Guide to Settings: Listing Strategies

Overview

Listing strategies are an extremely powerful tool to automate item pricing, listing duration, and relisting rules associated with a particular product category. The benefits of using listing strategies are:

• Increase sell-through rate by relisting your products at a more competitive price, alternating between channels, and more!

• Reduce manual effort in relisting products

• Automated rules for how to handle unpaid auctions

• Automated rules for recycling products that don't sell

This guide provides a walkthrough of how to navigate the listing strategy page, with descriptions of each feature and answers to common how-to questions.

Table of Contents

Listing Strategy Video Walkthrough

How to Access Listing Strategies in Lister

Listing Strategy Page Overview

Listing Strategy Editor Overview

Example Listing Strategy

Frequently Asked Questions

Listing Strategy Video Walkthrough

How to Access Listing Strategies in Lister

The listing strategies settings page is found in the Admin section of Lister. Admins and custom roles with access to manage listing strategies can change these settings.

1. Click the gear icon in the top-right navigation menu to reach the admin portal

2. Click “Listing Strategies” under the Products and Listing heading

Listing Strategy Page Overview

The listing strategy page shows a complete list of all your existing strategies. This page has the following information and tools.

1. New Strategy: Click to create and begin a new strategy

2. Upright ID: Strategy ID number used for troubleshooting with the Upright Labs team

3. Name: The name of the individual listing strategy

4. Status: This shows whether a strategy is published and can be used to list items or is in draft mode.

5. Active Listing Count: Shows the total number of products that are currently being used by the strategy

6. Edit: The pencil icon is a link to make edits to a strategy

7. Delete: The trash can icon will delete a strategy. Warning: This action cannot be undone

8. Duplicate: The copy icon will duplicate an existing strategy

Listing Strategy Editor Overview

When creating a new listing strategy or editing an existing one, you’ll move to the Listing Strategy Editor.

The listing strategy editor has eight core inputs, split into two columns. A brief overview of each input is outlined below, and we'll do a deep dive into each one in the following sections.

1: Listing Strategy Name

The strategy name is visible to your listing team when they create a new listing, so we recommend naming each strategy in a way that easily identifies what the strategy targets. For example, the primary marketplace category, pricing structure, marketplaces, etc.

2: Select Categories

This field allows you to target which marketplace categories the listing strategy should apply to when creating a listing.

• Choose specific marketplace categories, all sub-categories within a parent category, or leave the box blank to have the listing strategy apply to all categories by default

• Use the search box under “Select Categories” to type the name of a specific category

• Example:

  • Click the word "Clothing" from the category list to expand the sub-categories under the parent category

  • Click the checkbox next to "Clothing" to select all clothing categories

3: Auto-Recycle Option

This setting tells Lister what to do with a product if it completes all the steps within the listing strategy and no one purchases it.

• ON (recommended): The product will automatically move to your Products > Recycled page so that it can be purged from inventory

• OFF (default): The product will remain on the Products > All page

4: Status

By default, this option is toggled to "Published," meaning as soon as you click save, the listing strategy will be available when listing products.

• Setting the status to “Draft” will prevent the strategy from being used when creating new listings

• Products actively using a listing strategy will continue running until they reach the final step of the strategy

5: Unpaid Auction Handling Option

This setting tells the listing strategy what to do if a buyer wins an item but doesn't pay. Click here to see examples of what each of these options would do.

• Restart at starting price (Default): If the item goes unpaid, the strategy will repeat the current step at the starting price

• Restart at an unpaid price: If the item goes unpaid, the strategy will repeat the current step at the unpaid price

• Off: Move to next step: After an item passes the payment deadline, even if the listing goes unpaid, the strategy will go to the next step

Example Unpaid Auction Scenario

An item was won on step 2 for $25 and went unpaid. The following is what would happen depending on the unpaid auction handling setting.

