Software Built for Online Auctions on Ebay

In This Chapter

Figuring out what tasks you can automate
Finding online auction management services
Exploring auction management software
Now that eBay.co.uk has become a world marketplace, a single-page auction or item listing is an increasingly valuable piece of property. Thousands view your sale, and the more auctions and fixed-price items that you can list, the better your chance to make a good living. Time is money: You need to post your auctions quickly and accurately.
Auction posting, record keeping, inventory cataloguing, photo managing, and statistic gathering are all tasks that you can automate. The more your business grows, the more confusing things can become. Automated tools can help you keep your business admin straight. But remember that the more tools you use, the more expense you may be adding to your business. Always keep your bottom line in mind when evaluating whether to use fee-based software and services.
In this chapter, we discuss how to automate different tasks, software that you can use to automate, and Web sites that offer services to make your daily chores considerably more bearable. After you read this chapter, you’ll be well-equipped to decide whether or not you want to automate your business.
As luck would have it, many of the products and services that can help with your eBay.co.uk listing are only provided by companies across the pond in the US. We’ve checked that the products and services featured in this chapter will work for eBay.co.uk users.
Even so, products change over time and it’s best to lodge an enquiry with the software company before buying. Ask whether their stuff is compatible with your business. You might also like to check out Auction Software Review – a US Web site found at www.auctionsoftwarereview.com.
Take the time to get in touch with any US company to find out whether their products or services will work for you in the UK before you purchase.


Considering Tasks for Automation

You have to perform certain office tasks, no matter how few or how many auctions you’re running. Depending on your personal business style, you may want to automate any or all of the following tasks. You may choose to use a single program, a manual method, or some features from one program and some from others. If you aren’t ready for the automated plunge, we offer alternatives. Where appropriate, we insert references guiding you to where in this topic or on the Web you can find more information about the automated services we discuss.

Setting up images for automatic FTP upload

You have several ways to store the display images in your auctions. If you’re using an auction management service or software (such as MarketWorks.com or Auction Wizard, both of which we discuss later in this chapter), an uploader is usually included as a part of the software. Many online services merely fetch the photos from your hard drive without the need for additional FTP software. To upload your photos, you use a screen similar to eBay.co.uk’s Sell Your Item Page, shown in Figure 9-1.
Uploading images from your hard drive.
Figure 9-1:
Uploading images from your hard drive.
With this format, you merely click the Browse button to access the Open File window, and then find the location of the image on your hard drive. When you locate the images that you want to upload (one per line), click the Upload button and the images will be on their way to the service’s servers.
If you choose to keep images on your own Web site (which makes the images available for your Web site, too), you have to use some sort of FTP software. You probably aren’t using close to the total space that your hosting service allots to you for your Web site, making for plenty of room to store a separate folder of eBay images. ISPs often also give you several megabytes of storage space (see Chapter 8).
A straightforward, standalone FTP software program should be part of your auction arsenal, even if you use a service or other software. (We like to have a backup method.) Our personal favourite is CuteFTP from GlobalSCAPE, shown in Figure 9-2.
CuteFTP Home Edition.
Figure 9-2:
CuteFTP Home Edition.
CuteFTP is so simple to use, we’ve never read the instructions. To send files to a site, type the location and your username and password. Click Connect, and CuteFTP automatically connects to the site. From this point, you merely drag and drop to move a file from the screen on the left (your hard drive) to the screen on the right (your Web site). A 30-day free trial is downloadable from
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You can register the program for only US$39.95 – just over £20.

Setting up an auction photo gallery

Until you establish your own eBay.co.uk shop, setting up an online photo gallery is a great alternative. If your customers have a high-speed connection, they can browse your auctions through photographs. Some auction management sites host your gallery. Some sites charge for this service; others do not. You can produce your own gallery without any fancy programs or auction management software and at no additional cost.
To make your own gallery on eBay without installing fancy scripts in your listings, you need to do three things. You must include eBay gallery photos with all your listings. (You’re doing that anyway, aren’t you?) Next, test the following URL in your browser, substituting your own user ID where indicated in bold italic:
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Figure 9-3 shows you a sample of what you’ll see.
A star-fancydress' homemade gallery linked page.
Figure 9-3:
A star-fancydress’ homemade gallery linked page.
Now that you have seen a sample of your gallery, insert the following HTML into each auction to include a link to your gallery.
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As you can see in Figure 9-4, this HTML snippet also inserts the custom eBay button.
A link from your auctions to your own gallery.
Figure 9-4:
A link from your auctions to your own gallery.

