I feel like I am hijacking the other thread, so @rlmartin this is my reply to your last message. I’ve ended 6 listings, right clicked on them and selected new event. But this was the pop up that came up:
So if I hit the “duplicate and continue”, then these would not be true re-listings, but duplicates of the closed listings, which I am sure eBay does not like. Try as I might, I could not find a way to mimic what you have been able to do. 
For me, ended listings are shown in dark grey and when I right click and select “New Event from Selected Listings”, I get the pop up shown in the prior message - a warning that the listings are already started [they were - but I ended them].
My yellow flag about duplicates clears in a couple hours.
Try the duplicate and continue option. I’ve been doing it so long I forget if I got that message. I dont get the “already started” part.
So you’re not doing a true re-list - but rather you are duplicating old listings. eBay doesn’t allow that, which is why the warning pops up. Or at least that’s what I remember.
EDIT: What’s happening is what happens when one right clicks on a closed listing and picks “start listing” - it’s not doing what eBay considers a “Re-list” process.
Hmmm. I’ve been doing it for 2 plus months. The prohibition on duplicates is the exact same listing running concurrently NOT ended and restarted/relisted. You can’t have 2 identical listings running at the same time for 1 item.
I got suspended for 1 week 8 years ago when they were really picky on it for duplicates so I am well versed on it
Gotcha. I guess it takes a while for eBay to “see” that a listing is not active, so it marks the new listing as a duplicate, even though the old one is closed and inactive.
I like doing the “proper” re-list feature since eBay will e.mail some people who were interested in the item before I closed it; I often see re-listed items sell very quickly after they’ve been re-listed. That’s due to there still being an internal link from the old listing to the re-listed version. But starting a brand new listing, that breaks any linking and won’t notify interested buyers.
I am wary of running into the issue you had 8 years ago! Even after several hours, a closed listing seems to still produce that “hey, this is a duplicate” warning and that just kinda scares me! 
They aren’t a hardline as they once were. The just charge you regular fees and don’t show it to anyone when the discover it. The listing is only shown by the algorithm after the first duplicate sells. I had 2 duplicates running for 4 days until I discovered them. See my post on duplicates earlier this week.
Also, all you need to skirt the duplicate rules is add a #1, #2, #3 and so on and ebay looks the other way. I don’t like to do it and seldom do I do the numbers trick but I see other sellers do it constantly. I used to report them because I got burnt and ebay stopped doing anything about the duplicate reports so I quit reporting.
UPDATE I think you will find that you get more traffic when ebay thinks it is a new listing. That is the whole point of relisting. I also cut at. least $.05 of the price usually on a relist.
For me, I see a spike in re-listings [which are different than new listings]. Eg: I usually wait about 90 days if something has not sold, and stop the listing, and the next morning, do the re-listing process. I did the numbers a while back, but usually those re-listings get traction - something like 30% are sold within 24 hours for me.
Stopping the listing and duplicating it, beyond the risk of eBay not being okay with that, won’t trigger the all important push notices and e.mails that eBay sends out when they have customers who have “shown an interest” in an item [that doesn’t have to be a watcher - just can be someone who’s viewed the item]. When ebay sends those notices out, that tends to get the sale for me. Starting a new listing [based on a closed one aka duplicate listing], will not trigger those notifications.
This is why I made the feature request back in August to allow true relistings to be scheduled: Feature Request: Use the scheduler to schedule relistings?
I’m glad you have a way to do it via the duplicate listings; I am just wary of running afoul of eBay rules and having an actual duplicate get listed accidentally.
This is all pointing out to me that “marketing” on eBay, especially for folks in different long tail markets, is vibes and whatever seems reasonable
In my case, I started as a hobby buyer of the stuff I sell now, so I’m convinced that anybody “watching” an item of mine for more than about 2 weeks is just using their watchlist as a kind of stamp album. So I tend to ignore that crowd (even going so far as to explicitly stop and re-launch everything with any watchers at all every 45 days or so). For unwatched listings I randomly select 100-200 out of 4000-5000 active listings that are more than 2 weeks old, stop them, fiddle the prices (randomly up or down; dropping prices does not increase sales any more than raising them does) and some other attributes, and launch them again.
Eventually (because of the Gambler’s Ruin Theorem I guess) prices tend to randomly drop over time.
90% of my sales happen in the first 2-3 days after a listing is launched (or stopped and re-launched), and the vast majority of those happen when I send an offer to somebody who has watched it.
I price accordingly, and it seems to work out to a reasonable rate of sales per day so far.
There are maybe 20 repeat buyers in my follower list, and they all seem to be fine with the process, since what I’m doing is essentially running a very slow, very casual Dutch Auction (dropping prices from an initial high point) over several weeks. They buy when they feel the urge, and often buy several items at once.
I absolutely understand the idea of “technical relisting” being good for alerting earnest watchers, but I’ve never in 20 years (!) had more than 4 people watch a fixed price listing that actually sold. The only place watchers correlate with sales—for me—is in auction listings of recognized collectibles.
Nostalgia Aside: I remember when eBay had Dutch Auctions, I think?
Oh yeah, I firmly subscribe to “watchers don’t matter, only buyers matter”. The thing with eBay is that they have a “shows interest” - like when you send an offer to folks who “show interest” - one doesn’t need to watch an item to get served up an offer for an item [I use a different account normally for researching items I want to sell and never watch those items, but often get offers from sellers because ebay detected that I “showed interest”.
That said, I for sure do watch certain items to see if a buyer will lower the price, send me an offer, as well save searches for things so when a good deal on one pops up, I can buy it [this is for the buyer in me, not the re-seller in me ]
But yes, most of the sales I get happen shortly after listing an item [or re-listing it]. Or making some change it to as I discover I priced an item completely wrong, etc.
100% used to, but the still-buying-but-lying-to-myself rationalization pattern for me lately has been to watch HiBid for estate sales with things I might personally want, and if I see something buy it and some extra for resale
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