We are making some important updates to the Rewards Store today to ensure that Listia can continue to provide great new items to all members in a fair and fun way. A summary of the changes is listed below, but we encourage everyone to continue reading this entire post to fully understand the reasons for the necessary updates:

1. Rewards Store items are being simplified into three different categories:
   • Staff Picks: Great new items shipped to you by Best Buy and Walmart (items previously found under other categories will be located here)
   • Listia Goods & Gear: Listia swag, including t-shirts, mugs, stickers and coins
   • Amazon Gift Cards: Official Amazon.com gift card codes, delivered digitally
2. Most items, including all items sold through “Staff Picks,” will now be auctions that do not include a Get It Now (GIN)

The shift from GIN only items to regular auctions is the change that has the largest impact on Listia members. Since the Rewards Store first launched over two years ago, most of the items on the store have been available to Listia members through a fixed price (no bidding, just a GIN option). It was introduced as a nice benefit of being an active seller on Listia, and we felt that having GIN as the only option made buying from the store both quick and easy. It started off at a small scale, and the store was nearly always full of great products, and everything seemed fine.

In the span of the last several months though, we’ve noticed that items began to sell out extremely quickly (Can you imagine someone winning a 3-piece luggage set within 30 seconds of it being listed? It happens.) The Rewards Store started to look very sparse, and at times was completely sold out. An easy solution would have been to simply list more and more items, but as you can imagine, that would quickly become too costly for Listia to maintain.

There are two main reasons why the Rewards Store started to sell out:

1. The Listia community is growing, and that means more members are using the Rewards Store as a great way to spend their credits.
2. Items in the store were often priced much lower than what they would sell for on the rest of the site. In many situations, winning an item on the Rewards Store could be considered a steal, and who doesn’t love a great deal?

Over the last two years, we’ve steadily grown the Rewards Store. We’ve also changed the Get It Now amounts a few times to make the items priced more accurately. Those actions weren’t quite enough to keep the Rewards Store in a state where enough members could participate in a casual, stress-free way though. Hearing members’ stories about needing to refresh the Rewards Store constantly to immediately “snipe” something that gets listed is one of the things that keeps us up at night!

A few answers to some of the questions you may all have:

How long will the auctions be live for?
We are starting off with 5 day auctions, which we feel is short of enough to keep things exciting, but also long enough to make sure everyone gets a chance to see it. Items will be starting and ending daily, so keep your eyes peeled!

Will things get more expensive?
Since Listia will no longer set the price of most Rewards Store items, the bidding will behave just like any other auction on Listia. It’s hard to say if specific items will tend to sell for more or less credits, but in general you should see prices more accurately reflect their fair market value.

Our goal with today’s changes is to keep the Rewards Store as an enjoyable and rewarding place for our members to use their credits. While we are sad to see the GIN option go, we feel that it is a necessary step to make sure the store stays up-and-running for all members. Also, by having Rewards Store items as auctions with no starting bid and no GIN, everyone can place a bid early to have their opportunity at winning. As a separate measure, we will be increasing our focus on keeping the items as fresh as possible!

Thank you all for continuing to be a part of the Listia community!

Listia Stories features you, and all of the Listia community members. Tell us about the friendships you’ve made, or why you love Listia. Members whose stories are published here on the blog receive a unique Listia All-Star Badge, 5 Listia stickers which will arrive in the mail & 100 bonus credits deposited into your Listia account. Email your entries to Ilove@listia.com.

 (drinxx) I joined Listia in 2010 and have to say, it is a wonderful community of buyers and sellers alike. The best part about Listia is that any of the listed items can be gotten for free!! Sure, you might have to list a few items of your own, or earn free credits by completing surveys or tasks to get what you want, but it is ALWAYS worth the effort. So many great things to win on Listia. In addition, I also love the raffles and the fact that Listia offers ways to donate to charities as well. It’s been an all-around awesome experience and I hope to be here for a long time to come. Thanks Listia!! 🙂

 (amystahl94) After being a member on Listia for almost two years, I am writing this letter out of much happiness and joy. I have gained three friendships from this site and would like to thank you and them. I also have 100% feedback which means so much to me. Last year my son was very sick and to keep him calm, we decided to scrapbook. Since we couldn’t get to stores (because he was hospitalized) we got our stickers from Listia. It really helped him and when his spirits were low, we used to take out all the beautiful scrapbooking supplies and start scrapbooking! I am happy to say that with his new medication, he is doing much better. He still loves to scrapbook and loves all the stickers that we got. Whatever we get on Listia is a treasure.

(KariLody) I signed up on Listia a few years ago but I didn’t understand what it was all about, so I didn’t do anything. Then, the beginning of this year, I needed a lot of craft supplies (stickers, paper, etc.) for my scrapbooking hobby.  As usual, my husband said “it’s a waste of money, sell some of this stuff we have around the house on eBay instead”!  Well, I tend to agree that hobbies can be expensive, but I dislike eBay and all their rules.  Around that time, a friend of mine told me about Listia.  I went to sign up but noticed I was already a member!  From that day on, I was able to get rid of many things that have been accumulating around this house lately, and, I was able to stock up on hundreds of dollars of scrapbooking supplies, for FREE!!

As the Listia community grows, we need to continually evolve and improve our rules and policies to protect members and create as safe and enjoyable a marketplace as possible.  Today we’re introducing some more specific guidelines surrounding how shipping payments should be made between buyer and seller when auctions have fixed or flat rate shipping.

The updates can be read in their entirety on our Rules and Listia Assurance pages, but below is a summary:

1. Shipping payments are now limited to PayPal, Google Wallet, check, money order and cash.
2. Sellers can specify which of the above methods they support in their listing, but may not add additional payment methods not allowed by Listia, and may not specify “Cash Only” (sellers must accept at least one of the other methods as well).
3. When sending payment through PayPal, Google Wallet, check or money order, your credits are now protected by Listia Assurance in the event there’s a problem with the shipping payment being received.

While we always encourage sellers to offer free shipping, we understand that it is not suitable for all sellers and all items.  For these situations, we hope that these updates make both paying for and receiving shipping payments as simple and worry-free as possible!

(zekrom2419) Listia is so awesome! It’s so cool to know that you can actually win free stuff! It’s also cool to earn badges. I can earn credits by listing stuff and even doing surveys. I love Listia.com; it’s the world to me. It’s one of those sites where you try to sleep at night and you just can’t so you run into walls, doors and everything just to check out how many credits or comments you got. Listia is the answer to all your needs. Go ahead and check out Listia.com!

(kkmemories) I have been a member of Listia for almost 3 years now and I have loved the site ever since I found it. I was especially thankful for the site this past Christmas. I had to have surgery in November which put me out of work for a period of time and my husband is disabled so money got kinda tight. Thanks to Listia and all the wonderful members, I was able to get some really great gifts and not have to stress about the money. So, I just wanted to say thank you for helping my family to have a really nice Christmas.