Sorting auction e-mail

A vital function of any auction software or system is the ability to customise and send e-mails to your winners. Many sellers use the default letters in these programs, which tend to be a bit – no, incredibly – impersonal and uncaring. (To see some examples of customer-friendly e-mails and tips on drafting your own, head to Chapter 12.) You need to decide whether you want the program to receive e-mail as well.
Most computer-resident auction management programs have their own built-in e-mail software as part of the program. When you download your winner information from eBay.co.uk, the program automatically generates invoices and congratulatory e-mails.
How to handle your auction-related e-mail is a personal choice. Although we currently use eBay’s Selling Manager to send auction related e-mails, we receive auction e-mail through Outlook, using a separate folder titled Auctions that contains subfolders for eBay Buy and eBay Sell.

Automating end-of-auction e-mail

If you want to set up e-mails to be sent automatically after an auction ends, you need to use a software application to do so. The software should download your final auction results, generate the e-mail, and let you preview the e-mail before sending it out. Many of the online sites that we discuss later in this chapter (see the section ‘Online auction management sites’) send out winner confirmation e-mails automatically when an auction is over; set your preferences to preview the e-mail before sending, if you want to use this option.

Keeping inventory

Many eBay.co.uk PowerSellers depend on the old clipboard or notebook method – crossing off items as they sell them. If that system works for you, great. Others prefer to use an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of inventory.
Most of the auction management packages that we detail later in this chapter (see the section ‘Auction management software’) can handle inventory for you. Some packages automatically deduct an item from inventory when you launch an auction. You have your choice of handling inventory directly on your computer or keeping your inventory online with a service that’s accessible from any computer, wherever you are.
We handle our inventory on our desktop through Quick topics. When we buy merchandise to sell and post the bill to Quick topics, it automatically puts the merchandise into inventory. When we input our sale, Quick topics deducts the items sold from the standing inventory. We can print a status report whenever we want to see how much merchandise we have left – or have to order.

Generating HTML

Fancy auctions are nice, but fancy doesn’t make the item sell any better. Competitive pricing and low shipping rates work in your favour. Also, a clean listing with as many photos as necessary goes a long way to sell your product. Some software and services offer a large selection of templates to jazz up your auctions. But think of your customers – some of them are still logging on with dial-up connections, which are notoriously slow. The use of simple HTML doesn’t slow the loading of your page, but the addition of miscellaneous images (decorative backgrounds and animations) definitely makes viewing your auction a chore for those dialling up. And forget the background music – it really slows things down!
Don’t fret; you can make do by repeatedly incorporating two or three simple HTML templates, cutting and pasting new text as necessary. Most auction management programs offer you several choices of template. Stick with a couple of templates that are similar, giving a standardised look to your listings, just the way major companies give a standardised look to their advertising and identity. Your customers will get used to the look of your auctions and feel comfortable each time they open one.
You can use CuteHTML to generate much of your code for auction descriptions. An important line of code that everyone seems to forget is the one that inserts a picture into your auction description. On the Sell Your Item page, click the tab to view in HTML mode, and insert the following line below where you’d like your image to appear in your description:
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Make sure you substitute your own server and image name. If you want to put one picture on top of another, just type <P> between the lines of code -repeat the HTML line with a different image name for each image that you want to display.
If you’re in a rush and need a quick and easy HTML generator, go to www. coolebaytools.com and click Tools. eBay Timesaving Techniques  has sample HTML code for auction descriptions as well as a chart of all the code you’ll ever need for an eBay auction.

