EBay sellers have a number of online auction tools at their disposal when they use the options on eBay’s own platform to list and sell online. Still, some want to stand out from the competition and millions of item listings on eBay.
One way to enhance your eBay business is to invest in third-party eBay tools — tools you can use on eBay that are not developed by, or included in, eBay’s own online selling platform.
When you use these tools, you are not giving up anything in terms of running your business. You can choose to keep using eBay’s tools, but at the same time you can use third-party services so you can work with a unique mix of eBay tools to help you grow your eBay business.
Tools to Publish eBay Listings
Auctiva is a certified eBay solution provider offering a full auction-management platform. The solution has a number of features to publish eBay listings, including bulk-listing tools, profiles to quickly add your most commonly used information, image hosting, tools to manage inventory and consignment, Auctiva eBay Stores, traffic counters, automatic customer e-mails, Auctiva secure checkout and more. In total Auctiva offers more than 15 features and most are options you won't find when using eBay’s own listing platform.
Auctiva offers a free 30-day trial and four account plans to suit any eBay seller. If you run a small eBay business, you can invest $2.95 per month for 14 listings up to $19.95 per month on an unlimited plan that includes the stand-alone Auctiva Commerce Store.
BiggerBids services for eBay sellers include auction templates and image hosting accounts. The auction templates offered by BiggerBids are designed to save you time by storing the information that doesn't change from one auction to the next.
You can also make your listings stand out by using eye-catching templates that match your products, or you can choose seasonal themes. To use the service, you add the item information for a listing, upload and edit images, and then select a template that "wraps around" your information.
When you add information, you'll find that you can edit many areas within a BiggerBids' template. For example you can customize your auction title, description, shipping and payment details, auction policies and a number of other data fields.
The service also offers image hosting with a number of features, including bulk image uploads, watermarking tools to brand your eBay item images, image management tools, and an image-to-auction transfer that lets you associate images with the auctions in which they belong.
BiggerBids offers its services (unlimited auction templates and image hosting) to sellers at a flat rate of $8.95 per month.
InkFrog is another certified eBay solution provider that offers a full auction-management platform. Once you have created your account on inkFrog you can then use this service to handle all aspects of your eBay business and listing requirements. When you list an item on eBay, you use inkFrog's interface and also use the seller dashboard to customize eBay templates, manage all inventory tasks such as photo uploads, and to track your eBay sales and history.
The inkFrog auction service costs $9.99 per month flat fee for all services, and the company also offers a free 14-day trial.
You can use Page Mage, an eBay compatible application that we recently covered, to improve your selling page by listing items in a more interactive and engaging way. For example, you can embed video, show eBay image galleries, or add scrolling text to any eBay auction or fixed-price item listing when you use the Page Mage service.
Recently added features to this service support the option to publish eBay listings to a number of social networking sites and blogs.
Pricing starts at fifty cents per listing on the pay-as-you-go option, and up to $34.95 per month for 1,000 listings. Page Mage also offers new customers a 60-day free trial account.
Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.
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