• Restart step at starting price (Default): Item would relist on step 2 with a starting price of $7.99

• Off: Item would relist on step 3 with a starting price of $5.99 and a buy now of $9.99

• Restart step at unpaid price: Item would relist on step 2 with a starting price of $25

6: Strategy Step Options

The right column shows the information on each step of the listing strategy and allows you to set rules for each step.

If you have multiple marketplaces connected to your Lister account, select the desired one for the first step in the strategy by clicking the marketplace name under “​​Initially list to” and choosing from the available options.

• Each marketplace has unique listing rules for step 1 to set the initial values of the first listing, as described below

eBay Listing Strategy Options

If any of the following fields are left blank in the first step of the strategy, the details manually entered on the listing page will be used when the listing strategy publishes the listing to eBay.

1. Listing Type

   • Auction or Fixed Price (Good-til-Cancelled) can be selected from the Listing Type dropdown menu

2. Listing Duration

   • Auction-style format: 1, 3, 5, 7, and 10 days

     • Note: 1 and 3-day auctions incur additional insertion fees from eBay

   • Fixed-price format: Good ’Til Canceled.

3. Shipping, Returns, and Payment Profile

   • These options can be selected from your Business Policies on eBay. Click here to learn how to import business policies to Lister

   • Important Note: If the Listing Type is Auction, do NOT use a payment profile that requires immediate payment, as items listed will fail to list and appear in the Lister>Listings>eBay>Attention Required tab

4. Initial Values

   • Set the desired dollar value for the initial listing from the options below. Starting Price (Auction format only)

     • Buy Now Price

     • Reserve Price (Auction format only, incurs additional eBay fees)

Shopgoodwill Listing Strategy Options

Shopgoodwill allows for up to 5 pricing rules to be added per step, along with an auction duration. If any fields are left blank, the details entered on the listing page will be used when the listing strategy publishes the listing to Shopgoodwill.

Shopify Listing Strategy Options

Shopify is a fixed-price platform. You can add a starting price in Step 1, set the listing duration, and input product tags.

• Price: Set the desired dollar value for the initial listing. If left blank, the info entered when listing the product will be used when the listing strategy publishes the listing to Shopify

• Listing Duration: Select between 1 and 120 days

• Tags: Automatically apply product tags to Shopify listings using the listing strategy

7: Add Step to Listing Strategy

You can add a new step by clicking the blue plus button in the right column or the "Add Step" text at the bottom of the left column.

Note: If you have multiple marketplaces connected to Lister, a pop-up will ask you to select the step type.

• Singular (default choice)

  • Item will list to one marketplace

• Concurrent

  • If you have multiple marketplaces connected to Lister, this option will list an item as a Buy Now item across multiple connected marketplaces (eBay, Shopgoodwill, Shopify)

  • Click here to learn more about concurrent listings

By default, the new step copies all the settings from the previous step for the same channel. You can update any option to set, increase, or decrease price options by a flat dollar amount or a percent change.

8: Save

Once a new strategy has been created or an existing strategy has been edited, click “Save” in the left column to save changes.

Example Listing Strategy

In the example below, we’ve created a listing strategy that targets collectibles.

• Step 1 is an eBay 7-day auction with a starting bid of $19.99

• Step 2 is a Shopgoodwill 7-day auction with a starting bid of $19.99

• Step 3 is a concurrent step to all marketplaces for 14 days, priced at $12.99

• If the item is won but not paid, the step will repeat before moving forward

• If the item doesn’t sell after the 3rd step, the product will automatically recycle

Frequently Asked Questions

The following sections answer common questions and scenarios using listing strategies.

Can I Remove a Marketplace From a Concurrent Listing Strategy Step?

No. If you remove a marketplace from a concurrent step, any active listings on that marketplace will continue indefinitely, and the strategy will not progress.

Instead of removing a marketplace from a concurrent strategy step, we recommend discontinuing using the strategy and creating a new strategy.

Can I Add a New Marketplace to an Existing Listing Strategy?

