Section 9.1. eBay Tools

9.1. eBay Tools

When you're looking around for tools to help you automate selling, see what eBay has to offer. One advantage of using eBay's tools is that when eBay makes changes to the site, it updates the tools. Third-party software and services can take some time to catch up to eBay's changes. (Of course, sometimes it takes eBay a little time to get its own changes working, too.)

Note: Even though thousands and thousands of listings for Apple computers appear on eBay every day, eBay seems to forget about all the Mac fans who use the site. eBay's downloadable software for sellers works only with Windows. But all eBayers can use Selling Manager (Section 9.1.2), Selling Manager Pro (Section 9.1.2), and Sales Reports (Section 9.1.5), which are Web-based.

To see the latest eBay tools for sellers, use the navigation bar to go to Sell Seller Tools, shown in Figure 9-1.

Tip: eBay is always making changes and improvements to its tools for sellers. To stay in the loop, subscribe to the Seller Tools newsletter. From the navigation bar you find on any eBay page, go to Community Groups News & Events Announcements eBay Seller Tools News Group. Click Join Group to subscribe.

Figure 9-1. The Seller Tools page lists some of the eBay tools and services available to sellers (including Turbo Lister and eBay Blackthorne, described later in this chapter).Choose a tool from the left-hand menu to find out more, or scroll down the page for a brief description and a button that lets you download software or subscribe to a service.

9.1.1. Turbo Lister

eBay's Sell Your Item form (Section 5.4.2) works OK when you're listing just a few items at a time. But if you're ramping up your sales and listing a bunch of things at once, the Sell Your Item form doesn't cut it. You need a bulk listing tool , a program that lets you create a large number of auctions and list them all on eBay quickly and easily. Even if your sales volume doesn't qualify as turbocharged, you might find Turbo Lister a more convenient way to get your auctions online.

To download Turbo Lister (it's free), go to http://pages.ebay.com/turbo_lister. Before you click the Download Now! button, make sure you have these things:

• A PC (Windows 98 or later) with a 100 MHz processor or better.

• At least 50 MB of free space (100 MB for high-volume sellers).

• 64 MB of RAM for Windows 98 or Windows ME, although 128 MB is better.

• 128 MB of RAM for Windows 2000, Windows NT, or Windows XP, although 256 MB is better.

• Internet Explorer 5.5 or above.

Tip: If you have trouble installing Turbo Lister, it may be the fault of your virus scanner. Try turning off your virus-scanning program during the installationbut don't forget to turn it on again when you've finished!

9.1.1.1 Specifying settings

After you've downloaded and installed Turbo Lister, you can save yourself the time and effort of typing in the same information every time you list an item by heading to the main menu and selecting Tools Options. Then choose one or more Auction Defaults categories (Ship-To Locations is shown in Figure 9-2) and type in any information you want to apply to more than one auction. The more blanks you fill in, the less time youll spend at the keyboard when you start listing items.

Figure 9-2. Turbo Lister lets you set various options and use them every time you list an item. On this screen, specify your standard shipping options. You can also type in or change your Personal Information (eBay ID, mailing addresses, PayPal account), Seller Options (eBay site, auction format, eBay Store), and Auction Defaults (see left-hand menu for options). Advanced Options lets you set your preferences for receiving Turbo Lister updates, getting reminders, and displaying and storing photos

Tip: eBay is always adding new categories and features. To make sure that your version of Turbo Lister keeps up, open Turbo Lister, select Tools Options Advanced Options, and then turn on the "Automatically download updates when I start the program checkbox.

9.1.1.2 Creating new listings

When you're ready to create a new listing, go to Turbo Lister's main page and select Create New Create New Item, as shown in Figure 9-3. Turbo Lister walks you through the listing process. You fill out a series of screens like the one shown in Figure 9-4, which arent really all that different from eBay's Sell Your Item form (Section 5.4.2).

Figure 9-3. When you click Create New, this menu appears. Select Create New Item to begin a listing, or if you want to use eBay's prefilled item forms and stock photos, select "Multiple Items with Prefilled Item Information." Set Default Button lets you determine what happens when you click the Create New button in the future: display the current drop-down menu, create a brand new item, or create multiple item.

