eBay Promotions Manager Rules for Markdown Sales: How to Run a Black Friday Sale in 2026

eBay’s markdown sales run on a handful of rules: a discount of 5% to 80%, a sale of up to 45 days, an eBay Store subscription, and the 14-day rule, which skips any listing whose price changed in the last 14 days. Break one of them and your Black Friday sale launches with half your listings missing. This guide puts every rule in one place, compares eBay’s 6 seller promotion tools, and shows which one to use, and when, for Black Friday (November 27, 2026) and Cyber Monday (November 30).

Key takeaways

• Promotions Manager is now called Discounts Manager. eBay renamed it on July 8, 2024. Markdown Manager is the older name for its sale events.
• You need an eBay Store to use sale events, coded coupons, order discounts, volume pricing and shipping discounts. Sending offers to watchers works without a Store.
• Markdown sale events take 5%–80% off fixed-price listings, run up to 45 days (30 by default) and show a strikethrough “Was” price in search.
• Don’t change prices in the 14 days before your sale. Listings with a recent price change are skipped.
• Offers to watchers must be at least 5% below Buy It Now, go to up to 30 interested buyers and last 96 hours on ebay.com.
• eBay fees apply to the discounted price, so each promotion has a break-even discount. In our dropshipping examples it ranges from 9% to 50%, so check every item before Black Friday.

eBay Discounts Manager: the 6 promotion tools compared

For Black Friday, most sellers need two of them: a sale event for the strikethrough price in search, and offers to watchers to convert buyers who are already interested. The rest raise order value.

Tool	What the buyer sees	Discount rules	Store needed?	Best for Black Friday
Sale event (markdown)	Strikethrough “Was” price and % off in search, on the listing and at checkout	5%–80% off, or an amount off; up to 45 days	Yes	Traffic from search on Cyber Week
Coded coupon	Banner “Extra $5 off with code…” (public) or a code you share yourself (private)	Amount or % off, multi-item offers; budget, minimum spend, uses per buyer	Yes	Email, social and repeat buyers
Order discount	“Extra 15% off when you buy 3 or more” on the listing and in the cart	Spend, quantity or buy one get one; up to 500 items by ID, more by rules	Yes	Raising order value with accessories
Volume pricing	Price tiers for 2, 3 and 4+ units on the listing	Up to 3 tiers, no gaps; up to 500 items by ID	Yes	Consumables and multi-packs
Shipping discount	Free or cheaper shipping above a threshold	Order value or quantity minimum	Yes	Pushing carts over a free-shipping line
Send offers to buyers	A private offer in the buyer’s messages	At least 5% below Buy It Now; up to 30 recent watchers or cart buyers; valid 96 hours	No	Converting watchers on Black Friday

All Discounts Manager tools are free: eBay charges no fee per discount, and its usual fees apply to the discounted price.

Which discounts stack?

• Coupons stack with sale events and shipping discounts.
• Coupons don’t stack with order discounts or volume pricing.
• When several discounts apply, the buyer gets the best one.
• Best Offer and offers to buyers come first. If an offer is accepted, a coupon can’t be applied to that purchase.

eBay Promotions Manager rules for markdown sales

These are the rules that decide whether a listing makes it into your sale event. eBay spreads them across its help pages, Seller Center, its export guide and its developer docs; here they are in one table.

Rule	Limit	Source
Who can use it	eBay Store subscribers	eBay Help, Seller Center
Seller standing	Above Standard or Top Rated; sales can be rejected below standard	Web Retailer
Listing format	Fixed price with Buy It Now; no auctions	Seller Center
Discount	5%–80% off, an amount off, or “Sale Event Only” with no extra discount	eBay export guide
Duration	Up to 45 days; 30 days by default; start and end times in 1-hour steps	eBay developer docs, export guide
Price history	Same price for 14 days before the sale starts (the 14-day rule)	Web Retailer, eBay Community
Items per sale	Up to 10,000 listings; up to 500 when you paste item IDs or SKUs	Seller Center, developer docs
Minimum Advertised Price	Items under MAP can’t get strikethrough pricing	Seller Center
Editing after launch	You can change the end date, the name and the items, not the discount value	eBay Help
When the sale ends	Prices go back to the original price; this can take several hours	Seller Center
Cost	Free; normal eBay fees apply to the sale price	eBay developer docs

The 14-day rule, explained

eBay shows a “Was” price only if it was the real price. So a listing joins a markdown sale only if its price hasn’t changed in the 14 days before the sale starts. If it has, the listing shows as “Skipped: Recent price change” in the sale’s status report. For Black Friday that means:

• Freeze prices by November 13, 2026 for a sale that starts on November 27. For a Cyber Week sale starting November 24, freeze them by November 10.
• A listing can go straight from one sale into another, as long as its base price hasn’t changed.
• In the sale setup, eBay offers a checkbox to keep items in the sale and block price revisions. Turn it on, or a repricing tool can knock items out of your sale mid-event.

