eBay Seller Glossary: Key Terms and Actions Explained (2026)

How to use this glossary

eBay has its own dialect, and most of the confusion sellers run into traces back to a handful of terms nobody explained clearly. A blank item specific tanks your search visibility. A fee you didn't budget for eats your margin. A listing you can't figure out how to end leaves you stuck.

I grouped the terms the way they come up in real selling: what it costs, the data that goes on a listing, the actions you take, how buyers find you, and how your reputation works. Definitions are deliberately short. Where there's a full walkthrough, I point you to it instead of repeating it here.

If you're brand new, start with the broad picture in our guide on how to sell on eBay, then come back here as terms come up.

• Costs and fees — what eBay charges and how to read it
• Listing and item data — the fields that drive search and trust
• Selling actions — the buttons you'll actually press
• Search and visibility — how items get found
• Reputation — feedback, ratings, and seller standing

Costs and fees

Almost every margin mistake I see comes from misreading fees. Know these three before you price anything.

• Final Value Fee (FVF) — eBay's main commission, charged as a percentage of the total sale including shipping and tax, taken when an item sells. The rate varies by category. Full breakdown in our guide on how much eBay takes and the eBay seller fees guide.
• Insertion fee — the cost to create a listing. Most sellers get a monthly batch of free listings; beyond that, eBay charges a small per-listing fee. Covered in the seller fees guide.
• Promoted Listings fee — an optional ad fee you set as a percentage; eBay only charges it when a buyer clicks your ad and buys. It raises visibility at the cost of margin, so treat it as a lever, not a default.
• Store subscription — a monthly fee that lowers your per-item fees and raises your free-listing allotment. Worth it once your volume is high enough; not before.

Listing and item data

This is the section most sellers skip, and it's the one search rewards most. Item specifics are structured fields — eBay (and the buyer's filters) read them directly.

If you'd rather not type these by hand, FlowLister fills item specifics automatically from your photos, including MPN and brand where it can identify them.

• Item specifics — the structured attribute fields on a listing (Brand, Color, Size, Model, etc.). eBay uses them for search filters, so blank or wrong specifics quietly cost you views.
• MPN (Manufacturer Part Number) — the maker's own part/model number for a product. It helps eBay match your item to the right catalog entry and helps buyers searching by exact part. Full guide: What Is an MPN on eBay?
• UPC — the 12-digit barcode number on retail packaging. A product identifier that ties your listing to a known product.
• GTIN — the umbrella term for global trade identifiers (UPC, EAN, ISBN all fall under it). When eBay asks for a GTIN, it's asking for whichever barcode-style number your product has.
• SKU (custom label) — your own internal code to track inventory. eBay doesn't show it to buyers; it's for you.
• Sold comps — the actual sold (not asking) prices of recent matching items. The only honest basis for pricing. See how to see sold items on eBay, and FlowLister prices listings from sold comps automatically.

Selling actions

The verbs of selling — the things you'll do day to day. A couple of these trip people up because eBay's wording is unintuitive.

• List / publish — creating the live listing. FlowLister does this from photos: AI title, price, specifics, shipping, one-click publish.
• End / cancel a listing — taking a listing down before it sells (out of stock, wrong price, sold elsewhere). The exact steps and the gotchas with active bids or watchers are in How to Cancel (End) an eBay Listing.
• Cancel an order — voiding a sale after a buyer has committed, using an eBay-approved reason. Different from ending a listing, and it can affect your metrics if overused.
• Best Offer — an optional setting that lets buyers send you a price; you accept, decline, or counter. Good for items where the right price is fuzzy.
• Auto-accept / auto-decline — thresholds you set so Best Offers above or below a number are handled automatically.
• Relist — putting an unsold or sold-out item back up, often as a fresh listing to reset its search age.

Search and visibility

You can have a perfect item and still sell nothing if no one sees it. These terms govern who finds your listing.

• Cassini — eBay's search engine. It ranks listings on relevance, price competitiveness, listing quality, and your seller performance. Clean titles and complete item specifics are how you feed it. More in our listing optimization guide.
• Watcher — a buyer who clicked 'Add to watchlist' on your item, signaling interest without buying yet. Watchers can hint at demand and are who eBay notifies if you send an offer. Full guide: What Is a Watcher on eBay?
• Promoted Listings — eBay's ad program that pushes your item higher in results for an optional fee (see Costs and fees).
• Title keywords — the searchable words in your 80-character title. The single biggest lever on whether Cassini surfaces you. See our title generator.

Reputation

Trust is currency on eBay. These terms determine whether buyers click 'buy' and whether eBay favors your listings.

• Feedback — the rating and comment a buyer or seller leaves after a transaction. Your feedback score and percentage are the first thing buyers judge. Templates for both sides: eBay Feedback Examples.
• Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs) — anonymous 1-to-5 star ratings buyers leave on shipping speed, item description, and communication.
• Seller level (Top Rated / Above Standard / Below Standard) — eBay's performance tier based on defect rate, late shipments, and cases. Top Rated status can earn fee discounts and a search boost.
• Defect rate — the share of your transactions with a seller-fault problem (cancellations for being out of stock, cases closed without resolution). Keep it low to protect your standing.

Product identifiers compared: MPN vs UPC vs GTIN vs SKU

From a full-time reseller

After years of full-time selling, my honest take is that 90% of the trouble new sellers hit is vocabulary, not effort. They price off asking prices instead of sold comps. They leave item specifics blank because the field looked optional. They panic-cancel an order and dent their metrics when ending the listing was what they meant. None of that is hard once the words click — which is the entire point of this page. Learn the term, follow the link to the deep guide when you need the steps, and you'll stop losing money to things you simply didn't know the name for. The listing busywork — titles, specifics, sold-comp pricing — is what I built FlowLister to handle, but you should still understand every term it's filling in, because that's how you stay in control of your own store.

Sources

• eBay: Selling fees overview
• eBay: Item specifics and product identifiers
• eBay: Feedback for sellers
• eBay: Ending a listing
• eBay: Seller performance standards