relist an item vs increased qty

[busybeas_books]

Have there been studies on whether it is better to relist a sold item (if you have multiples of it) or to list it once with higher (than 1) quantity?

question 2. scenario: I have 5 same items, sell 1, relist, sell, relist etc. Each time there is a listing fee (or in my case a store free-listing count decrease). If it is listed as a 5 quantity, there is only a single listing fee for the month no matter the number (1 to 5) of sales. My question is does the store free-listing count drop by 1 (for the month, sale or no sales) or by 1 plus the number of sales? I'm fairly certain it is just the 1 count per month but couldn't find anything official.

The reason behind this is for January I dropped down to the basic store level (from premium) and my listings count is close to the free-listing amount (10,000 in collectibles catagory)

[femmefan1946]

As a sometime bookseller, I prefer to relist a Sold item using a scan of the cover of the actual book.

And often, I have multiple (used) editions of the same title, which makes it even more important to clarify what  I am selling.

However, if you are selling multiple copies of the same new edition of a title, it is less work (and time is money is labour) to do the multiple listing. 

[flipistics]

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@busybeas_books wrote:

Have there been studies on whether it is better to relist a sold item (if you have multiples of it) or to list it once with higher (than 1) quantity?

question 2. scenario: I have 5 same items, sell 1, relist, sell, relist etc. Each time there is a listing fee (or in my case a store free-listing count decrease). If it is listed as a 5 quantity, there is only a single listing fee for the month no matter the number (1 to 5) of sales. My question is does the store free-listing count drop by 1 (for the month, sale or no sales) or by 1 plus the number of sales? I'm fairly certain it is just the 1 count per month but couldn't find anything official.

The reason behind this is for January I dropped down to the basic store level (from premium) and my listings count is close to the free-listing amount (10,000 in collectibles catagory)

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eBay recommends using a multi-quantity listing because then it doesn't break advertising links and things like that. It's possible eBay may slightly boost the exposure too if one of them sells, but that's unclear. My personal opinion is that it probably doesn't make much difference. It is worth noting that when people see multiple items available, they likely feel less pressured to purchase right away because they're not as concerned about someone else buying it.

[recped]

In my opinion (most of what I sell is from multi-quantity listings) is that it is much better to maintain the single listing rather than ending and relisting each time. As @flipistics mentions it takes time for listings to start showing up offsite (like Google), if you keep ending a listing and then relisting the odd of your items ever showing on Google etc. is dramatically reduced. Most of my MQ listings have been up for 5 years or more and they consistently show on page one of Google searches even when only some keywords are used for the search.

As far as your second question, It counts as one listing no matter what the quantity listed or the number of sales from the listing.

One other thing to consider and that is using the Out Of Stock option, with that you can just list with a quantoty of 1 (or 2,3,4, etc), when those are sold the listing remains active so that you can add more inventory if you have it. When you no longer have any more and won't be getting more you can manually end the listing or just let it sit. eBay will renew the listing each month 5 times, if no inventory is added then eBay will end it after 5 renewals.

The only issue with OOS is that it is a global setting so all your Fixed Price listings will be affected. The one that you will never restock have to be ended manually (especially if your alottment of "free" listings is limited.

It is easy to end the "no stock" listings, just go to Active Listings, sort on the Quantity and all the zero listings will be grouped together.