Increasing your Profits - Through Increasing your eBay Limits

Initial Account Limits:

Almost 100% of the time nowadays a new eBay account will have an immediate selling restriction upon creation.  Usually, your restriction will allow you to list only 5, 10, 20, 50 or 100 items.  This initial limit depends on many things, including but not limited to your IP address, other eBay accounts accessed from your computer, whether your name and address match any public records, whether you have other registered eBay accounts and their current standing and many other factors, all related to account security and risk probability.

How do Limits Work?

According to eBay themselves, you have a limit on the number of items listed and sold (combined), as well as limits on the volume listed and sold (combined).

For example, if your listing limits are 500 and $25,000 and you have already sold 250 items with a volume of $10,000, you can still have another 250 active listings with a volume of $15,000. 

Another important aspect of how your limits work is that these two kinds of limits, quantity and volume, will be whichever you reach first.  So, if you have listed and sold 500 items, and you still have an extra $5,000 in your limit allotment, you won’t be able to use that volume because you’ve already reached 500 items listed and sold.

In order to get your limits increased:

eBay wants to see evidence that you’re a reliable and genuine seller who will provide a high level of service to buyers. So, for starters, to get your limits increased you need to meet eBay’s minimum detailed seller ratings requirements. 

DSRs are of course something you always have to work on but when you first start out it is especially important to do whatever it takes to keep your buyers happy!

This means you need to have accurate item descriptions, respond to your customers quickly and professionally, ship your items on time and offer free or low-cost shipping.  Additionally, you need to be getting all positive feedbacks during this crucial new account period.  Lastly, before requesting higher limits, you’ll want to have sold a few items and received a few positive feedback remarks.  About 5 to 10 sales and feedbacks will suffice. 

Verifying information that you’ve given to eBay:

Verifying the information on your account such as your address, bank account, email and phone number can also help with initial limits that are placed automatically on new accounts.

By the way, even if you already have other eBay accounts with high limits in good standing, these new account limits DO apply to new accounts you open.  

Ridiculous I know, as eBay is obviously aware of your other accounts but unfortunately that’s the way it works.

If you already have other eBay accounts:

There is one thing you can do. You can call eBay and specifically ask them about your new account limits, explain that you've been selling for a long time, have good feedback, etc. and that this is a new venture and then ask them to increase the limits on your new account for you, which they will usually do with no problems, provided your other accounts meet the necessary criteria:

• Your first positive feedback was more than 90 days ago.
• You don’t have any unresolved cases.
• Your DRSs are at least 4.8 in all areas.

So if your other accounts meet these conditions (which it should definitely do) then you can request an increase in selling limits from eBay without waiting.

If this is your first eBay account or a stealth account:

However, if this is the first account for you, or if it's a stealth account, an account that belongs to you but cannot be detected by eBay as being yours and therefore does not get linked with your other eBay accounts, then you do not want to call and ask for the limit increases as mentioned above.  It's very important that you first make those 5-10 sales and receive 5-10 feedback comments.

I might even suggest buying 5-10 $1 items on eBay and giving (then receiving) positive feedback from those purchases in order to get your feedback score looking even higher.  But, you must have feedback from at least 5-10 buyers!

Options for Getting Limits Increased:

There are two options for getting your limits increased. 

1. Organically
2. Calling eBay

I will go over both options and the pros and cons of each method.

Organic Increases:

Organic limit increases are the safest way to increase your limits. This process is super simple.

1. Keep your DSR’s High
2. Ship on time
3. Upload Tracking
4. Get lots of Positive Feedback (use the automation app like FeedbackPro)
5. Answer customer inquiries quickly (and provide excellent service)
6. **Use almost all of your current limits

The most important step above is “use almost all of your current limits”.  eBay simply will not increase your limits if you don't need them increased.  Maxing out your listings shows eBay that you have and use your current limits and are able to stay in good standing.  Therefore, you can be trusted with higher limits. 

If you are doing the above 6 steps then eBay will raise your limits automatically without you having to call in.  **Another good piece of advice is to change your eBay account to a Business Account.  This will also help with those automatic limit increases.

The only downside to automatic listing increased through organic account use is that it may take a little more time.  However, the increases generally seem to be more significant with this method as well.

Calling eBay:

Once you have received 5-10 positive feedbacks and you are using your current limits, if you have not received an automatic increase you can either keep waiting (it will come) or you can go ahead and call eBay.

The downside here is that any contact with eBay can hurt as much as it can help.  So, you need to be careful what you say, and how you present yourself and your business to eBay.

eBay will likely take you through 2 steps.  The first step is verifying your identity.  They will ask you personal questions from public records to be sure you are who you say you are.  Questions like have you ever lived on this street, or did you take out a loan on this vehicle.  Are you personally known to so and so?  Etc.  These questions will be multiple choice.

Once that is completed, they likely will continue to ask you some of the following questions below.  I’ve included some good generic answers as well.

• Where do you get the items that you sell? Various swap meets, flea markets, online wholesale stores and China.
• What are your goals with this business? Growing my store
• How fast do you dispatch orders? Within 1-2 business days.
• How do you get pictures of your products? I take pictures in my photo booth I have here at home. Sometimes I have a professional take my photos for me.
• What carrier do you use? I use all different carries. USPS and Fed Ex a lot.
• Do you upload tracking? Yes, always.

Just be prepared.  The less you say to suggest drop shipping the better.  eBay will likely then increase your limits.  Wait 30 days, if you don’t receive another limit increase then call eBay again.  You can repeat this process every 30 days.

The most important piece of advice you can take away from this article is to USE YOUR LIMITS.  Max out your limits.  If you have 10, list 10.  If you have 50, list 45.  If you have 100, list 90.  If you have 5,000, list 4,900.  Etc.   Using your limits combined with good account standing will get you the most frequent limit increases. 

With drop shipping, the goal is to get the highest limits possible.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be like some of the high volume drop shippers with 250,000 listings netting $1,000 a day?