In This Chapter
Auctiva
InkFrog
Vendio and Vendio Stores
BuyItSellIt Stores
Fast Photo
BidRobot
Auction Wizard 2000
Shooting Star
eBay's Turbo Lister, Selling Manager, and more
Ready to take your sales to the next level? Are you looking for snappy-looking text or fancy layouts to make your auctions scream, "Buy me!"? Need to slip in a bid in the middle of the night without losing sleep? If so, here's a list of ten (or so) programs and services to help put your auctions ahead of the pack and make your bidding life easier. In this chapter I recommend some reliable companies, and many of them offer free solutions!
As online sales grow in popularity, software developers are constantly upgrading and developing new auction and selling software to meet eBay's changes. Many of these programs even look for new versions of themselves — and update themselves as you start them. (Aladdin never had things so good.)
Tip
You absolutely don't have to use any of these programs or services to run eBay sales successfully. However, when you're running more than several auctions a week, the addition of a "helper" makes things go ever so much smoother (especially if it's free or very low cost).
A large amount of companies out there are offering online management service and offline programs. (Let's face it, as long as people will pay they will be happy to have something to sell you.) I can't cover each and every one, so the software that I mention in this chapter has been tried and tested by me. You may know of others, and I'd love to hear about them. I do know that these work and are good tools when you choose to expand your eBay sales.
Listed in this chapter are several auction-management Web sites. Each site has its own distinct personality. I also provide the names of some terrific offline software programs you can use to help manage your auctions, make your e-auctions elegant and eye-catching, find the best prices, and snatch up that bargain at the last minute.
Note
Be sure to check my Web site www.coolebaytools.com for updates on software and services pricing, as well as special discounts that are offered to my readers.
You're comfortable transacting your auctions online, so why not manage them online as well? The sites in this section offer incredibly useful services that save time in both posting your auctions and wrapping them up.
If you're new on eBay and you'd like to try a little automation to get you started, Auctiva is your entry-level choice. Auctiva has been serving eBay sellers since my first edition of eBay For Dummies in 1999. First, let me tell you my favorite part about Auctiva: It's free. That's right, FREE (my favorite four-letter word). Now, I always say you get what you pay for, but with Auctiva you get a bit more than that.
Auctiva offers online item-listing software and image hosting for eBay sellers. The easy-to-use site guides you through the process: creating auction listings, posting them on eBay, communicating with buyers, collecting payments, organizing shipments, keeping records of sales, marketing your listings, and much more.
Here are some of the site's features:
A one-page listing tool: You can create your professional-looking listings with a complete one-page listing tool — and if you like variety, you can choose from 1500 template options.
Unlimited image hosting: Auctiva enables you to upload hundreds of images at a time, and you can keep your account organized by managing your images within Auctiva's online folder structure.
Auctiva Scrolling Gallery: You may have noticed that at the bottom of many listing you see on eBay, there is a scrolling gallery showing other items for sale by the seller. This is an excellent tool for selling even more merchandise.
Profiles: After you generate your profile information, your Auctiva profile is set to automatically appear in all your listings by default.
For these features and more, visit the Auctiva Web site at www.auctiva.com.
InkFrog is a Web-based service founded by Tomas Salas and Greg Sisung. They've been helping eBay sellers since 1999. In 2006 InkFrog bought out another respected service, SpareDollar. InkFrog represents a super bargain in a Web-based management service. The best part about its service is that you pay a flat monthly fee of only $9.95. With its easy-to-use service, little guys can get the same benefits as large-volume sellers — and pay smaller fees.
You can manage every aspect of your eBay sales, including image hosting, ad design, automated e-mail management, and report tracking. If you want to get fancy, you can design your item listing from any of its templates. Here are some more features:
Image hosting: InkFrog hosts your images and has a handy uploader that allows you to insert your images with a click of your mouse.
One-step lister: Create your listings (with as many images as you want) using a simple form. InkFrog also lets you schedule your listings to start at a future time at no additional cost.
Checkout system and tracking: InkFrog has a checkout system that integrates with eBay's checkout system. You can track which items need to be paid, which items need to be shipped, and which of your customers need feedback left. You can then update these items in bulk. You can also automatically send custom e-mails to your customers.
For more information, and even more features, visit the InkFrog Web site at www.inkfrog.com.
Vendio was one of eBay's first providers in 1999 and has been serving over a million sellers since. These sellers have sold over $15 billion in merchandise to nearly 300 million buyers. Vendio is a major provider of services that help e-commerce merchants on eBay, Amazon, and many other sites reach consumers, manage transactions, and profitably grow their businesses.