One-click re-listing and selling similar items

Using an auction software or service speeds up the process of posting or re-listing items. After you input your inventory into the software, posting or re-listing your auctions is a mouse click away. All the auction management software packages that we detail later in this chapter include this feature.
If you buy your items in bulk, you may want to take advantage of eBay.co.uk’s free re-listing tool. By clicking the Sell Similar link on any successful listing, you can automatically re-list your items. Sell Similar starts the listing as new, so if the item doesn’t sell you can avail yourself of the Re-list feature. This way, if the item sells the second time, your listing (insertion fees) for the first listing will be credited.
Although eBay says that Sell Similar is for re-listing items, it also works when listing a duplicate of an item that has sold successfully. The only difference is that you aren’t credited for the unsold auction listing fee.
You can use the eBay Sell Similar feature to post new auctions. You merely click the Sell Similar link, and then cut and paste your new information into the existing HTML format. That way, your auctions all have the same feel and flavour.

Scheduling your listings for bulk upload

If you want to schedule the unattended launch of your auctions without incurring eBay.co.uk’s fee, you need to use an online management service (check out the ‘Online auction management site’ section, later in this chapter). If you can be at your computer to send your auctions to eBay singly or in bulk, you can use the Turbo Lister application, which eBay offers at no charge. (For details, see the ‘Turbo Lister’ section, later in this chapter.)

Researching your statistics

So many questions exist when you’re selling on eBay.co.uk. What is the best time to end my auction? What day should I start my listing? Is it better to run a five-day or a seven-day auction? Now an online service can help you separate the rumours from the facts.
Lots of eBay experts out there give you hard-and-fast rules to guarantee success with your listings. These people’s advice is a load of bunk. Every category and every type of item may draw shoppers at different times of the day and different days of the week.
The best experts are those who are selling every day on eBay, day in and day out. These people are usually PowerSellers and do their own research for their listings. They don’t have the time to spout off and give you secrets. We’re regular sellers on eBay (we’re PowerSellers too), and we’ve noticed distinct variations in our sales through a fantastic online service called ViewTracker from Sellathon.
Sellathon tracks your listings using a small piece of code that you insert in your auctions. The site gives you loads of information about your visitors, without violating anyone’s privacy. Here are some of the things you can find out:

How many times someone has visited your auction

The date and time the visitor arrived at your auction and what city and country your visitor is from
Whether the reserve price was met when the visitor arrived
When the item receives a bid (and how many bids have been placed up to that moment)
Whether the visitor has chosen to watch this listing in his or her My eBay page
Whether the visitor browsed a category, searched a category, searched all of eBay, used eBay’s Product Finder utility, came from ‘See Seller’s Other Items’ or some other page and what category they were browsing
If they were searching, what search terms they used to find your item and did they search Titles Only or Titles and Descriptions

Whether the user elected to view Auctions Only, Buy it Now, or both

You get all this information and more. Sellathon offers a 30-day free trial at www.sellathon.com. After that time period, the service is US$4.95 (about £2.80) a month or $49.00 (about £27.50) a year.
To end an old wives’ tale about what days your auctions get the highest hits, Figure 9-5 shows you a chart from a Sellathon account, showing how many visits 26 listings got each day. Verrry interesting.
Sellathon chart showing 2,228 hits on 26 auctions in 7 days worth of listings!
Figure 9-5:
Sellathon chart showing 2,228 hits on 26 auctions in 7 days worth of listings!

Photo hosting

If all you need is photo hosting, and you’ve checked out your ISP and they don’t give you any free Web space to use (please check Chapter 8 for a list of ISPs and the amount of Web storage space they give to their customers), you can always use eBay.co.uk’s picture services to host an additional picture in each auction at 12p an image.
However, if you run more than 40 auctions a month, a better alternative is Auctionpix.co.uk, offering a reasonably priced package, the FTP Account, which is tailored for eBay sellers. For £10 every three months (or £40 a year) you get 5MB of storage space to hold your eBay images, auction templates, and a handy feedback organiser, which allows you to track who hasn’t given you feedback and, if necessary, chase them up. New users can buy more storage space for £1 per MB. There are also some free services available. For more information, visit
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Automating other tasks

You can automate a few more tasks. Having so many options is like being in a sweet shop: You may want it all, but that may not be good for you. For example, if you use online postage, you may not want to print your labels because that doubles your work. Take a serious look at the options you’re offered and see whether they fit into your particular work style.

