, relisting will not necessarily increase views or sales.
Before relisting, note the following:
- A new listing might come with a different eBay Item ID.
- You might lose your previous records of sales and sold items.
- You might not carry over your watchers and other types of buyer involvement.
- You might incur other listing fees.
💡 Extra feature for M2E Cloud users: Cancel listings and relist them in bulk. Be sure to review the details of the product you want to relist, its pictures, and prices before you put it back on the market, as relisting the product will not save you from problems you had before.
Important: Never close listings that still generate sales. Also, don’t create duplicate fixed-price listings, as this may violate eBay’s policy on duplicate listings.
How to Measure Whether Your Changes Worked
You’ve updated your titles, added better images, and relaunched unsold products. Now it’s time to see what changed.
The goal isn’t just to get more views. It’s to turn those views into sales.
Five important aspects to keep an eye on:
- Impressions & views: Are you attracting more buyers to your products? You can check these metrics in eBay Seller Hub.
- Click-through rate: Are customers clicking on your products after finding them?
- Conversion rate: Are these views resulting in sales?
- Sales: Are your sales numbers getting better? Make sure you are tracking these results in M2E eBay Sales Analytics.
For example, while your views may be increasing, they don’t necessarily lead to more sales, which could mean you need to reconsider your pricing or offers.
For how long should you monitor the results? Track the statistics before making any adjustments, then compare the two. Wait 14 to 30 days for the results to appear.
M2E eBay Sales Analytics offers an easy way to check sales profits, order counts, and sales-trend analysis in one place. Use this analytical data to understand what works and change other listings.
The Bottom Line
As you develop your eBay listings, it becomes increasingly difficult to monitor your goods. What once took minutes for a few products now takes too much time and effort.
Also, checking and updating your listings manually creates a backlog of other business problems. By automating your eBay listing work, you can eliminate this tedious work.
Automation can simplify managing listings. In particular, with M2E Multichannel Connect, you will be able to:
- identify slow-selling listings more quickly by using filters for Stale Items;
- limit your attention to selected items instead of updating the whole catalog;
- set up eBay settings easily by using listing policies;
- synchronize your store data, thereby decreasing the need to make numerous manual checks.
This way, you can run this process every month: highlight unsuccessful listings and prioritize updating them.
Check M2E Cloud features today and book a demo with our team!
