Popular Auction Management Tools
| To give you an idea of the various auction management tools available, we'll take a look at what's available from eBay and major third-party providers. Remember, all prices and services are subject to change. ÁndaleÁndale (www.andale.com), shown in Figure 19.1, probably offers the most variety when it comes to auction-related services. It's the only site that offers the full range of tools from pre-auction research to post-auction management. Figure 19.1. The Ándale website. Ándale Checkout (www.andale.com) provides a post-sale checkout option similar to eBay's checkout feature, as well as automated post-auction tools similar to those of Selling Manager Pro. At the close of an auction, Ándale automatically sends the high bidder an email with a link to an Ándale Checkout page. (Buyers can also check out by responding to the end-of-auction email.) You can view the entire post-auction process for all your auctions from Ándale's sales console; you can also use this page to generate invoices and shipping labels. Note In case you're wondering (or even if you're not), Ándale is pronounced on-de-lay, not an-dale. The charge for Ándale Checkout depends on the number of customers who use the service. Table 19.3 details the various fee plans.
The nice thing about Ándale Checkout is that its fees are scalable based on the number of auctions you run in a given month. If you run only a handful of auctions, you pay a low fee20 cents an auction, roughly. You're not forced into a high fixed monthly cost, which can translate into high per-auction costs. It's a good choice for low-volume sellers or sellers whose volume varies from month to month. Auction HawkAuction Hawk (www.auctionhawk.com), shown in Figure 19.2, is an up-and-coming auction management service with affordable pricing. Auction Hawk offers a variety of tools in its main service, including image hosting, bulk listing creation, end-of-auction checkout with automated winning bidder email, bulk feedback posting, and profit-and-loss reporting. Figure 19.2. The Auction Hawk website. One nice aspect of Auction Hawk's services is that you are not charged any per-transaction or final value fees. In addition, all the services are included in a single price, so you're not nickel-and-dimed to death with a la carte pricing. The full-service monthly plans range in price from $12.99 (for 110 listings) to $89.99 (unlimited listings). At these prices, Auction Hawk is worth checking out. AuctivaAuctiva (www.auctiva.com), shown in Figure 19.3, used to offer a variety of different plans at various prices, but now offers just a single planand it's completely free. You get listing creation, image hosting, listing tracking, hit counters, automated feedback posting, and all the rest, all at no charge. As you can imagine, Auctiva's popularity has increased substantially since the site removed its fees. Figure 19.3. The Auctiva website. ChannelAdvisorChannelAdvisor (www.channeladvisor.com), shown in Figure 19.4, offers a fairly affordable suite of auction management toolsas well as services for bigger online merchants. The service you want to look at is ChannelAdvisor Pro, a surprisingly easy-to-use collection of auction management tools, quite reasonably priced at a flat fee of just $29.95 per month. If you're doing more than 50 auctions a month, it's definitely worth consideringeven more so if you're a heavier lister. Figure 19.4. The ChannelAdvisor website. |
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