Checking out

When someone wins or buys an item, eBay.co.uk’s checkout integrates directly with PayPal and also indicates your other preferred forms of payment. If you’re closing less than 100 auctions a day, that arrangement is all you need. eBay and PayPal also send an e-mail to you and the buyer so that you can arrange payment.
Some online auction management services offer your own private checkout area, which costs you a percentage of your sale, so you need to decide whether your business warrants this option – many do not. A personalised winner’s notification e-mail can easily contain a link to your PayPal payment area, making a checkout service unnecessary.

Tracking buyer information

Keeping track of your winners isn’t rocket science. You can track buyer information in an Excel spreadsheet or a Word document, both of which are exportable to almost any program for follow-up mailings promoting future sales. If you choose to have an online management service to track buyer information for you, make sure that you can download the information to your computer (in case you and the online service part company someday).

Generating customised reports

Sales reports, ledgers, and tax information are all important reports for your business. Online services and software supply different versions of these reports.
PayPal allows you to download your sales data into a format compatible with Quick topics, a highly respected and popular keeping program. You can also choose to download your data in Excel spreadsheet format (the downloads also work in Microsoft Works). PayPal reports are full of detailed information about your sales and deposits. Putting this information in a standard accounting software program on a regular basis makes your year-end calculations easier to bear. (In Chapter 16, we detail what else you may need for this task.)

Submitting feedback

If you’re running a lot of auctions, leaving feedback can be a chore. One solution is to automate the submission of feedback through an online service or software. Timing the automation of this task can, however, be tricky.
Don’t leave feedback for an eBay.co.uk transaction until after you hear from the buyer that the purchase is satisfactory. Leaving positive feedback immediately after you receive payment from the buyer is too soon. After you receive an e-mail assuring you that the customer is satisfied, manually leaving feedback by going to the feedback forum (or the item page) can be just as easy – if not easier – as bulk-loading feedback.

Managing Your Business with Online Resources and Software

If you search the Internet for auction management services and software, you come up with loads. Most of these services and products are based in the US but offer services worldwide. For simplicity’s sake, we examine just a few of these services in this chapter. After speaking to many sellers, we’ve found online services that offer uptime reliability (uptime is key here; you don’t want the server that holds your photos going down or mis-launching your auctions) and software that’s continually updated to match eBay.co.uk changes.
Using a site or software to run your auctions takes practice, so try any that appeal to you and that offer free preview trials. As we describe these different applications, we include a link so that you can check them out further. Table 9-1 compares the costs of many auction management and online services.

Table 9-1 Cost Comparisons for Auction Management
Services and Software
Site Services or Software Cost
All My Auctions £22 (paid in US dollars)
andale (http://uk.andale.com) Price scaled according to
usage volumes
Auctionsage.com £17 for three months (paid in
US dollars)
AuctionTamer.com £2/month (paid in US dollars)
SpoonFeeder.com £12 – £120 (paid in US dollars)
eBay’s Selling Manager Free
eBay’s Selling Manager Pro £4.99/month
IDSAuction (www.auction-solutions. Varies
co.uk)
InkFrog.com £8/month (paid in US dollars)
Kyozou.com Varies
Trak Auctions (http://www.jwcinc.net/) Free basic package

Some software and services work on a monthly fee, whereas others work on a one-time purchase fee. For a one-time-purchase software application to truly benefit you, it must have the reputation for updating its software each time eBay makes a change in its system. The programs that we discuss in this chapter have been upgraded continually to date.
Most services have a free trial period. Don’t spend lots of your precious time inputting your entire inventory, only to discover you don’t like the way the service works. Instead, input a few items to give the service a whirl.