You can buy some or all of Vendio services (kind of like a Chinese restaurant). Here are just a few of their many applications:
Buyer appreciation: This automates the process of personalized customer communication. The first time a customer bids or buys, they send a thank you e-mail. Best of all? This service is free.
Counters: This free service from Vendio will let you see the number of visitors to your item, as well the total number of bids. Er, by the way, this is also free.
Image hosting: Store your images on their site. Pricing starts at $3.00 a month for up to 3MB of storage (you really don't need more).
Research: Study what's going on in the market. See what's selling. This service keeps you up with what the competition is doing. Feature analysis and more is available for $20.00 a month.
Free stores: Yes, you read it right, Free! Vendio offers you a free professional online store that's easy to set up. No image fees for stores, no final value fees, no listing fees, no hosting fee. Completely free! (But do yourself a favor, and study my books before you launch a store.)
Free Gallery Pro:. Readers of this book get a great free service from Vendio, their Gallery Pro. This service gives you a small bit of text that you add to your listings that displays a scrolling gallery of your items for sale when someone views one of your listings. It is said that it will help increase hits by 50 percent and sell-through by up to 18 percent. You can also specify the order in which specific items appear. To get this free offer, email [email protected] with your request.
The main Vendio service is a robust listing, inventory, and business management platform. With their site you can manage each step of the online sales cycle: inventory management, marketing, fulfillment, customer communications, and more. This costs only $10.00 a month, plus a percentage of your sales.
To view all their offerings, go to www.vendio.com.
You want to start small? You can at Buyitsellit. When you're ready to set up your own full-featured Web store, Buyitsellit will give you one for only $9.95 a month. You get 100MB of file storage, custom templates, and a custom domain. They offer a dashboard where you can run your store with real-time traffic statistics. They even offer a starter store, where you can list ten items for free. If you'd like to give it a try, visit www.buyitsellit.com.
If your photos need a touch up to make them Web ready and PhotoShop is too expensive and complex (it really is for eBay purposes), you might be happy giving Fast Photos by Pixby Software a try. It's a simple, all-in-one photo-editing program designed especially for e-commerce and eBay sellers. The developer of the software knew exactly what processes online sellers need for their images and included just those — and nothing else. There are tools for cropping, JPEG compression, sharpening, resizing, enhancing, rotating, and adding watermark text and borders.
The software is a PC application that runs on Vista, Windows XP, 2000, ME, and 98 SE. For a 21-day free trial, visit their Web site at www.pixby.com/marshacollier.
As you can tell by reading Chapter 7, I'm a big fan of sniping. It's my favorite way to win an auction. It makes the entire auction experience even more entertaining. Sadly, with the schedule I keep, I am rarely at my computer when the auctions close!
BidRobot to the rescue. When I find an auction that I'm serious about, I simply go to the BidRobot Web site, log in, and place my future snipe bids. All I have to do is type the item number and my high bid, and that's it. I can shut off my computer knowing that BidRobot will do my bidding for me. Nobody on eBay will know what item I'm desperate to have, because the magical BidRobot doesn't place my bid until a few seconds before the auction closes. If I'm the high bidder, no one will have the chance to bid against me!
BidRobot's services are reasonably priced, based on the amount of time that you want to use the service. As of this writing, BidRobot has placed bids for more than 100,000 eBay users since 1998! You pay a flat rate for all the snipes you can handle. You don't pay any extra charges for the service. For a free trial, visit BidRobot's Web site at this special URL for my readers www.bidrobot.com/cool.
Software for offline use can handily reside on your computer after a simple download from a Web site. As with online services, this software comes in a variety of flavors, so take a look and decide which program works best for you. Downloadable software may be available from Web sites that offer other services and can be used whether you are online or not. Offline software enables you to handle auctions in your spare time, without the limitations of ISPs or servers.
Auction Wizard 2000 is a full-service professional management software package developed by eBay sellers. The software is fairly simple and amazingly powerful. It expedites all the seller functions for running and completing eBay sales, including automating the following tasks:
Inputting your inventory on the software's HTML templates and uploading auctions in bulk onto eBay.
Automatically updating the software with the current status of your auctions, including who won, who is a runner-up, and the auction bidding history. The preformatted e-mail and feedback files automatically fill in the values from each auction and send them to the people you do business with directly through the software.
Tracking income and expenses, as well as creating a full set of reports.
If you choose to become a Trading Assistant — that is, sell items for other people — Auction Wizard 2000 has a separate tracking area where you can keep track of your consignment sales by consignee. It even computes the fees that you're charging for your services. They charge $100.00 for the first year, and $50.00 for annual renewal.
