How eBay Is Turning Its Back on Small Sellers

By Robert Couture | 10FoldSteel.ca | 10FoldMoto.com

Publish: May 23.2025

From Community to Corporation.

Before 2019, eBay was more than a marketplace — it was a lifeline. I used to pull in around $800 CAD every two weeks, flipping tech, tools, and hard-to-find parts. Combine that with a full-time 9-to-5, and I built everything I own from the ground up — without handouts, without safety nets.

Coming from foster care, I had nothing. No trust fund. No family couch to crash on. Just hustle. eBay was my platform to survive and build a future.

Now it’s 2025. And I’m $20,000 in debt.

Not because I stopped working.

Not because I stopped trying.

But because eBay changed.

It used to be about the underdog. The home seller. The weekend warrior. That messy corner of the internet where people traded knowledge, passion, and real value.

Today? It’s just a second Amazon. Big box companies like Newegg flood the listings. Search results are clogged with mass-produced garbage and inflated “refurb” tech. Corporate sellers dominate with sponsored ads and warehouse stock, pushing real people, small sellers, into obscurity.

Even my own listings get buried, unless I pay to promote them. They want you to pay to show up on your own damn store shelf.

What eBay Used to Be.

eBay used to be cool.

People launched brands from bedrooms. I’ve heard of entire skateboard companies that started by selling decks and tees through eBay listings and message boards. You could sell something niche—like custom decals, used PC parts, or handmade leather gear — and find your people.

It was raw, chaotic, and full of opportunity. Not polished, not optimized. But an Authentic website that felt like looking through an online thrift store, swap meet, or farmers market.

Now? That kind of startup energy doesn’t stand a chance. There’s no way a brand like that gets off the ground today unless they’re ready to shell out for ad space, inventory sync tools, and corporate packaging.

eBay was once the rebel marketplace. Now it’s just… beige.

Bulk Listing Isn’t Gone — Just Buried and Broken.

I just confirmed it myself: eBay’s bulk listing feature is still there, but you’d never know it unless you went digging. It’s hidden so deep in their interface it feels like they don’t want you to find it. And once you do? It’s slow, glitchy, and still freezes your browser if you try to load too many items at once — just like the old days, but worse.

It used to be a powerhouse tool.I could list or edit 100+ items in one sitting and still have time left in the day. Now? It takes hours because I’m constantly battling lag, clunky navigation, and an outdated UI that feels like it's held together with duct tape and sheer willpower.

Why bury one of the most time-saving tools for sellers? Because eBay doesn’t care about efficiency for the little guy anymore — just control and compliance. They don’t want you scaling your shop independently. They want you slow, dependent, and paying fees every step of the way.

Broken Tools, Broken Trust.

eBay’s rot goes deeper than just search rankings. They’ve silently pulled back features that used to help sellers stand out and grow their shops:

• RSS feeds? Dead. No warning, no replacement, no explanation.

• HTML embeds for listings? Unreliable. They barely work anymore.

• API access? A nightmare. You’d think in 2025, you could show your own listings on your own website. But no — their API is buried under layers of OAuth, outdated documentation, and arbitrary limitations.

Trying to build a site around eBay listings today? Good luck. You’ll spend more time fighting their systems than growing your business. We Built Their SEO — And Paid For It Ourselves.

Here’s what nobody talks about: eBay’s reputation, visibility, and dominance in search engines. That’s because of us. The sellers.

We’re the ones who:

• Bought paid ads to drive traffic directly to our eBay listings

• Built our own websites with backlinks pointing to eBay

• Used social media schedulers to promote listings 24/7

• Wrote optimized titles, tags, and product descriptions to boost visibility on eBay and our own websites

• Embedded eBay listings into blogs, YouTube descriptions, forums, and more

That’s strategic backlinking. That’s unpaid SEO labor. That’s thousands of dollars and hours spent, not to grow our brands, but to grow eBay’s authority in the eyes of Google and other search engines.

And what did we get for it?

Higher fees. Worse visibility. Buried listings. Punishment for trying to build off-platform.

eBay owes much of its power to the small sellers who treated it like a business partner, but instead of partnership, we got gatekeeping and suppression. It’s one of the biggest bait-and-switch plays in e-commerce history.

The Cost of Staying.

• Rising fees eat into your margins before a sale even clears.

• Free return policies force small shops to eat shipping costs and deal with dishonest buyers.

• Algorithm changes punish sellers without UPCs or perfect feedback.

• Support? Non-existent unless you're a "Top Rated Seller" — aka a bulk warehouse.

If you’re not running a fulfillment center, you’re disposable.

Penalized for Leaving?

Here’s one of the most frustrating things I’ve experienced as a seller: If you unlist too many items at once, eBay can actually charge you final value fees as if those items were sold, even when they weren’t.

Yep. You read that right.

It happened to me. I unlisted a batch of items — some of it old stock I was retiring, some I was planning to sell elsewhere — and eBay still charged me. They assumed I was selling "offline" and decided they were entitled to a cut.

It’s not just me. Other sellers have reported the same thing.eBay treats it like you’ve cheated them by daring to sell outside their platform, even if you’re just reorganizing or closing out old inventory.

This is the kind of policy that locks sellers in and punishes independence. And if you’re trying to shift your business model, or just take a break from listing? Tough luck. They still want their cut, even when they had nothing to do with the sale.

Afraid of the Competition — From Their Own Sellers.

eBay has this unspoken fear: that sellers might actually succeed without them. That’s why their policies are designed to discourage you from selling on your own website or other platforms. They frame it like you're breaking some kind of trust when really, they’re just worried about missing their cut.

They don’t want sellers to have real freedom. They don’t want you building a brand. They don’t want you sending customers to your own site — like 10FoldSteel.ca — even if it's better for everyone involved.

To them, if the sale doesn’t happen on eBay, it’s a threat. And they’ll find ways to punish you for it.

A New Path.

I didn’t stop selling. I moved.

I’m building a new home for my work at🌐 10FoldSteel.ca and 10FoldMoto.com📸 Tumblr: 10FoldMoto.tumblr.com

It’s not easy. It’s not free. But at least it’s mine.

If you’re like me — burned out, buried, and boxed out of the very platform you helped grow — you’re not alone.

This is what eBay doesn’t want you to see: That small sellers built the marketplace. And now they’re being squeezed out of it.

Final Thoughts.

I’m not asking for pity. I’m asking for awareness. If you’re tired of the way eBay treats the people who made it successful in the first place, speak up. Move your store. Build your site. Support other independents.

Because the only way to fight the algorithm……is to leave the machine.