Figure 9-4. Type in your listing title and select a category. If you don't know the category number (and you probably don't), click the Find Category button. At the bottom, you can label your item, adding a comment (like how much you paid for it) that will be invisible to your buyers when your auction is running. In the screens that follow, you write a description, insert one or more photos, and add features and options in a process very similar to the Sell Your Item form.

When you're done with the last screen, click Save. Your listing appears in something called an inventory list, shown in Figure 9-5.

Figure 9-5. On the Item Inventory tab, Turbo Lister shows you a chart of the auction listings you've created. At the bottom of the window, you can schedule auctions to start as soon as Turbo Lister puts them on eBay, or you can schedule a start time. When you're finished with a listing, select it and then click "Add to Upload."

The cool thing about Turbo Lister comes after you've created an auction. If you sell the same item in multiple auctionssay you bought a wholesale lot of shiny yellow rain boots and you're selling them pair by pairsimply click the toolbar's Duplicate button. Turbo Lister asks you how many duplicates you want to list; type in the number and then click OK. With just a couple of clicks, you can create as many duplicate listings as you needwhether it's just one or a couple hundred. It would take you dozens of tedious hours to do that through the Sell Your Item form.

The Duplicate feature speeds up your listing creation time even when the items you're selling aren't identical. If those rain boots come in different sizes, for example, you can duplicate one listing and then edit the duplicates to make sure that each auction advertises the right size . It's easy to edit a listing: just select the listing you want and then click the toolbar's Edit button to go to the Edit Item screen shown in Figure 9-6. Make your changes and click Save.

9.1.1.3 Uploading your listings

All the listings you create in Turbo Lister stay right on your machine until you upload them to eBay, at which point your auctions go live (unless you've scheduled a start time, as shown in Figure 9-5). When you're ready, start up Turbo Lister and make sure you're on the Item Inventory tab. Select the listings you want to transfer to eBay and then click "Add to Upload." (You can select multiple listings at one time: click the first item you want, then hold down the Shift key and click the last item you want: Turbo Lister selects those two items and everything in between. To pick and choose items rather than select them in a block, hold downthe Ctrl key as you click the items you want.) Turbo Lister puts the listings you've selected on the "Listings Waiting to Upload" tab, shown in Figure 9-7.

Figure 9-6. If you need to make changes to individual listings you've duplicated , the Edit Item screen is the way to go. You can change any aspect of the listing. At the bottom of the screen, Previous Item and Next Item arrows let you go through the items in your inventory list to edit them; you don't have to keep going back to the main list. The Create Another button duplicates the listing. Clicking Save as Template saves the listing in your Templates folder, which is handy the next time you want to create a listing for an identical or similar item.

Figure 9-7. You can upload all the listings in the "Listings Waiting to Upload" tab with one click of the "Upload All to eBay" button. If you want to see how much your listing fees will be before you start the auctions, click Calculate Listing Fee(s); clicking this button also lets you check for eBay updates to Turbo Lister. The Change Start Time button lets you change an immediate-start auction to a scheduled one (for eBay's usual scheduled-start-time fee) or the other way around; it affects whichever listings you've highlighted.

Tip: Before you click the Upload button, check your watch. If you happen to be using Turbo Lister at, say, two o'clock in the morning or some other low-traffic time, don't transfer your listings yet. Either schedule the auctions for better start and end times or, to save the scheduling fee, come back and upload the auctions at a time when you're likely to get more last-minute bidders (Section 5.4.5).

If your items don't sell, you can relist them through Turbo Lister, if you subscribe to Selling Manager or Selling Manager Pro (Section 9.1.2). If you qualify and you want to relist items, click the "Listings Waiting to Upload" tab's "Import eBay items to Relist" link.