Online auction management sites

Auction management Web sites handle almost everything, from inventory management to label printing. Some sellers prefer online (or hosted) management sites because you can access your information from any computer. You may use every feature a site offers, or you may choose a bit from column A and a bit from column B and perform the more personalised tasks manually. Read on to determine what service best suits your needs.
Although quite a few excellent online services for automating sales are available, we have room here to show you only a few. Remember that by using an online service, your information resides on a server out there in cyberspace; if you’re a control freak, it may be a bit much to bear. Many services are similar in format, so in the following sections we point out some of the highlights of a few representative systems.
When selecting a service, look for a logo or text indicating that the service is an eBay Certified Developer, Preferred Solution Provider, or API licensee. These people have first access to eBay’s system changes and can implement them immediately. Others may have a day or so lag time to update their software.

Following are some of the popular service providers in the online auction management arena:

andale (uk.andale.com)
Auctionsage (auctionsagesoftware.com)
IDSAuction (www.auction-solutions.co.uk)
Inkfrog (www.inkfrog.com)
Kyozou (www.kyozou.com)
andale offers a suit of services for online auctioneers and targets eBayers more than anyone else, as can be seen in Figure 9-6. The company supplies hit counters for eBay.co.uk auctions, but there’s a whole lot more to the company’s product range, which includes:
Counters: Tell you how much traffic your auctions are getting. Allow you to make more informed decisions about when to list items and for how much.
Listing programmes: Give a more professional look to eBay.co.uk auctions and let you re-list items without having to re-write all the info.
Image hosting: Stores images and allows you to reuse them. andale claims its photos enjoy 99.98% uptime.
Gallery services: Give your auctions better cross-promotion by installing a prominent link to your gallery page featuring all your listed items.
andale's Web site homepage
Figure 9-6:
andale’s Web site homepage
IDS Auction Information Data Systems (www.auction-solutions.co.uk) (See Figure 9-7) is an old head in the auction management business (relatively speaking of course). The company has its home in Norfolk and since its launch in 2000 has grown steadily.
It prides itself on its bespoke and friendly service and even suggests that if you can find any improvements needed with the service, they’ll design it for you for free! Customer service is definitely a strong point for these guys and they claim that each customer gets a personal service.

In general, however, IDS offers:

Search and filter facilities, which allow you to retrieve information quickly from current and archived auctions.
Financial analysis.
Printouts of invoices and statements can be set to your specifications.
Auto catalogue creation, which can be set-up to include business logos and graphics.
The ability to share information between multiple sites.
A reporting module: Powerful reporting tools allow you to retrieve and analyse data as you need it.
A user-friendly Windows-style help file.
IDS's Web site homepage.
Figure 9-7:
IDS’s Web site homepage.

eBay.co.uk’s Selling Manager

When you subscribe to Selling Manager, the All Selling links in My eBay views are replaced by Selling Manager links. Selling Manager displays a summary of your current transactions. Many sellers (even some PowerSellers) rely on Selling Manager to handle their eBay management chores.

From Selling Manager, you can:

View listing status: You can see which sales activities you’ve completed and what you still have to do.

Send custom e-mail and post feedback:

Customise your e-mail templates and set up stored feedback comments to help you run through the post-sales process quickly.
Re-list in bulk: Re-list multiple sold and unsold listings at once.
Maintain sales records: See individual sales records for every transaction, including a history of the transaction status.
Print invoices: Print invoices directly from sales records.
Download sales history: Export your sales records to keep files on your computer.
Keep track of NPB and FVF: File non-paying bidder alerts and final value fee requests.

Auction management software -Turbo Lister

Turbo Lister is simple and easy to use. This software has a built-in WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) HTML editor, which makes preparing listings offline easy. When you’re ready, just click a button and your items are all listed at once. For a fee, you can also stagger listings and schedule them for a later date.
Using Turbo Lister is as simple and straightforward as posting a listing using the Sell Your Item page on the eBay.co.uk site. One of Turbo Lister’s benefits is that it allows you to prepare auctions while offline and group them for launching all at once to eBay. Using the program is a two-step process. First, you download the application from eBay.co.uk at
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Next, install Turbo Lister on your computer. You can then list auctions on the easy-to-use form (see Figure 9-8) and send them all to eBay in a group. You can also keep the listings in the program for re-listing in the future. What could be simpler?
The Turbo Lister program, ready to go on your home computer.
Figure 9-8:
The Turbo Lister program, ready to go on your home computer.

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