Download a fully functional 60-day test drive with no inactive features and no restrictions from www.auctionwizard2000.com.
A super desktop software from Foodogsoftware, Shooting Star works for sellers on multiple eBay sites: the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Download the software to your computer, install it, and you're set to perform all listing and management procedures without being online. Check out the e-commerce software, which is available for $120.00, at www.foodogsoftware.com.
When the users call, eBay answers! As eBay grew, the need for additional services and software also grew. eBay answered the need with Turbo Lister software and its PowerSeller program. Read on to see how these services tailored for the eBay user may benefit you.
Turbo Lister is free software that enables you to upload many auctions simultaneously. I use it regularly to set up my listings. After you prepare your auctions offline, the software uploads your auctions to eBay with just the click of a button. You can edit, preview, and (when you're ready) launch all your auctions at once, or schedule them to launch at different times (which costs you $0.10 for each scheduled auction). Your items can include eBay's templates, and the items will remain archived on your computer for later use. The software is convenient and simple to use even if you have only a few items at one time — although Turbo Lister will let you launch thousands of listings at a time! The program is free, and you can download it at pages.ebay.com/turbo_lister.
I have used Selling Manager Pro for my eBay sales for many years, and I find it to be a convenient way to quickly relist singly (or in bulk), track the progress of my sales, send bulk e-mails, leave feedback, and keep track of what has and hasn't sold.
You also get a nice selection of reports to help you keep track of how your listings are performing. This way you can tell whether your sales are on-target or not. As you can see from Figure 20-1, Selling Manager (or Selling Manager Pro) replaces the All Selling page of My eBay. This thorough data is updated automatically from eBay's servers and PayPal, so you have up-to-the-minute info.
Selling Manager is free to all sellers but you must request the feature. The Pro version, which adds inventory management and reporting features, is tailored to high-volume sellers, and costs $15.99 a month. Both versions are available at pages.ebay.com/selling_manager/.
eBay offers an elite club for PowerSellers who fulfill the following requirements:
Be an active eBay member for at least 90 days
Sell a minimum of $1,000 or 100 items per month for 3 consecutive months, or sell a minimum of $12,000 or 1,200 items for the prior 12 months
Have a minimum overall feedback rating of 100
Maintain at least a 98 feedback percentage
Keep your eBay account current
Comply with all eBay policies
Maintain a rating of 4.5 or higher for the past 12 months in all four Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs)
Run your business by upholding eBay's community values
No, you don't need to wear an ugly tie. PowerSellers get a special icon next to their user IDs on the eBay site, thereby giving potential bidders the assurance that they're dealing with a seller of good repute who stands behind each sale. PowerSellers who meet or exceed eBay's requirements also get the following benefits:
Bronze level and higher ($1,000 in gross monthly sales or 100 items a month) gets you a PowerSeller logo posted on the site next to your user ID. You also have access to a private PowerSeller discussion board and have 24/7 e-mail tech support with a very fast response time.
Silver level ($3,000 average in monthly gross sales or 300 items a month) gets you the benefits of the Bronze level, plus a toll-free phone number for priority support during business hours.
Gold level ($10,000 average in monthly gross sales or 1,000 items a month) gets you the benefits of the Silver level, plus a dedicated account manager and a dedicated support hot line, 24/7!
Platinum level ($25,000 average month in gross sales or 2,500 items a month) gets you Gold level benefits, plus I'll bet you get quicker callbacks from your account manager than at the Gold level.
Titanium level ($150,000 average month in gross sales or 15,000 items a month) probably gets you a whole lot of special attention!
Diamond level ($500,000 average month in gross sales). At this level, I don't think they care how many items you sell, but I'll bet they will be supernice to you.
There are many more benefits to becoming a PowerSeller. It's something important to aim for, but start slow and hone your selling skills. You'll get there soon enough. If you feel that you qualify for eBay's PowerSellers service (eBay knows who you are!), apply at pages.ebay.com/services/buyandsell/welcome.html.
For experienced eBay sellers who have a feedback rating of 97 percent or more, the Trading Assistant program is the place to be! This is where you can register to sell items for others who don't have the time or inclination to learn how to sell on eBay.
People with items to sell go to pages.ebay.com/tahub/ and search for Trading Assistants by zip or area code. After their search, they're presented with a list of sellers who are ready and willing to sell their goods (that's you, right?). Take a look at some of the sellers in your area who act as Trading Assistants to get an idea of what you should charge for your services. For full information, go to ebaytradingassistant.com/.