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Bear Paws by RoxanneI don't know whether to scratch my watch or wind my butt. 
What is up with ebay? I have a Panda bear listed on ebay right now... Which is to end this afternoon.
My confusions is, I listed it as a "feature listing" right.
I do not see it there in the featured. And I have been charged by ebay for the feature listing.
My counter is sooooo low, which is what made me check to see if it was in the featured listings...
What do ya'll see? Am I just loco?
Mikki, Cripple Creek CreativeR. Just was on Ebay...it's featured.Mikki
Walnut Tree Corner Bears By GailI think it depends what you search under as to whether it shows. If you look under bears and best match it doesn't show but if you do bears/artist with best match ,it does show at the top. if you do bears with ending soonest ,it doesn't show up but bears/artist and ending soonest, it does???? It only seems to show up at the top of the page if the search is really narrowed down I think.
Canna Bear PaintYeah, I noticed that earlier this week. eBay is apparently testing something out in the bears category. For the last few years, eBay has "front loaded" the featured auctions. That is how people are now used to it... all the week's featured auctions are displayed FIRST, before any of the regular auctions. That works fine in a smaller category like artist bears, where there are so few auctions that the featureds usually only last for one page. It's horrible in large categories like art, where featured auctions can run for 60 or more pages before you ever run across the regular auctions (and who clicks through for 60 or more pages????). This effectively buried everything that wasn't featured, many artist's sales tanked when they started front loading (so much art was purchased with the old "going, going, gone" option on eBay, which showed everything ending within 3 hours and did NOT front load 60 pages of a week's worth of featured listings in front of them... people really could see all the auctions ending in three hours, and would snap up paintings at the last minute. Going, going, gone was absolutely the best way to be found in an extremely large category.
Anyway... point is... front loading has worked well for small categories, but has been horrible for large categories. So obviously they're testing out whether they want to change it again. Your bear is still appearing as a featured bear, Roxanne, but it is not being front loaded. Click through the pages and you'll find him.... he's still at the top of his page and still featured... but not on the very first page right now. He *will* appear on the first page when he is closer to his ending time.
Anyway, hope that all makes sense. This is the way eBay had always treated featured auctions up until a few years ago, it will be interesting to see if they decide to revert back to it.
Cheers,
Kelly
Pumpkin & Pickle BearsY'know, the EXACT same thing happened to me with my bunny which finished a few days ago!! I sent ebay an email the day after the listing started...4 days later I had NO reply. I wrote them another email and told them how horrified I was that they could do this to people...2 days later and STILL no reply! 
I am SO frustrated with them - I now have £17 in ebay fees for the bunny but frankly I really don't feel like paying it!!
FenBeary Folk I too was caught with this one as well, awhile back, end of August I think, never again
editing your listing ia another reason your listing might disappear for a while - I edited my Wally listing last saturday morning and it disappeared completely from ebay for over 16 hours - all day saturday! - and I know it wasn't just my imagination, because I had emails from clients wondering if I had ended the listing early.
when I finally got in touch with ebays 'live chat' they told me that when you edit your listing, it gets put back in a queue, and that the 'q' is really long on a busy weekend. sheeeesh, go figure! never gonna do that again. .
I have the same problem, I can´t see my elephant pincushion in the featured area 
Yikes!!!
I have not been watching ebay lately and was totally unaware of this change. I just took a look and I was also confused by the changes. Spending the extra money on "Featured Plus" hardly seems worth it. :doh:
I was just thinking of giving ebay another try with the panda that I am just finishing .... I'm rethinking that now.
ebay is totally wacko!
Kathy
this is a totally new development. I just went to try starting a listing, and the 'featured' options have changed, as have the prices. the old $19.99 'featured item' appears to be gone,, along with $24.99 featured gallery' option, replaced by a single $24.99 'featured first' item that they explain as thus in the listing options:
Featured First ($24.95)
Showcase your listing at the top of search results in the Featured area. Gallery Plus included!
Listings are randomly selected to appear in the Featured area from sellers who maintain a Raised or Standard Search Standing. (italics mine)
Add pictures to make your items more successful and to take advantage of features like Gallery Picture, Gallery Plus, and Featured First.
sweetmarymotherofgod, what are these people up to. . .
(I think this might be what the other Kelly was talking about, also)
the really bizzare thing is that I have been paying the $24.99 'featured gallery' fee because eBay wouldn't let me use the $19.99 'featured plus' option until I have a feedback rating of '10'. I've been buying like mad & begging for my feedback to get myself up to a '10' by Sunday, as the 'featured plus' option seemed to score far more hits. . . and now the option is gone. . . . .
I feel like I'm in Orwells 'Animal Farm'. . . what rule will they change next, for what arbitrary reason. . . and to hear 'Oz Matilda' talk in another thread, they are even monitoring TT at time . . .totally bizarre. . . (oh sure, they are probably just reading, but doesn't monitoring have more punch. . .?
Bear Paws by RoxanneWow...This is really nutz..
Thanks ya'll for checking this out... No padded room for me today...!
Canna Bear PaintOh wow Kelly, that's a new twist on it, isn't it???? Randomly selected... what a joke. And "raised or standard search standing"? Guess I'll have to look that up, because I don't even know what it means!
I never thought I'd see the day that I missed Meg Whitman as CEO! But as soon as she left, things certainly went (farther) south for sellers.