WORKAROUND WORKSHOP
Turbo Fizzler

Some eBayers can install Turbo Lister and begin creating scads of auctions in mere minutes. Others aren't so lucky. If you're one of the cursed, you might encounter trouble downloading, installing, or using Turbo Lister. Here are some suggestions to help you get Turbo Lister working:

• Update Windows . Turbo Lister relies on various behind-the-scenes Microsoft components to do its thing. If your Windows software is out of date, you might run into problems installing Turbo Lister or reading and creating listings. The two components you probably need are the latest versions of MDAC (which stands for Microsoft Data Access Components , in case you were wondering) and Jet, Microsoft's database engine. You can get the latest versions of these programs from Microsoft's Download Center. Point your Web browser to www.microsoft.com/downloads, then search for MDAC and find the latest update. Make sure that the update you download works with your version of Windows. Then repeat the process, this time searching for the most recent update of Jet . Install the downloaded files on your computer, and then restart it.

• Check your firewall settings . Your computer's firewall is software that protects your computer from everything on the Internet that could cause damage or unauthorized access. But if your firewall is too fiercely protective, it will interfere with the information you try to transfer between your computer and eBay. Different firewall software needs different fixes. Go to eBay's Turbo Lister Troubleshooting page (http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/turbo-lister-troubleshooting.html).

  (You can also reach the page from Turbo Lister's menu bar by selecting Help Online Troubleshooting.) Then, find your firewall program to get instructions on how to make it Turbo Listerfriendly.

• Compact the database . An unwieldy database can slow Turbo Lister to a crawl. Give it room to work by compacting its database from time to time. From the Turbo Lister menu bar, select Tools Compact Database, and then click OK. It can take a couple of minutes for Turbo Lister to do the compaction

• Get help . If you've done everything you can think of and Turbo Lister still refuses to list (in turbo fashion or otherwise ), it's time to ask for some assistance. The place to start is eBay's Turbo Lister discussion board (Community Discussion Boards Tools Turbo Lister). Post the problem youre having, and friendly fellow eBayers will try to help.

You'll probably need to show them a copy of your Turbo Lister log. Your computer stores this log in its hard drive. Open Windows Explorer, find C:\Program Files\eBay\Turbo Lister , and look for the most recent file ending in .log . Open the .log file in Notepad (not in Word), then copy it (highlight it and choose Edit Copy) so you can paste it into your plea for help. The discussion board is probably the fastest way to get an answer to your question, but you can also contact eBay for support. To do so, from the Turbo Lister menu bar, select Help Contact Customer Support. In the form that opens, explain your problem. Paste in the log file to help eBay help you. Click Send Email when youre done.

Turbo Lister archives every auction you create, so if you come across another collectible comic book just like the one you sold for a bundle a few months back, you can find the previous auction and duplicate it to save time creating the new listing. But it can get cumbersome keeping all your old listings in your inventory list. If you get tired of looking at them, get organized by creating and using your own folders. From the menu bar, select File New Folder. Name your new folder and then click OK. Now you can simply drag whatever listings you wish into the appropriate folder.

9.1.1.4 Turbo Lister tricks

To get the most out of Turbo Lister, use these tips and features:

• Templates . Any listing you create can serve as a template for similar listings. Just find the listing you want, click the Edit button, and make any changes that apply to the new auction. When you've created a listing that you know you'll want to use again, save it in the Templates folder by clicking the Save as Template button. That makes it easy to find your template later.

• Insert . If you have a logo or some favorite text (like Don't forget to add me to your favorite sellers !), you can save time by creating and storing these as inserts , the stuff that you like to add to most of your item descriptions.

  You create an insert during the step when you enter your item description (page326). From the Inserts drop-down menu, select "Create an Insert." In the window that opens, name the insert and type in your text or logo-referencing HTML; you can use up to 1,000 characters . Click Save. Turbo Lister stores up to five inserts.

  Put an insert into your listing like this: on the Enter Your Description page, select the insert you want from a drop-down menu, as shown in Figure 9-8.

• Backups . Anyone who's ever spent more than about 10 minutes on a computer understands the importance of backing up his data. Imagine creating and storing hundreds or even thousands of listings, only to lose them in some computer catastrophe. Turbo Lister's backup feature creates a copy of each of your listings, including photos, descriptions, item specifics, and prefilled information. To back up your listings, from the menu bar select File Backup Database to display the Backup Database window shown in Figure 9-9.

