Online tools for the eBay seller
After Amazon experienced some difficulties last week with its selling options in the Amazon Marketplace, it made me wonder if anyone decided to start selling some of their merchandise on eBay. If so, they would join thousands of others who are using the online auction site to make a few extra bucks. If that's your goal, check out some of these services for eBay sellers.
eBay tools
Auctiva Auctiva is a full-featured product that allows you to use a variety of templates and modules to help you sell products more effectively on eBay.
Auctiva is quite powerful. You can create side-scrolling galleries with pictures you upload to the site (you're allowed 1GB of storage), change the color of your listing page, and issue invoices. It won't help you determine if you're selling products that eBay users want, but it will help you easily manage your auctions. Admittedly, Auctiva is for active sellers, but at $9.95 per month for so many nice features, it's an affordable offering.
Auctiva helps you add inventory and track it on the site.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)eBay Market Researcher Terapeek's eBay Market Researcher tool is a fine way to determine how to get the most out of your listing.
After you sign up for the site and choose a membership (it costs $24.95 per month or $197.95 per year), you can immediately start searching through the app's listings of eBay products. When you find the product you're looking to sell, it provides you with information on the item's average bid, how much the average listing makes, and how page design affected profits. The app even provides you with information on which day is best to list the product and end your auction. It's a powerful tool.
eBay Market Researcher provides you with a variety of research tools.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)HammerTap HammerTap is another eBay market research tool that provides basic information, like the number of active item's listings, how many times a product has sold, and the average sales price of those auctions. One of the app's nicest features is its "will it sell?" offering, which displays a scale, showing the percentage chance of the product selling on eBay.
HammerTap is a useful tool, but beware that it costs $19.95 per month after a 10-day free trial.
HammerTap features the number of listings and the keywords matching your query.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)ListingTicker ListingTicker is a simple tool that helps you post all your listings on your blog or Web site. The site asks you to input your eBay user ID. It then creates a widget to be placed on your site. It shows all your auctions that will be ending soon. It also provides your site's visitors with a search box in case they want to find something else.
ListingTicker will show all your recent listings.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Photoblat Photoblat is a neat utility if you want to save some money on adding photos to your eBay listings. The site allows you to upload photos to the service. From there, you can add those photos to your eBay listings page through tools like eBay's Blackthorne Pro. All the photos are hosted on the Photoblat site. Photoblat charges $3.99 per month for access to its service.
Photoblat allows you to upload images in no time.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Selling Manager eBay's Selling Manager app is installed into the My eBay section of a seller's listing page. The app allows you to manage all your listings in one place. You can also create customized e-mail templates to send to buyers who won your auction. If the buyer doesn't pay, it automatically relists your item. If you want all these options, you'll be forced to pay $15.99 per month. The free version of the Web-based app will let you create a professional listing and edit your listings in bulk.
Selling Manager lets you relist items quickly.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Toolhaus Toolhaus is a service that allows you to see the reliability of an eBay user. It lists all the feedback the user has received, including both positive and negative reviews. It's not the most useful app in this roundup, since it basically lists information you'll find on eBay, but it does come in handy when you want to quickly determine if you can trust users.
Toolhaus displays how users view you.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Vendio Vendio is an online shopping platform. If you want to sell products on your site, it will help you out. But Vendio's real value is in its marketplace tools that help you improve your listings on eBay.
Vendio's listing-creation tool lets you display images, set up promotions, and track all the items that were sold on eBay. The site also tracks customers, displaying their name, the last time they purchased products from you, when they bought those products, and more. Vendio is free to use, but it takes up to 1.95 percent of your sales that are generated through the service.
Vendio lets you create a store in no time.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)My top 3
1. Auctiva: with so many options and a relatively affordable price, Auctiva takes the top spot.
2. Vendio: Vendio has some offerings that should appeal to you.
3. ListingTicker: having the option of listing all your eBay auctions is quite convenient.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
And I have a tool that can beat that!
Inflated shipping prices to mask the low reserves, scams, auctions that are taken down before they finish, mis-represented items... no thanks.
It was fun back in the day, when you could unload an odd bit of gear for more than you'd get locally, and it was fun to find some rockin' deals on other gear, but nowadays, it's a mess. Even for the seller, he or she cannot defend themselves against a crap rating, or even against a customer who doesn't pay up. Bleh.
I'd have to agree on the previous comment that inflated shipping costs aren't the problem they used to be, especially now that you can report people for it and since a healthy number of sellers offer free shipping (which is really just a guise for eBay to gig sellers for more fees). Most things ship Postal Service Priority mail, or the UPS/Fed/Ex equivalent so it's pretty easy to tell if somebody's trying to scam you.
And I'd also agree it's not as much fun as it was 10 years ago. Once upon a time eBay was an auction site, but the majority of stuff seems to be Fixed Price listings these days.
http://www.vendio.com
I tell you, I may not sell as much yet because I am building up my own traffic (which takes time) but after I calculate fee's, time and effort - go it myself has been 1000% better.....also as I build my business maybe in the future It will have value and someone will buy it from me....who the heck would ever buy a user name,.....which essentially is your business when you are on ebay or amazon....wake up people...you are part of nothing and have to deal with everything...Bow down before me.......as the eBay monkey man says....and people still do...
- by tomtom81 August 23, 2009 1:56 PM PDT
- Right! need some knowledge. I want to know if there is an ebay tool out there that will send an automated message to the buyer once the sale has taken place?
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(12 Comments)ie..... the buyer purchases a Phillips toaster...
The selling tool would imediatelly send a message along the lines of ''CONGRATULATIONS ON THE PURCHASE OF YOUR NEW PHILLIPS 67274682 TOASTER!''
and the tool would be able to do this individually for all listings.
Any ideas!
Tomtom