This is all nice and informative, but one has to spend to make money. I don't have a marketing degree, but run any business and one will have to read all the ad gimmicks and think of new tricks also. I Have noticed sales decrease since September 2008 on my eBay store while ebay keeps making exemptions as to promotions. Ebay is not all at fault, but did play a big role with the only Paypal policy BS!
The promotional or list for three days in January didn't help since exemptions were placed on collectibles and basically almost every very low dollar category for the January promotion. What also eBay wants people to do is buy into advertising programs to promote. Thyen, restrictions on how to get credits for your listings.
There seems to be a good company called megapromotions.com which costs one $30, but your site is submitted to something like half a million search engines.
Be creative aslo. Nobody said you can't mention coupons in Google Base feeds. Coupons are a good marketing tool, but do take time to word correctly. You don't need a coupon software maker program just something where you can ecport coupons as JPEGs or a PDF. What's nice is you can limit the use in Auctiva Commerce. Just wish the system would generate a random bar code tioed back to one's email address as to people requesting coupons.
Screw eBay and get the e-mail addresses after people win an items. Use a site like evite.com to let people know your out there. It's free by the way and was pretty easy to use.
Best Regards,
Mike