  Tip: If you're the kind of person who'd benefit from someone occasionally looking over your shoulder to say, "Remember to back up that database," click Backup Reminder when you create a backup file. You can tell Turbo Lister how often you'd like it to remind you to save new data.

• Importing/exporting . When you need to move some of your listings from one computer to anothersay you want to move them from your desktop machine to your laptop so you can work on your listings at the local coffee shopuse Turbo Lister's import/export feature. First you have to export the listings. Select the listings you want and then from the menu bar, select File Export Selected Item To CSV. (CSV stands for comma-separated value ; it's the simplest method for storing data in a text file.) Turbo Lister prompts you for a file name and a location to save the file, and then creates a CSV file storing the selected listings. You can save that file to a storage medium, like a diskette or a flash drive.

  To open the exported listings on another computer that has Turbo Lister installed, stick your export diskette (or flash drive, or whatever storage medium you chose) into the new computer. Open Turbo Lister and select Import Items. From CSV. Find the file you want and then click Open. Turbo Lister puts the listings into a new file called "Imported from CSV." From there, just work with the listings as you normally would.

  

  Figure 9-8. After you've created an insert, it appears by name in the Inserts dropdown menu. Click the insert you want to put into your item description. You can also use this menu to create new inserts and edit or delete existing ones.

  
  

  

  Figure 9-9. Turbo Lister names your backup file based on your eBay ID. You can change the name if you like, but leave the extension (.tla) as it is. By default, Turbo Lister stores backup files under My Documents in the Turbo Lister backup file. If you want to store the backup file somewhere else, click Browse and find the folder you want.

  
  Tip: Import/export is useful when you need to transfer selected listings, not the whole database. If you want to transfer everything, back up your data (Section 9.1.1.4), then transfer the backup file.

• Previews . To get a sense of how your auction will look, click the Preview tab while you're typing description text and adding photos to a new item (Section 9.1.1.1). This view puts everything togetheryour description, any Listing Designer frames you chose, your photosexactly as it will appear in your auction. You don't have to guess whether you're getting your listing to look the way you want.

• Uploading in batches . If you're going to be running a number of auctions for the same or very similar items, consider transferring those auctions to eBay in batches, rather than all at once. If all your auctions end at the same time (or within seconds of each other), bidders who didn't win one auction don't have time to find and bid on another. Transfer a group of auctions, and then wait a few minutes before you send eBay the next batch. You'll get more bids from last-minute auction watchers and also-rans.

9.1.2. Selling Manager

Turbo Lister (Section 9.1.1) gets your auctions online, but to track your auctions and do the paperwork after the sale, you need another tool. Enter Selling Manager, a Web-based program from the folks at eBay that helps you manage sales during and after your auctions. It's available by subscription (for a monthly fee after a 30-day free trial). Selling Manager is Web-based, so you can use it no matter what kind of computer you have.

Note: If you already subscribe to Blackthorne Basic (Section 9.1.3) or own an eBay Store (Section 7.3), subscribing to Selling Manager doesn't cost you a penny.

To use Selling Manager, you need one of the following:

• Internet Explorer 4.0 or later.

• Netscape 3.0 or later.

• AOL 3.0 or later.

Here are some of the things you can do with Selling Manager:

• Relist unsold items in bulk.

• Print invoices and shipping labels.

• Send sales records to your computer.

• Manage Unpaid Item reports and fee-refund requests in bulk.

• Leave feedback in bulk.

Selling Manager Pro, designed for high-volume sellers, adds the ability to list, so you don't have to use separate listing and sales-management tools (for example, Turbo Lister and regular Selling Manager). Selling Manager Pro offers everything that Selling Manager does and more:

• Automated listings . If you regularly sell the same items, you can schedule regular, automatic listings.

• Automated relistings . When an item doesn't sell, Selling Manager can relist it for you automatically.

• Listing designer . Use free templates to dress up your listings.

• Inventory management . Create templates for the products you sell most, update quantities , add notes, get restock alerts when inventory is low.

