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

The sale price of your listing will appear as a Buy It Now price in the places your listings normally appear. Sales will also show up for buyers with strikethrough pricing and the calculated discount in the following areas:

• Item pages

• Cross promotions on the Item page

• Shops Search Results

• Express Item Page

• Items I'm Watching

• Items I'm Watching Ending Soon Email

• Shops Promotions Boxes

• Seller Email Marketing

Creating and managing sales using Markdown Manager

You can create and view sales promotions within your Shop using Markdown Manager. Sale promotions can be scheduled for a later date or rescheduled once they've finished. You can choose a price discount or a free P&P discount.

Shop 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 P&P discount for any listing, including Fixed Price, Shop Inventory, and auction listings.

If you select a free P&P discount, it will apply to the first postage service that you selected when you listed your item. The free P&P 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 Shop

• Express View Item page

• Items I'm Watching

• Items I'm Watching Ending Soon email

• Shops Promotions boxes

• Seller Email Marketing

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

• View Item pages

• Items I'm Watching

• Items I'm Watching Ending Soon email

To create sales in Markdown Manager:

T o edit sales in Markdown Manager:

Promote your sale    

Promote your sale by sending a customised email to announce your discounted listings to your Shop 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 tickbox 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. Learn how to create promotions and set up your email mailing lists by taking our step-by-step tutorial.

Markdown Manager rules

• Revising the item price, P&P 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.

• There are minimum and maximum durations for price sales. A Fixed Price or Shop Inventory sale cannot be longer than 14 days and it cannot be shorter than a day. The minimum duration between sales is one day.

• Free P&P 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 P&P sale to that listing.

• Only Shop Inventory Format listings can be put on sale.

• 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 CA$5 for Canadian listings and £5 in the UK.

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

• Items must have been available at the pre-sale price for at least 28 days before they can be put on sale.

• If you have bids on your auction listing, you cannot add or remove a free P&P sale.

Limits to sales in Markdown Manager

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

• A price or P&P sale on a Fixed Price or Shop Inventory listing can be no longer than 14 days and no less than a day.

• Free P&P 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 a 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.