How to create a markdown sale in Seller Hub

1. Open Discounts. In Seller Hub, go to the Marketing tab, then Discounts, and choose Sale event under the Create button.
2. Set the discount type. Choose Percentage off, Amount off or Sale event only, and enter a value between 5% and 80%. Tick the box that keeps items in the sale and blocks price revisions.
3. Set the dates. The default is 30 days from today; the maximum is 45. Use Customize time to start at a set hour, for example 12:00 a.m. Pacific on Black Friday.
4. Name the sale. Buyers see this name, so make it specific: “Black Friday: 25% off LED decor”.
5. Select inventory. Pick specific items, upload item IDs, choose eBay or Store categories, or select all inventory. Filter by price range, condition and category.
6. Launch. Select Launch, or Save for later to keep a draft. The sale then appears under Marketing > Discounts, where you can track its sales.

eBay’s own tip: don’t put your whole store on sale. A sale on one category or theme, like “LED Christmas lights”, converts better than 2,000 discounted items.

How to create a coded coupon

Go to Marketing > Discounts > Create > Coupon. Enter a code (up to 15 characters), choose amount off, percentage off or a multi-item offer, and set the minimum spend, the maximum uses per buyer and a total budget. Choose Public to show the coupon on eBay, or Private to share the code only with your own buyers. When the budget runs out, the coupon stops showing.

How to send offers to watchers on eBay

1. Go to Seller Hub > Listings > Active and select Send offers – Eligible.
2. Select the listings and choose Send offers.
3. Pick a discount of at least 5% below the Buy It Now price. Shipping isn’t included.
4. Add a short message and select Send offers.

The offer goes to the 30 most recent interested buyers: people who watch the item or had it in their cart. It’s valid for 96 hours on ebay.com, or until the item sells. A buyer must have had the item in their cart for at least 2 days to get an offer. You can also turn on automatic offers so eBay sends them for you.

Black Friday 2026: which promotion to run when

Run one markdown sale for Cyber Week, send offers to watchers on Black Friday, and save the coupon for after Cyber Monday.

• November 10–24: freeze prices. No price changes on items you plan to put on sale. Build the sale event as a draft and pick the items.
• November 24–30: markdown sale event. Launch at a set hour with Customize time. Group items by margin: 15–20% off for thin margins, 25–30% for items that can afford it.
• November 27: offers to watchers. Send offers on Black Friday morning, 5–10% below the sale price. They’re valid 96 hours, so they cover the weekend and expire on December 1.
• November 30: Cyber Monday. Check stock on your best sellers and end the sale on items that sold out.
• December 1–14: coupon for repeat buyers. A private coupon by email or a printed card in the box, with a budget, keeps sales going until Christmas shipping cutoffs.

How deep can your markdown go? The break-even discount

eBay charges its 13.6% final value fee (plus $0.40 per order) on the sale price plus tax, not on the original price. So the deepest discount you can afford is: Break-even discount = 1 − (Cost + $0.40) ÷ (Price × (1 − (13.6% + ad rate) × 1.08)) The 1.08 is an 8% sales tax; use your buyers’ average. Promoted Listings ad fees are charged on the same total, so add your ad rate to the 13.6%.

Adobe expects peak holiday discounts of 18–30% depending on the category, up to 30% over Cyber Week. Three of our four dropshipped items can match that and stay profitable; the fog machine can’t. At 20% off it already loses $2.30 a sale.

Item	10% off	20% off	30% off	Break-even, with a 5% ad rate
Skull prisoner prop ($40.84)	$13.97	$10.48	$7.00	46.7%
450-LED spider web lights ($45.98)	$14.91	$10.99	$7.07	44.5%
8 ft inflatable ghosts ($67.94)	$16.77	$10.98	$5.18	34.8%
700W fog machine ($49.95)	$1.96	−$2.30	−$6.56	8.8%

Profit per sale after eBay fees, without ads. Product prices come from our Halloween margin check.

