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Every business needs to grow and scale to succeed, but new businesses need to do it slowly. Ebay is no exception, and that’s why new sellers have to work their way up carefully with eBay’s selling limits.
This guide will walk through everything you need to know about eBay selling limits. By the end, you’ll know what they are, how to be eligible for a limit increase, along with multiple methods to increase your eBay seller limits.
Selling limits are eBay’s way of limiting new sellers on their platform from growing too fast. But, why would they want to do that, you ask?
Think about it – if there weren’t any selling limits, anyone can open a seller account, list expensive products, sell them, not ship out anything and keep the money.
To avoid such scenarios from occurring, every new seller starts with a low limit of up to 10 items and $500. Both of these limits include the number listed and sold combined.
To understand how eBay selling limits work, we need to familiarize ourselves with how the item quantity/ $ Amount limits work and the monthly listing renewals.
We’ll demonstrate how eBay selling limits work on a starting limit of 10 items and $500. So, let’s say we listed 1 item for $100. This will update our limits to 9 items and $490.
Now, let’s say that item sold a couple of days after listing it. Our limits will update to 8 items and $480. That’s because, as explained above, eBay counts both the amount listed and sold.
Therefore, start with cheap items, and don’t let one expensive item hog up your limits. The more items we have, the higher our chances to sell and get the ball rolling.
All of the eBay selling limits renew at the beginning of each month. Meaning, we begin every month with 0 items and $0 amount listed and sold.
And, every calendar month, eBay also renews the listings on our stores. That’s because our fixed-price listings automatically come with the ‘Good ‘Til Cancelled’ option.
For example, if we add a new listing on January 5th, then on February 5th, the listing will renew itself. Renewing means it will take up space on our monthly selling limits (and insertion fees on our store subscription.)
Therefore, it’s essential to check our listings’ performance the day before they renew themselves.
Then, we can remove those that aren’t performing well and replace them before taking up space on our monthly selling limits.
First, head to the seller dashboard by hovering over ‘My eBay,’ then click on ‘Selling.’
We can find our selling limits and additional data regarding our sales, performance, traffic, promotions, and more on the seller dashboard.
If you don’t have a monthly selling limits chart on your seller dashboard, click on the ‘Customize’ link on the top right to activate it.
Furthermore, we can rearrange the charts on our seller dashboard to best suit our needs.
As a result, every time we enter our seller dashboard, we’ll see our monthly limits along with how much we have left.
So now we know what eBay limits are and how they work. We also know that every new eBay seller starts with low limits.
We bet your next question is, “How do I increase my eBay selling limits?”
The million-dollar-question, with all of its solutions, down below.
Before we take action to increase our eBay seller limits, let’s go over the ground rules and conditions.
If your eBay store does not meet all of the following criteria, fix whatever is necessary to make sure you’re clean before attempting to raise your eBay selling limits.
First and foremost, before thinking about a limit increase, make sure your current limits are full and in the red zone.
Otherwise, eBay will reject any attempt to increase your selling limits, as you’ll still have more room to list new items.
If you’re not in the red zone yet, continue adding listings every day until you reach the sweet spot.
On the seller hub, check out the ‘Orders’ section and ensure that there are no open returns/replacements.
Also, the resolution center and order cancellations should be clean.
If there are any open cases/returns/unresolved buyer requests, close them before requesting a limit increase.
Next, we want to make sure that our eBay seller accounts are in good standing. This piece of information is also available on our eBay seller dashboard.
To be eligible for a selling limit increase, eBay is looking for seller levels ‘Above Standard’ and above (Top Rated.)
If your eBay seller level is ‘Below Average’, improve your eBay seller rating by:
The next condition before increasing our eBay limits is to ensure that all of our active listings are in stock.
On the eBay seller hub, click on the ‘Listings’ tab to open up your active listings. Then, sort the quantity from smallest to largest to view the out-of-stock listings first.
Remove the out-of-stock listings and replace them with items that are available.
If you have an eBay seller account with bigger limits, you don’t have to completely exhaust the limits by 100%. Anywhere between 90%-100% will suffice.
Once all preparations are complete, we can proceed to request a selling limit increase.
Here are the five methods to increase your eBay selling limits:
Our favorite method is the automatic one.
If our seller accounts meet all of the requirements to be eligible for a limit increase, and we’re making constant sales, eBay will automatically increase our selling limits.
They have special algorithms that scan our stores once a month for our seller metrics and performance.
As soon as it happens, they’ll send a ‘Now your can list even more’ email with all of the information inside. (See screenshot above.)
