Listing expiry and renewal

Expiry keeps your marketplace fresh. Old listings for things that sold long ago put buyers off, so most marketplaces take listings offline after 30, 60 or 90 days and let sellers renew the ones that are still current.

You can expire listings in two ways:

• After a fixed number of days, the same for every listing.
• On a date the seller chooses, with a special custom field.

Expire listings after a number of days

1. In the admin panel, go to Listings › Settings.
2. In Posting, enter the number of days in Listing Expiration Date. Enter 0 for listings that never expire.
3. Decide whether sellers may renew: switch Allow Listing Reactivation on or off.
4. Click Save changes in the bar at the bottom.

The days count from the listing’s publication date. For a listing you approved in moderation, that is the day you approved it.

What happens when a listing expires

When	What happens
The moment it passes its expiry	It disappears from lists, search results and the home page.
Two days before it expires	The seller gets the ad-to-expire email, with a link to edit the listing.
Each morning	Listings past their expiry are set to Unavailable and each seller gets the ad-expired email, with links to edit and to reactivate the listing.

You can change the wording of both emails in your email templates. In All listings, the Not expired and Expired filters show which listings are which.

Renewing an expired listing

Who	How
The seller	The reactivate link in the email, or Activate the listing in My Listings. Only works when Allow Listing Reactivation is on and you don’t use a moderation mode.
You	Activate in Listings › All listings, at any time.

A renewed listing gets today’s date as its new publication date, so it runs for a full period again and appears among the newest listings.

If you sell bring to top, sellers can also pay to move a listing that is still live back to the top. See Featured listings and bring to top.

Let sellers choose the expiry date

For events, job vacancies or rentals, the right end date depends on the listing. A custom field named expiresat lets sellers pick it.

1. Go to Listings › Custom Fields and click New field.
2. Enter expiresat as the Name (exactly that, it can’t be changed later).
3. Choose Date as the Type, and a Label such as Show until.
4. Switch on Required if every listing must have an end date.
5. Click Create field.

From then on, each listing stops showing on the date the seller picked (it is visible up to the day before), and is set to Unavailable the following morning.

Before you change the number of days

Changing Listing Expiration Date applies to every listing at once, old ones included, not only to new ones.

• Shortening it (or switching it on for the first time) immediately hides every listing older than the new limit, and the next morning they are all set to Unavailable and every one of their sellers gets an ad-expired email.
• Lengthening it brings back listings that were hidden but not yet set to Unavailable. Listings already set to Unavailable stay offline until they are reactivated.

If you have many listings, check how many are older than the new limit before you save, and warn your sellers.

Related guides

• Publishing options — the other posting settings.
• Custom fields — how custom fields work.
• Listings disappeared — expiry is a common reason.
• Email templates — edit the expiry emails.