Markdown sales for dropshippers: three rules that protect your margin

A markdown sale on items you don’t stock has one extra risk: the supplier price can move after the sale starts. On Black Friday, Amazon and Walmart prices change daily, and your sale price stays fixed for the whole event.

1. Discount from a margin, not from a price. Set each item’s sale discount below its break-even, minus a buffer of 5–10 points for supplier price swings.
2. Freeze prices for 14 days, but keep watching costs. The 14-day rule means you can’t reprice right before the sale. If a supplier raises its price during that window, pull the item from the sale instead of selling it at a loss.
3. Prefer offers and coupons for thin-margin items. An offer to watchers or a private coupon reaches fewer buyers than a storewide markdown, so a supplier price jump costs you less.

Where Easync fits in

The hard part of running sales as a dropshipper is the work around them: knowing your real cost on every item, and catching the supplier change that turns a sale into a loss. Easync automates that part:

• Price and stock monitoring 24/7. Easync tracks your supplier prices and stock on Amazon, Walmart and AliExpress, so you know which items can take a 25% markdown today and which can’t.
• Repricing by your margin rules. Outside sale events, Easync keeps each eBay price at the profit margin you set. Plan your price changes so they land more than 14 days before a sale, then let the sale run.
• Out-of-stock protection. When a supplier sells out, Easync updates the eBay listing, so your Black Friday sale doesn’t collect orders you can’t ship.
• Automatic orders and tracking. Every sale is ordered from the supplier with the buyer’s address, and tracking goes to eBay. A Cyber Week spike doesn’t turn into late shipments.

Why your eBay markdown sale isn’t working

Problem	Likely cause	Fix
Listings show “Skipped: Recent price change”	The price changed in the 14 days before the sale	Keep the price unchanged for 14 days, then add the item again
You can’t find Sale event in Seller Hub	No eBay Store subscription	Subscribe to a Store; offers to watchers work without one
The sale is stuck in Pending or rejected	Seller level below Above Standard	Fix late shipments and defects first; contact eBay if it stays pending
Auctions aren’t in the sale	Sale events work only with fixed-price Buy It Now listings	Use a coupon or switch the item to fixed price
You can’t change the discount	eBay doesn’t allow editing the discount after launch	End the sale and create a new one, or change the end date
Prices didn’t return after the sale	Reverting takes up to several hours	Wait; check again the next day

FAQ

What are eBay’s rules for markdown sales?

You need an eBay Store and fixed-price listings. The discount must be 5%–80% (or an amount off), the sale can last up to 45 days, and each listing must keep the same price for 14 days before the sale starts. One sale event can include up to 10,000 listings.

What is the 14-day rule on eBay?

A listing can join a markdown sale only if its price hasn’t changed in the 14 days before the sale starts. Otherwise it’s skipped with the status “Recent price change”. The rule makes sure the crossed-out “Was” price is a real price.

Is Promotions Manager the same as Discounts Manager?

Yes. eBay renamed Promotions Manager to Discounts Manager on July 8, 2024. Markdown Manager is the older name for what’s now called a sale event.

Do I need an eBay Store to run a sale?

For sale events, coupons, order discounts, volume pricing and shipping discounts, yes. To send offers to watchers or use Best Offer, no.

How do I send offers to watchers on eBay?

In Seller Hub, go to Listings > Active, select Send offers – Eligible, choose the listings and a discount of at least 5% below Buy It Now, then send. eBay sends it to the 30 most recent watchers or cart buyers, and the offer lasts 96 hours on ebay.com.

Do eBay discounts cost anything?

No. Discounts Manager is free. eBay’s normal final value fee is charged on the discounted sale price.

How long can an eBay sale last?

Up to 45 days. The default is 30 days. To run longer, start a new sale when the current one ends.

Can I combine a markdown sale with a coupon?

Yes. Coupons stack with sale events and shipping discounts, but not with order discounts or volume pricing. When discounts overlap, the buyer gets the best one.

Your Black Friday sale in five steps

Freeze prices by November 13, calculate each item’s break-even discount, run a sale event on the items that can afford it, send offers to watchers on Black Friday, and keep a coupon for repeat buyers. If you dropship, keep supplier prices and stock in sync with Easync so your discounts stay profitable through Cyber Monday. Try Easync free for 7 days.