We do not recommend adding a new marketplace to an existing strategy, because old items created before the strategy was updated will fail once they reach the new marketplace step.

This happens because the original listing was created only with the original marketplace details.

Example:

• A listing strategy has three eBay steps

• 1000 items are listed using this 3-step eBay strategy

• The strategy is edited while products are live, and a Shopify step is added

• Result: Any of the original 1000 items created will fail when they reach the Shopify step because they were listed without Shopify details

How to Troubleshoot Adding a New Marketplace to an Existing Strategy

If you do add a new marketplace to a listing strategy, follow the steps below to ensure older listings can be listed in the new marketplace. In this example, we’ve added a Shopgoodwill step to a strategy that previously only had eBay steps.

• Step 1: Navigate to the Products > All Tab

• Step 2: Click “More filters”

• Step 3: Select the recently updated strategy

• Step 4: Hide fulfilled products

• Step 5: Click on a product that doesn’t show the new marketplace logo in the listings column

  

• Step 6: Scroll down to the listings section of the product overview page and click the red “Attention Required” text to verify the future steps

• Step 7: Click “Create listing” next to the newly added marketplace step from the listing strategy, then add the new marketplace details

How to Use Listing Strategies When Listing

When a lister creates a new listing and selects a category tied to a listing strategy, the listing strategy will auto-populate on the first page of the New Product form under the "What are you working on?" section.

• Step 1: Select the product category

• Step 2: The listing strategy will auto-populate in the field below the category

How to Use Multiple Listing Strategies for One Category

You can create multiple listing strategies that tie to one category. For example, say you list bulk lots of trading cards and individual trading cards, and each type of listing has different shipping and starting bid prices

• In this example, you could create two listing strategies, one called "Trading Cards - Individual" and one called "Trading Cards - Bulk Lot," each tied to the trading cards category but with specific rules for the type of listing

• When first listing a product, a lister can select the appropriate listing strategy from the dropdown menu

How to Edit a Listing Strategy

1. Click the gear icon in the top right navigation menu of Lister to go to the settings pages

2. Click "Listing Strategies" in the sidebar

3. Click the pencil icon next to the strategy you'd like to edit

   

4. Once you've edited the fields, click "Save" in the left column

   

How to Duplicate a Listing Strategy

1. Go to your Settings page

2. Click "Listing Strategies" in the sidebar

3. Click on the icon with two squares to duplicate a listing strategy

How to Delete a Listing Strategy

1. Go to your Settings page

2. Click "Listing Strategies" in the sidebar

3. Click on the trashcan icon next to the listing strategy you'd like to delete

How to Pause and Resume the Listing Strategy on an Active Product

1. Go to your Products manager page

2. Enter the SKU in the search bar

3. Click “Pause Auto-Relisting” in the Strategy box to stop the strategy from continuing

4. Click “Resume Strategy” to continue a paused strategy

How to Restart a Listing Strategy on an Active Product

1. Go to your Products page

2. Enter the SKU in the search bar

3. Click “Restart after current listing” in the Strategy box to return the product to the first step of the listing strategy after the current listing ends without a sale

How to Change the Listing Strategy on an Active Listing

1. Go to your Products page

2. Enter the SKU in the search bar

3. Click “Use another strategy” in the “Strategy” section

4. Choose the new strategy in the pop-up window

How to Change the Listing Strategy on an Expired Listing

1. Go to your Products page

2. Enter the SKU in the search bar

3. Click “Use another strategy” in the Strategy section

4. Choose the new strategy in the pop-up window

5. Click “See listing details” in the Active Auctions section to navigate to the listing page

6. Click “Relist” at the bottom of the page to start the strategy

How to See All Products Connected to a Listing Strategy

1. Go to your Settings page

2. Click "Listing Strategies" in the sidebar

3. Locate the desired listing strategy in the list

4. Click the number in the “Active Listing Count” column

Related Guides

Have questions? Reach out to us at support@uprightlabs.com or via chat anytime between 9am-6pm ET, Monday to Friday