Getting automatic selling limit upgrades is a sign that we’re in the right direction. Our seller accounts are healthy, our store’s sale conversions are high, and our customers are happy.
If you got an automatic selling limit increase, give yourself a pat on the back!
The second method to increase your eBay selling limits is by clicking on the ‘Request to list more’ link.
You can find it on your eBay seller hub in the monthly limits section.
Once you click on it, eBay will run a quick scan on your seller account and will let you know within seconds if they increased your limits or not.
Keep in mind that you can only use this option once every month.
So, whether the answer was negative or positive, you’ll have to wait at least 30 days before eBay will scan your store again through that link.
Therefore, go over all of the steps to ensure you’re eligible for a limit increase before trying.
The third method to increase our eBay selling limits is by contacting eBay by phone.
Calling eBay is the preferred method since they rarely log calls. Meaning, if for some reason, we fail, we can try again instead of waiting one month before each attempt.
To get an eBay representative on the phone, get to their selling limits help section by clicking on that link or by clicking on ‘Help & Contact’ on the top bar:
Then, scroll down to ‘Browse Help Articles’ and click on ‘Selling’:
From there, scroll down to ‘Listing Your Item,’ and click on ‘Selling Limits’:
Now, scroll to the bottom of the page, where you’ll have methods to contact eBay on the subject.
One of those methods should include contacting them by phone, and they will offer a one-time passcode to get to an eBay representative quickly.
If the contact by phone option doesn’t exist under selling limits, try picking a different help & contact subject and scroll to the bottom of the page.
On some help subjects, the contact by phone option exists, while on others, it doesn’t. It differs from seller account types and locations.
Before making the call, make sure to go over eBay’s Selling Policies and get familiar with what they’re looking for in a seller.
In general, eBay is looking for overall buyer satisfaction, fast shipping times, clear shipping & return policies, and overall professionalism.
Keep in mind that they want you to sell more and have more listings, as they’re profiting from it, too.
After a quick verification process, they’ll want to know what type of items you’re planning on selling and how much, your shipping times, your item’s locations, and making sure you’re complying with their policies.
Then, they’ll quickly scan your seller account and will let you know if you’re eligible for a limit increase and by how much.
The fourth method to increase your eBay selling limits is by contacting eBay by email.
The process is the same as contacting them by phone, as shown above.
Head to the Help & Contact section, navigate to the seller help section, get to the bottom of a help article until you reach the ‘Need more help?’ section with contact options.
One of the options is the ‘Email us’ link which will direct you to fill in a text form. There, politely ask for a limit increase, and show your professionalism.
You will get a response within 48 hours by email. If the eBay representative didn’t agree to raise your limits, you can try again in a month.
The fifth method to increase your eBay selling limits is by contacting eBay via chat. Yes, you can chat live with an eBay representative!
However, keep in mind that eBay logs the chats, so this method can also be used once a month to be effective.
To get to the chat, the process is the same as the two examples above.
On eBay’s help section, some of the help sections have a chat option when you scroll to the bottom.
They change from time to time, so be sure to check a few help sections until you find the option to chat.
Be kind and courteous to eBay’s representatives. Show them that you are serious about your business, and that customer service is at the top of your priority list.
And, that needs to be true if you want to succeed in this business!
Not eligible for an eBay seller limit increase? Not to worry.
Here’s what you can do to improve your chances to get that limit increase on your next try.
While it should go without saying, make sure you read all of the steps above (What To Know Before Increasing eBay Selling Limits).
Go over each step carefully and see what needs tweaking on your seller account before trying again.
Just because new seller accounts only have a limit of ten items, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t focus on them.
If we work harder on our product research, we’ll find items with a much higher chance of selling.
Replace poor-performing items with cheaper, trendier products and optimize your product pages.
Then we’ll have a better chance of being eligible for a selling limit upgrade, whether by reaching out to eBay or having eBay automatically increase our limits as explained above.
If you chose to speak with eBay by phone, and they didn’t raise your limits, you can simply hang up and try again. They rarely record calls for a reference.
However, if your method was to use the ‘Request to list more’ link or contacting eBay by chat or email, you’ll have to wait one month before trying again (even by phone).
Go through all of the steps to make sure you’re eligible, wait for the right time, and try again. Success is just around the corner.
Now that we know what eBay selling limits are, how they work, and what we need to do to increase them, the road becomes more clear.
Take all of the steps in this article to reduce failed attempts and get on the path to higher selling limits, which will ultimately bring in more listings, more sales, and higher profiting.
Once you become an expert in increasing your eBay selling limits, you can start implementing the Big Numbers Strategy and really start taking your online business to the next level!