• Listing statistics . Keep track of the percentage of successful sales and average selling price.

• Sales reports . These monthly reports show all of your selling activity, including eBay fees.

• Alerts . You can receive alerts in My eBay when a buyer pays, when payment is overdue, or when you get negative feedback.

The basic version of Selling Manager works best for medium-volume sellers who run, say, a dozen or so auctions per week. Fewer than that, and it's not really worth the monthly fee; more than that, and you need a more powerful auction management tool, like Selling Manager Pro or one of the many third-party options out there (Section 9.2).

One useful feature of Selling Manager is that it helps you keep an eye on problematic auctions. Under Sold Items: Past Due, Selling Manager has these categories:

• Unpaid and eligible for an Unpaid Item reminder.

• Unpaid Item disputes awaiting your response.

• Unpaid and eligible for Final Value Fee credit.

Another useful feature is that you access Selling Manager from your My eBay page (Section 1.4.9); it replaces the Sell page, as shown in Figure 9-10. This means that Selling Manager looks and feels familiar, so you can get up to speed fast.

To sign up for Selling Manager, go to your My eBay page and then click Manage Subscriptions. Find the version you wantSelling Manager or Selling Manager Proand click Subscribe.

Selling Manager updates your information every 10 minutes, so you don't have to worry that it's giving you yesterday 's news. But if you need to check something from an old auction, the archive holds completed sales for up to four months. To see what's in your archives, look under My eBay Views and then click the Archived link.

Figure 9-10. When you subscribe to Selling Manager, it replaces the Sell page in My eBay. Selling Manager continually updates your sales information, putting Scheduled and Active auctions into new sections ("today" and "within the next hour ") as their time approaches, and moves listings through the post-auction process. In the left-hand menu, click any link under Selling Manager to get more detailed information.

9.1.3. eBay Blackthorne

Blackthorne, called Seller's Assistant before its mid-2005 redesign, is a downloadable software program that helps you automate and manage your auctions from start to finish. Here's a sample of what Blackthorne lets you do:

• List or relist items in bulk.

• Create listings quickly with templates and preset fields.

• Track sales status.

• Send after-auction emails in bulk.

• Leave bulk feedback.

Blackthorne comes in two flavors: Basic and Pro. Blackthorne Pro offers everything that the Basic version does, plus you can do the following (and more):

• Create multiple seller accounts if you sell, for example, CDs under one eBay ID and sporting goods under another.

• Print bulk invoices and shipping labels.

• Schedule listings.

• Manage inventory; know when you're getting low on widgets and need to order more.

• Get profit-and-loss and sales tax reports.

• Manage your suppliers and consignments.

Tip: To ask other eBayers about Turbo Lister, Selling Manager, and Blackthornehow to use them, troubleshooting tips, which software they preferhead over to the discussion boards. From the navigation bar, select Community Discussion Boards. Theres a Tools board for each program.

Here's what you need to run Blackthorne on your PC (sorry, Mac loverseBay has no immediate plans to make this tool available for Macs):

• Windows NT, 2000, or XP.

• 1 GHz of processing power.

• 256 RAM minimum (512 MB is better).

• 50 MB or more of free space on the hard drive.

Both versions of Blackthorne require you to download software and to subscribe to the service for a monthly fee. You can try either level of Blackthorne free for 30 days; go to http://pages.ebay.com/blackthorne and then click the Subscribe Now link for the version you want.

The first time you use Blackthorne, it asks a bunch of questions to help you set things up, such as your eBay ID, contact information, the email account Blackthorne will use, sales tax information, and so on. Then Blackthorne offers you the options of printing out a quick start guide, reading the user 's manual, or getting started with Blackthorne.

UP TO SPEED
At Your Service

One of Blackthorne's improvements over Seller's Assistant is something called the Servant , a feature that runs in the background whenever you're online and have Blackthorne open.

With Seller's Assistant, eBay's previous sales-management tool, you had to instruct the program to contact eBay whenever you wanted to send information to eBay or retrieve information from it. In contrast, the Servant interacts with eBay automatically. You don't have to do a thing.

