| If you're a high-volume seller, trying to manage each and every auction individually gets real tedious real fast. Many high-volume sellers choose to outsource their auction management to an outside service or utilize dedicated software programs to do the management for them. These programs and services not only track the progress of in-process auctions, but also manage all manner of post-auction activity. We'll look at some of the top auction management tools next ”including those "official" tools provided by eBay. eBay Selling Manager eBay Selling Manager (pages.ebay.com/selling_manager/) is eBay's official auction management tool. When you subscribe to Selling Manager, the Selling tab of your My eBay page is transformed into a Selling Manager tab, where you can manage all your auction and post-auction activity ”including sending customer emails and leaving feedback. Cost is $4.99 per month. As you can see in Figure 12.2, the main Selling Manager page provides an overview of your active and closed auctions. You can click on any link to see a finer cut of your activity ”to view only your active listings, for example, or only those listings that are paid and ready to ship. Figure 12.2. Managing your auction activity with eBay Selling Manager.  The most useful aspect of Selling Manager comes after the close of an auction. When you display any of the Sold Listings pages (such as the one shown in Figure 12.3), you see a list of closed auctions, with the customer status indicated by a series of icons. You can select an individual auction to mark it paid or shipped, or to send it to your personal archive. Click the Buyer Email link to send a series of post-auction email messages, or click the Record # link to view complete listing details ”and enter buyer shipping information and print invoices and shipping labels. Figure 12.3. Use the Sold Listings page to view and manage all post-auction activity.  eBay Selling Manager Pro Selling Manager isn't perfect. One of its biggest problems is that you pretty much have to manage one auction at a time ”it lacks features that let you manage multiple auctions in bulk. If you're a high-volume seller, a better solution is eBay's higher-end Selling Manager Pro, which offers bulk management features. For $15.99 per month, Selling Manager Pro does everything the basic Selling Manager does, plus more: -
Sends email messages in bulk -
Leaves feedback in bulk -
Manages individual inventory items, and issues restock alerts -
Generates a monthly profit and loss report, including all eBay fees and cost of goods sold "Mike Sez"  | I find eBay Selling Manager an extremely useful tool if I have a moderate number of auctions running simultaneously . Running just a few auctions makes Selling Manager cost-prohibitive on a per-auction basis ”and if I'm managing several dozen auctions, I come to curse its lack of batch email features. Still, for many sellers, Selling Manager does a fine job ”and is a lot better than trying to manage post-auction activity manually. |
Selling Manager Pro also incorporates all the bulk listing features of Turbo Lister. As you can see, this is a more complete auction management tool meant to compete directly with the offerings from ndale, Vendio, and other third parties. ndale Checkout ndale 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, ndale automatically sends the high bidder an email with a link to an ndale 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 ndale's sales console; you can also use this page to generate invoices and shipping labels. "Mike Sez" | | While I like Selling Manager Pro, I do have an issue with its pricing. If you only run a dozen or so auctions a month, that $15.99 monthly fee equates to a dollar or so per auction. You have to be running a hundred or more auctions each month to make Selling Manager Pro a cost-effective auction management tool. |
The charge for ndale Checkout depends on the number of customers who use the service. Table 12.1 details the various fee plans: Table 12.1. ndale Checkout Fees | Monthly Fee | Checkouts Included | Each Additional Checkout | | $2.00 | 10 | $0.20 | | $7.50 | 40 | $0.18 | | $16.95 | 110 | $0.15 | | $33.95 | 275 | $0.12 | | $56.95 | 550 | $0.10 | | $89.95 | 1,100 | $0.08 | | $149.95 | 2,750 | $0.05 | | $224.95 | 5,600 | $0.04 | The nice thing about ndale Checkout is that its fees are scalable based on the number of auctions you run in a given month. If you only run a handful of auctions, you pay a low fee ”twenty 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. Auctiva eBud Auctiva eBud (www.auctiva.com) is an interesting auction management tool in that it tracks all your current and closed auctions in a separate software program that looks and works pretty much like an Excel spreadsheet. Each auction is displayed in a row in the spreadsheet; auction details are displayed in columns . You can use eBud not only to track your auctions, but also to send post-auction emails, print invoices and shipping labels, and generate various eBay sales reports . Auctiva charges $11.95 for eBud subscriptions. Vendio Sales Manager As you learned in Chapter 11, "Creating Item Listings," Vendio Sales Manager is a powerful set of listing creation and auction management tools. You can use Sales Manager not only to create new item listings, but also to manage all of your current and post-auction activity. Sales Manager will automatically generate end-of-auction emails, print invoices and packing slips, and upload customer feedback to eBay. If you remember from Chapter 11, the fees for Vendio's services are unnecessarily (in my opinion) complex. The problem with this type of fee schedule is you're never really sure which is the lowest -cost plan. I suppose the Standard Plan makes sense if you're a low-volume seller, or one whose sales volume tends to vary from month to month. If you know you're going to achieve a high sales level, then one of the other plans might be in order ”and if you're committed to a really high sales level, the Power plans might be cost-effective. But choosing which plan you'll need in advance is often difficult ” especially if you're just starting out. The Absolute Minimum Auction management entails a lot of different activities ”keep these points in mind: -
eBay lets you make changes to an auction listing until the first bid is placed; after that, you can append additional text to your listing, if necessary. -
All sales activity can be monitored from your My eBay page ”at no charge. -
eBay's Selling Manager tool provides more advanced auction management services, such as sending end-of-auction emails to buyers. -
Other popular auction management tools include ndale Checkout, Auctiva eBud, and Vendio Sales Manager. |
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