Had links to photos hosted on another site and they were working fine for days but now seem to have disappeared? Is this normal? Do ebay just break the link because you haven't paid to use their photo upload or am i being paranoid?

listing here ( i dont think anyone will be remotely interested in the product or i wouldnt link to it) and when i go to revise it the preview doesn't show up the pics like it did when i first listed it

There must be ways of getting around it, plenty of people do it and getaway with it, but I think you are correct in your assumption, you're avoiding paying for extra pics.