In fact, if you leave Blackthorne running and walk away from your computer, the Servant will periodically update your listings and sales information (as long as your computer is online). When you come back, your information in Blackthorne is up to date.

9.1.3.1 Listing items

To list items using Blackthorne, click the Create Items tab, shown in Figure 9-11, and then select New Item Untitled to open the Item window, shown in Figure 9-12, where you create your listing. The great thing about the Item window is that you can do everything you need to list an itemwrite a title and description, add photos, choose a category, determine price and shipping infoall in one window. No stepping through screen after screen before youre finally done.

Figure 9-11. The Create Items tab lets you create new listings (click New Item) or duplicate existing ones (click Duplicate). This is also where you preview listings (Preview) and transfer them to eBay (Submit). Under Items Views, folders and filters help you search and organize your listings. To edit a listing, right-click it and then from the menu that appears, select Open item.

Figure 9-12. Blackthorne's Item window, which you use to create a new item, is a little crowded; some of the fields are hard to read. You can spread things out by dragging the window's lower-right corner.

To speed up the data-entry process, Blackthorne uses presets for some parts of the listing, like shipping, return policy, picture host, and payment method. A preset is a group of preferences that you set once and then apply over and over again to your auctions. For example, if you sell clothing and charge a flat shipping rate for each item you sell, you can create a preset that includes your shipment method andthe flat amount, and then name the preset clothes , as shown in Figure 9-13. To create a preset within the Item window, find the field you want to create a preset for, like Shipping, then click its arrow and choose Manage Presets. Follow the prompts to define your terms, name the preset, and then click OK.

Tip: Blackthorne offers Quick Tips in the lower left-hand pane (you can see it in Figure 9-11). To get an off-the-cuff explanation of a button, menu, or field, hover your cursor over the item you'd like to learn about. The Quick Tips pane displays a definition.

Figure 9-13. Presets let you set your terms once and then reuse them as often as you like with just one mouse click. After you've created and named a preset, it appears in the drop-down list so you can select it easily. Selecting a preset automatically inserts your predefined terms into the listing.

When you've typed all the info that your auction needs into the Item window, click OK. Back on the Create Items tab, check your auction to make sure you've set it up correctly. Select Items Actions Preview and Check Errors. You get a preview of the auction, shown in Figure 9-14. When Blackthorne checks for errors, it also calculates your eBay insertion fees, based on your starting price and any features you select. If you need to correct an error (or make any other changes), right-click the title and then, from the menu that appears, select Open Item. When youre good to go, click Submit.

When you click Submit, you can choose whether you want the auction to start immediately or, for a fee, start at a time you schedule. If you opt to schedule your auction's start (Section 5.4.5), you can also select a time interval between listings to space out your auctions, giving last-minute bidders time to swoop in. Click OK to upload your listing to eBay.

After you've submitted the auction to eBay, Blackthorne changes the item's status from "In process" to "Entry completed" and creates a listing record. To take a lookat the record, click the Monitor Listings tab. Look under Listings Views to find "Listings by Status," and then click the Running filter. Running (active) auctions appear in the main part of the window.

Figure 9-14. Preview and Check Errors doesn't check for typos and misspellings, but it does make sure you've filled in everything you need to list your auction successfully. The bar above the preview shows your listing title, any errors, and the insertion fees. When you're ready to list the auction on eBay, click Submit. If Blackthorne finds an error, click Close, and then select Tools Activity Log; the error is on the Listing History tab.

POWER USERS' CLINIC
The Magic of Filters

Blackthorne uses filters , which are akin to smart folders, to organize your search results. When you run a search, Blackthorne dumps the results in a filter called, not surprisingly, Search Results. It's a good idea to rename the filter to something more specific, indicating what's in it, like Bike Accessories or BIN Listings. (To rename a filter, simply right-click the filter name, choose Rename Filter, and type the new name.)

Unlike a folder, however, which merely holds a list of results from previous searches, a filter automatically runs the search again the next time you open it, so your results are always up-to-the-minute. As your Blackthorne content changes, so does the list of results in a given filter.

