Sales are a great way to promote your auction, Fixed Price, and Store Inventory listings in your Store. You can create sales that are seasonal, for specific holidays, for specific categories, or just to clear out inventory. Sales events promote your Store by creating excitement and encouraging buyers to browse and buy.

• Determining discounts

• Creating and managing sales

• Promoting your sales

• Markdown Manager rules

Determining discounts

You can choose a price discount or a free shipping discount.

Fixed Price and Store Inventory listings can be discounted by a percentage amount or discounted by a specific money amount. For example, an item that is selling for $10 can be discounted by 20% or, alternatively, $2. This means the item is on sale for $8 in both cases.

Price sales can't be applied to auction listings. However, you can select a free shipping discount for any listing, including Fixed Price, Store Inventory, and auction listings.

If you select a free shipping discount, it will apply to the first U.S. shipping service that you selected when you listed your item. The free shipping discount will not apply to any additional services that you selected.

Note: All items with price sales must be discounted by a minimum of 5% and can be discounted up to 75%. The sale price of your listing will appear as a Buy It Now price anywhere on the site your listings would normally appear. Price sales will also show up for buyers with a special look (strikethrough pricing and the calculated discount) in the following areas:

• View Item pages

• Cross Promotions on the View Item page

• Search results within a Store

• Express View Item page

• Items I'm Watching

• Items I'm Watching Ending Soon email

• Stores Promotions boxes

• Seller Email Marketing

Buyers will see that your listings have a free shipping sale in these areas:

• View Item pages

• Items I'm Watching

• Items I'm Watching Ending Soon email

Creating and managing sales in Markdown Manager

You can create and view scheduled, active, and inactive sales within your Store in Markdown Manager. Sales can be scheduled for a later date or rescheduled once they're over.

To create sales in Markdown Manager:

• Go to My eBay and sign in if required.

• Click the "Marketing Tools" link on the left side of the page.

• Click the "Markdown Manager" link on the left side of the page.

• Click the Create Sale button.

• Once a sale is created, you will receive a success message. If you are scheduling more than 200 listings in your sale, you will receive an email to let you know when your sale is created.

To edit sales in Markdown Manager

• Go to My eBay and sign in if required.

• Click the "Marketing Tools" link on the left side of the page.

• Click the "Markdown Manager" link on the left side of the page.

• View sales and click the corresponding sale name.

Promoting your sales

Promote your sale by sending a customized email to announce your discounted listings to your Stores newsletter subscribers. The number and frequency of emails you can send is based on your subscription limits and other eBay policies.

Creating and editing a promotional email in Markdown Manager

In the “Promote your sale” section, your first mailing list will be automatically selected.

Note: If you don't want to send an email to promote your sale, you can clear the check box for the mailing list.

• A one-time email will be sent to the mailing lists on the same date and time as the scheduled sale.

• The “edit your email” link allows you to edit the Subject and Message text fields of your emails.

• You can edit your promotional emails as long as the sale has not started.

Note: Once the sale has begun, the "Promote your sale" section will no longer appear in the Markdown Manager "Edit Sale" page.

Note: If you do not have any mailing lists, the “Promote your sale” section will not appear in the Markdown Manager “Create Sale” page. Take a step-by-step tutorial about setting up your email mailing lists. 

Markdown Manager rules

• Revising the item price, shipping cost, or both of an item in the Revise My Item page will remove the item from a sale.

• Most sales will be processed within an hour.

• The price of an item must be discounted by a minimum of 5%.

• There are minimum and maximum durations for price sales. A Fixed Price or Store Inventory price sale cannot be longer than 45 days and it cannot be shorter than 1 day. The minimum duration between sales is 1 day.

• Free shipping sales on auction listings have no end dates. Sales on auction listings are valid until the listing ends.

• If a listing is already on sale, you won't be able to add a new sale. For example, if your listing is on a price sale, you won't be able to add a free shipping sale to that listing.

• If you have listings in multiple currencies and choose to discount by an amount (not a percentage), that discount will be in the currency of the listings and will not be converted. For example, a discount entered as "5" will be CN$5 for Canadian listings and US$5 in the United States.

• Sales can be scheduled for up to 6 months in advance and eBay will keep sales information for up to 15 months after the end date.

• If you have bids on your auction listing you can not add or remove a free shipping sale.

Limits to sales in Markdown Manager

Sales in Markdown Manager are limited in these ways:

The number of listings allowed to be changed in one day is 250 for Basic Stores, 2,500 for Premium Stores, and 5,000 for Anchor Stores. Changes include scheduling, editing, or adding listings to a sale.

A price or free shipping sale on a Fixed Price or Store Inventory listing can be no longer than 45 days and no shorter than 1 day.

Free shipping sales on auction listings are valid until the listing ends.

A listing can be in only one active sale at a time, but a listing can exist in multiple scheduled and inactive sales. There must be at least 1 day between sales for a particular listing.

If you accept Best Offer for a listing that you put on sale in Markdown Manager, you will not be able to respond to offers automatically. Once the item goes on sale, you will need to individually review all Best Offers for it.