Cheers,
Kelly
I do not understand.. please could you tell me what is the difference between the Featured and the featured plus , please think I was a child,lol you know my english....
hugs
Manuela
Newcastle, OntarioI haven't used Ebay since last April, I miss the auctions but every time I think about giving it another try, a post lke this makes me rethink things again! I read the other day that sales this quarter are down for Ebay for the first time - no kidding!!!!
hugs,
Brenda
Jellybelly Bearswow, thats silly....well not for larger categories, but us.....bit of a waste of money now isn't it especially when I convert it all to aussie dollars!
edited to add
Thanks for bringing this to our attention Roxanne, I would have listed again with the feature and then become most infuriated with the change and the waste of money.....
desertmountainbearKelly Dean wrote "The really bizzare thing is that I have been paying the $24.99 'featured gallery' fee because eBay wouldn't let me use the $19.99 'featured plus' option until I have a feedback rating of '10'. I've been buying like mad & begging for my feedback to get myself up to a '10' by Sunday, as the 'featured plus' option seemed to score far more hits. . . and now the option is gone. .
Kelly, until you have a feedback of ten that option will not be available to you at all on your screen. Once you get your feedback it will be there for you
Joanne
gosh. . .I'm so confused. . .
oh, wait. . .
we're back where we started. . . :crackup:
thanks, Joanne, I get it now - but how about $19.99 to get 'ramdomly selected'
yeeeeehaaaaaah, as they say down in Texas!
desertmountainbearI did use that once before I got my feedback score up. I thought it was a complete waste of money. I never once saw that I was put into featured. If you can start to get you sales up to $1000 per month (I have seen your auctions, shouldn't take you long) for 3 months straight, you can be a powerseller. There are good discounts for that, featured plus is only $14.95 and you get a % off your final value fee. something to think about in the future. Remember from what everyone says ebay hates the little guy, but they love their powersellers.
Joanne
I had listed a bunch of magazines on ebay a couple of weeks ago. I also had listings take days to show up. I realized it was because of my Auctiva account. It revised all my items to put that slide show of my other auctions into the listing. Revising the listings caused a huge delay in showing up.
I deleted my Auctiva account, and with my next batch of auctions every listing showed up right away.
desertmountainbearI have an auctiva account with that little carousal, I have had it for a year, and I never had it hold up listing, what happened to you Laura Lynn is not usual, thank goodness
Joanne
I have just found in small print at the top of the listings OPT OUT, when I clicked this it took my listings page back to the way it was with all the featured items first....doesn't make any sense, but opting out seemed like the thing to do.
hugs,
Krista
I had listed a bunch of magazines on ebay a couple of weeks ago. I also had listings take days to show up. I realized it was because of my Auctiva account. It revised all my items to put that slide show of my other auctions into the listing. Revising the listings caused a huge delay in showing up.
I deleted my Auctiva account, and with my next batch of auctions every listing showed up right away.
Laura, that's exactly what happened to me ...it was driving me nuts and I went to live help numerous times, in the end I asked them if it was the auctiva slideshow and they sheepishly said "oh it might be" ...I got rid of the stupid thing and haven't had a problem since...
I didn't use auctiva templates just the slideshow and everytime it went into my new listings it revised them and they were gone for over 16 hours...
Joanne.....perhaps if you use the auctive site to list the slideshow goes on straight away and you don't have the same problem, but if you only use the slideshow, your listings will show for about an hour or so then disappear for hours when the slideshow kicks in as a revision..
Opting out of that new search thing is the way to go.... the forums are full of complaints about the new search, but they just plow on, never taking any notice of their members....ebay has lost the plot, completely!
I noticed this when 'window shopping' the other day.......thought I was losing it as the featured items weren't there! I finally found the small print at the bottom of the page saying they were testing this type of search and that I could opt out. Well, I did opt out and everything is back to normal for me. I don't know if I'm going to spend the extra to use the featured listings anymore though.....why bother when it's not going to help much to increase your views? Actually, the main reason I still use eBay at all anymore is for 'advertising' ....... seems like the lack of views would make that kind of pointless. 
I totally agree with Tracy....I used to think of my ebay auctions as advertising (and they were... because I would add new collectors on to my mailing list with each auction) but now it seems like putting an auction on ebay to keep your work visible really is "a thing of the past". I'm sad 
With this new system it seems like only collectors that search for your work will be able to find your listing on ebay.
Well, I have not been getting as many bidders on my Bid4Bears auctions but I've been happy with the results....and it's less stressful than dealing with ebay. I may still post on ebay before they take everything away from us, just to pick up a few new collectors.
As teddy bear artists, we do have other options...like Nancy's "North Country Teddy Bears" and Karin's "Who is who in Bear Making" .... they are both having online shows in November. We need to support them and introduce our collectors to these new options.
Kathy
I just went and found that "opt out" button....I'm much happier with the old format...but I doubt that we will have this option much longer.
desertmountainbearI do not ever search in a category, I search by keywords only. artist bear...mohair..etc. Nothing has changed. I still see the featured items first at the top of the page. I do not think I am alone in searching this way. I have always searched by keywords, with everything I search for. That is why it is so important to choose your wording very carefully when filling in item title. I do not have a large mailing list. At this time, with this bear I have 50 watchers, so someone is finding the bear when they search.
Joanne