For example, say you specialize in selling vinyl LPs, and you've created listings for tons of Beatles records. To keep the listings together, you ran a search for Beatles a year ago and saved the results in a filter that you named "Beatles." Now, you want to create a listing for an import version of The White Albumand if you already have such a listing, you want to duplicate it rather than start from scratch. But you can't remember whether you've listed that particular LP before. No need to run a search; all you have to do is open your Beatles filter. Every listing you've ever created with Beatles in the title is already in there, automatically.

Playing around with filters will give you a sense of how to organize your listings. You can create, name, duplicate, and delete as many filters as you like; just right-click the filter and select Rename Filter from the menu that pops up.

Blackthorne does have some built-in filters that you can't mess with; these are the filters that are already there the very first time you open Blackthorne, like "Inventory items,""Completed listings," "Sales by Status," and so on. You can't duplicate or delete these filters; the only changes you can make are to display options, such as which columns the filter shows.

9.1.3.2 During the auction

When your auctions are up and running, use Blackthorne's Monitor Listings tab to view listings, revise listings that haven't received any bids, add information to listings where bidding has started, or cancel an auction.

You can view running auctions by the following criteria:

• Auction format.

• Current auctions.

• Scheduled auctions.

• Recent bidding activity.

• Auctions that can be relisted.

• Seller account (for Blackthorne Pro).

You can also search for a particular listing by title, starting price, and almost any other criteria you can think of, as shown in Figure 9-15.

Figure 9-15. You can search for specific listings from any of Blackthorne's main tabs. You don't have to search by title; you can look for almost any variable in an auction, from package weight to reserve price to bid count to starting priceand beyond. Choose whether you want the results to contain or not contain the words you type into the text box. Click Go to have Blackthorne display the results.

9.1.3.3 After the auction

If an item doesn't sell the first time around, you can relist it (Section 5.6.1). Blackthorne makes relisting simple. First, find the items eligible for relisting. To do so, in the Monitor Auctions tab, under "Listings by Status," click Relistable to display the auctions you can list again. Highlight the auctions you want to relist and then select Listing Actions Relist Items. Click Yes to bring up a window that lets you make the changes you want. (Was the starting price too high? Could your title or description be more appealing?) When youve finished, click either Relist (to relist the current item) or Relist All (to relist all the items you selected).

When you make a sale, Blackthorne automatically changes the status of the item to Sold and keeps track of its current place in the post-auction processwhether the buyer has paid, whether you need to ship or leave feedback, etc. You can find sold items on the Finalize Sales tab under "Sales by Status," as shown in Figure 9-16.

Figure 9-16. The Finalize Sales tab shows the status of your sales, from awaiting payment to awaiting feedback. Search for any completed listing by final price, sales tax, shipping fee, buyer ID, and a bunch of other criteria. You can filter sales by archived sales or search results.

If you accept PayPal and all goes smoothly, the buyer might pay immediately after the auction. But if the buyer needs a nudge to send payment, Blackthorne lets you send a "first notification" email as a gentle reminder. To send this email, make sure you're on the Finalize Sales tab; from the menu bar, select Sales Actions Email Buyer "First Notification to High Bidder." You can also use the Email Buyer drop-down list. Blackthorne shows you the email, which is already filled in with the item number, titles, and the final amount the buyer owes. Click Submit to send the gentle reminder winging on its way.

Tip: If the high bidder ignores your requests for payment, you can file an Unpaid Item dispute right from Blackthorne. To do so, on the Finalize Sales tab, select Sales Actions Report Unpaid Item Dispute.

Blackthorne comes with a variety of email templates that fit most of the emails you'll want to send. (To see them, just click Email Buyer.) Preloaded templates give you a quick and easy way to do the following:

• Request the high bidder's address.

• Send first, second, and third requests for payment.

• Notify the buyer that you've received payment.

• Notify the buyer you've shipped the item.

• Request feedback (shown in Figure 9-17).

Each of these templates is specific to whatever listing you've selected, prefilled with the information you need, like the item title and number. You can modify these templates or create your own, as shown in Figure 9-18.

