Submitting an Item
After you've entered all the data for your item, you are finally ready to submit it to eBay. Submitting an item is a simple process. In fact, once the
item record
is created, you can return to it and submit another listing from it in just a few seconds.
When you submit a listing you can either submit it to start running immediately, or you can schedule it to run later.
There are two methods of scheduling that we will discuss: scheduling with eBay, and scheduling with Blackthorne.
Scheduled listings have been built into the eBay process for a while now. You can submit an item to eBay and tell eBay when you want it to start. This method has a small fee, but it is very reliable and worry-free.
You can also use Blackthorne to submit your listings at a scheduled time. While Blackthorne is running, it will continuously check to see if it has items scheduled to be submitted now. When the time comes, Blackthorne will submit the item in the background for you. Scheduling listings with Blackthorne is free, but you must ensure that Blackthorne is running and that you have a valid internet connection when the scheduled time arrives.
Another advantage to scheduling submissions is that you can specify an interval between listings. This is useful if you have a lot of repeat buyers.
Each time an item is submitted, a listing record is created in the Monitor Listings mode. You can track the progress of your listings from the Monitor Listings mode. For more information on what can to do while your listing is running, start with the topic "Monitoring Listings".
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Abigail sells baseball cards. Every Monday, she submits 200 auctions. She tends to have a lot of repeat buyers, and her buyers like to watch her listings as they close and bid at the last second (in other words, they like to
snipe
). When she submits her listings, she schedules them
using Blackthorne
. She sets them to start at 7:00PM and places a one minute interval between them.
When she leaves her shop, she leaves her computer on.
At 7:00PM,
Blackthorne
starts submitting her items 1 minute apart and is finished 3 hours and 20 minutes later.
She didn't have to pay anything for this type of scheduling, and as long as her electricity didn't go off, or her internet connection didn't go down, her listings were successfully started.
Next week, starting on Sunday, Abigail is going on vacation. She doesn't want to leave her computer on all week, and she doesn't want to miss a weeks worth of listings. On Saturday she will submit her 200 listings, and use eBay to schedule them. eBay gets the listings on Saturday and holds them til Monday night. Abby had to pay a little extra, but was able to enjoy her vacation because she knew her items would be listed.
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To submit items:
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From the Create Items
Grid
, select the item(s) to be submitted. They will be submitted in the same order they are sorted in the grid.
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Select from the menu or click the Submit Action Button. The Submit Listings window will appear.
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Select the number of copies of each item you would like submitted.
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If you submit multiple copies and combine that with a scheduled interval, you can have eBay Blackthorne submit an item multiple times in the future. For instance, to submit a T-Shirt once a day for the next week, you submit it with 7 copies and an interval of 1 day.
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Next choose the submission method as described above. If you chose
one of
the scheduled method
s
, then set a Start time and an Interval between listings. You can manually type a date and time, or you can use the dropdown menu and time selector to set the date and time. You can also move your cursor to any area of the Start time and Interval input boxes and use the arrows to change the values. The interval allows you to space your listings out up to 99 days 23 hours and 59 minutes apart. Set the Listings per interval to the number of listings that should be submitted for each interval.
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On Fridays, Abigail receives new shipments of baseball cards. She receives about 1000 unique cards. She would like all of them listed between 6:00PM and 8:00PM Friday night. At one minute apiece, that would take 1000 minutes or about 16 hours and 40 minutes. If she sets the start time to 6:00PM, the interval to 1 minute, and the listings per interval to 10, it will list 10 cards per minute and only take her about 100 minutes (1 hour and 40 minutes) to list.
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If you want to ensure that your listings are submitted in the order they were selected, then check the Force the order of submission box. If you do not care what order they are submitted in, then leave the box unchecked. By checking the box, eB will upload the listings one at a time. If you leave the box unchecked, it can submit multiple items at the same time which will make them submit faster. We recommend you leave this box unchecked unless there is a good reason they must be submitted in order.
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Click OK to submit your listings. A status window will inform you about the progress of your submissions. If you had errors, a message box will appear telling you how many submissions failed. Proceed to Fixing and Resubmitting Items with Submission Errors to learn how to fix them.