Figure 9-17. Blackthorne's various email templates fill in the specifics of a particular auction automatically. Everything inside the double square brackets pertains to the specific auction you selected.

Figure 9-18. To create your own email template, click New. The Duplicate button duplicates any existing template and saves it with a new name. You can also edit any template using the Edit button. If you fool around with a template and don't like the results, click Restore Defaults to put it back in its original, pristine state.

If the buyer pays with PayPal, Blackthorne automatically updates the auction's status to Paid. If the buyer pays by another method, you have to let Blackthorne know. From the menu bar, select Sales Actions Update Sale Status To Payment Received.

Note: When you update an item's payment status, it might seem to disappear. This is because Blackthorne has moved the listing to a different filter, from "Awaiting payment" to "Paid and ready to ship."

When the transaction is complete and (in a perfect world) everyone's happy, Blackthorne automates the process of leaving feedback (Section 2.3.3.1), which is a great timesaver. (Leaving feedback the standard way, one transaction at a time through eBay, takes a lot of time and a lot of typing.) On the Finalize Sales tab, select Sales Actions Leave Feedback and then choose the message you want, as shown in Figure 9-19.

Figure 9-19. Blackthorne comes with several positive feedback messages built in. You can leave the same message for all the listings you've chosen , or you can select Random to vary the messages. Blackthorne has no prewritten messages for negative and neutral feedback; you should handle these on a case-by-case basis, anyway. To modify an existing positive feedback message or write a new one of your own, choose Edit Feedback Messages.

9.1.4. Accounting Assistant

If you use QuickBooks, the small-business accounting program, to help you keep track of where your eBay-earned cash is coming from (and going to), Accounting Assistant can save you some time. With Accounting Assistant, you can transfer information about sales and payments from eBay to QuickBooks, including:

• eBay sales.

• eBay fees.

• PayPal fees.

It doesn't matter whether you use the Pro, Premier, or Enterprise edition of QuickBooks, but you must use a U.S. version of QuickBooks 2002 or later. (Other bookkeeping programs and international versions of QuickBooks won't work.) Accounting Assistant is available for free to all eBay Store owners and to those who subscribe to Selling Manager or Blackthorne. (If you don't fit one into one of those categories, you can't use Accounting Assistant.)

To download Accounting Assistant, go to http://pages.ebay.com/accountingassistant and then click Download Accounting Assistant Full Setup. After you've installed Accounting Assistant, it asks some preliminary questions about how you want your information entered into QuickBooks. Take the time to answer the questions carefully ; this setup process saves you lots of time later. Another timesaver is Accounting Assistant's ability to match eBay sales transactions to existing customers and items in QuickBooks automatically. When you've been using Accounting Assistant for a while, it actually gets smarter about how to match sales, customers, and items, which means less time tapping the keyboard for you.

Note: For help with QuickBooks, check out QuickBooks: The Missing Manual .

9.1.5. eBay Sales Reports

If you want to see at a glance how your eBay business is doing from month to month, you can subscribe to eBay Sales Reports, a Web-based service shown in Figure 9-20. There are two levels: just plain Sales Reports, which are free, and Sales Reports Plus, which cost $4.99 per month (but you can try them out free for a month). Here's what they include:

• Sales.

• Ended listings.

• Successful listings (those that ended with a sale).

• Average selling price.

• eBay and PayPal fees.

Sales Reports Plus tacks on some diagnostic tools you can use to analyze your auctions:

• Metrics to measure success by category, auction format (like regular or BIN), day/time of auction end.

• Buyer counts.

• A detailed breakdown of your eBay fees.

• Unpaid Item credits you've requested .

To sign up, from the eBay home page go to My eBay Manage Subscriptions, find the level of sales reports you want, and then click the Subscribe link. You can view your Sales Reports from your My eBay page. In the left-hand menu, look under My Subscriptions, and then click Sales Reports.

Figure 9-20. Sales reports break down your sales for a given month, showing how much you earned, how many auctions ended (and how many of those ended in a sale), and average selling price, in text and graphic formats. Other information further down the page includes month-to-month sales growth and your eBay and PayPal fees.