posted on January 28, 2004 04:21:54 AM new
Why is it that people are always looking for something that is "FREE", for something that does their work for them?????
posted on January 28, 2004 05:13:42 AM new
Ryan - Unfortunately, selling on eBay is not easy and never free. I don't know another auction service site that is free and reliable. I have always used Vendio (it was AuctionWatch when I started) and have not really found the fees too high. Are you hooked up with PayPal? There are fees involved there, too. But you have to look at it like this: If you rented a booth at a flea market or show, you would pay at least $50 a day and would only see a few hundred potential customers; if you rented a store - well, you might be lucky to make the rent each month. With eBay, you can sell your items from the comfort of your home, with millions of potential customers. I'm recently retired, but while I was working I managed to do 15 - 20 auctions a week. eBay has changed over the years, but IMHO is still a good deal. By the way, what type of items are you selling?
posted on January 28, 2004 07:14:04 AM new
I also use Vendio and have been since I started 4 years ago. I only list through here. I don't use any other service and I find it very reasonable. It would cost me more to list through eBay than it does through here and this is a very reliable site. I try and do a couple of auctions a day to list once a week. Very reasonable.
posted on January 28, 2004 07:39:26 AM new
You didn't say whether or not you use Vendio now. There are plans available without FVF..depends on your average sales price and volume.
Here are the Vendio plans:
Variable Rate Power Plan
Monthly Fee: $29.95
Listing Fee: NONE
Final Value Fee: 1.25%**
Bonus: Free Stores Subscription!*
Variable Rate Premium Plan
Monthly Fee: $12.95
Listing Fee: $0.05/listing
Final Value Fee: 1%**
FLAT RATE POWER PLAN
Monthly Fee: $39.95
Listing Fee: $0.10/listing
Final Value Fee: NONE
Bonus: Free Stores Subscription
FLAT RATE PREMIUM PLAN
Monthly Fee: $12.95
Listing Fee: $0.20/listing
Final Value Fee: NONE
Vendio recommends using the Variable Rate plans for items selling for less than $30 and the Power Plans for people listing more than 300 items/month.
I use the Variable Rate Power Plan and my average sale is less than $10. The FVF for an item selling for $10 is 1.25 cents and much cheaper than EBay's 10 cent/pending listing fee!!
posted on January 28, 2004 08:09:42 AM new
execlrye, selling on Ebay is this simple if you want to make serious money. You are going to work work work and pay pay pay. There is no free lunch around here. Sorry.
posted on January 28, 2004 09:55:22 AM new
Neglus, I also use the variable Vendio plan. I only list an average of 15 auctions a week, so this works great for me. I have been with AW/Vendio from way back when it was free. Why do some people think that you can ger something of quality for nothing?
posted on January 28, 2004 10:22:52 AM new
I agree Sanmar, but in defense of the OP he asked for a listing scheduler that didn't charge a FVF ... not FREE.
I think, however, that the idea of a FVF scares people away when it often is the cheapest plan. I pay $30/month for Vendio Variable Rate Power Plan and I list well over a thousand items/month. I don't pay image fees and I don't pay listing fees to Vendio, just the 1.25% (a little over a penny for a $10 item) FVF on the items that SELL. Lets say I sell 33% of a thousand postcards with an average sales price of $10...my sales would be $ 3,300. I would pay Vendio $30 subscription fee and $ 41.25 FVF for a total of $71.25. For me, Vendio is MUCH CHEAPER than ebay's 10 cent/listing for auction scheduling (that would $100 for 1,000 listings!) and I also get image hosting, listing templates and post-sale management.
posted on January 28, 2004 08:06:22 PM new
Depending on what you sell, Vendio has covered all the bases with a plan that will benefit any seller. You can change from one plan to another if your selling activities change. You can open multiple accounts, each with a different plan. The main thing you want is reliability, especially when it comes to auctions launching when you're not present. If there were any programs available that could match Vendio's reliability at a cheaper price, one of the pro's who post on these boards would have found it before now.
The light at the end of the tunnel will turn out to be an oncoming train.
posted on January 28, 2004 08:25:38 PM new
I use AuctionSage. It doesn't have a schedule function, but you have a space on the listing form for whatever you want to use it for. I put the date I want to list the item there. And, you can edit it from the listing page if you decide to change that or want to mark it for relist at any certain date.
It takes a little more work than a program that will schedule it for you, but lists items with the push of a button and costs $69 a year rather than the $64 I paid for just last month with Vendio.
I did use ChannelAdvisor. For scheduling, they are the best. You can schedule for months (I think even years) in advance. But, you can only list online and it takes way too long to wade through the 3 pages for each ad. Plus, their customer service is lacking to see the least and out and out rude if you want the honest truth.
Auction Sage customer support is extremely helpful, it is cheap, you have full control, and it works great. I can make a listing in under 2 minutes. My photo's and ads are always there for me since nothing is ever deleted and you can sort all the columns of the inventory and listing spreadsheet by any of the columns used (and hide any you don't want).
You do have to have your own photo hosting space though. I bought 800 mb for $94 for a year with Ipower and am very pleased with it.
If you don't list too many items at a time, your ISP probably has web space you can use. MIne had 70mb but it wasn't enough.
posted on January 28, 2004 09:54:15 PM new
lindaJean,
Thanks for the wealth of information you provided to "All", in the forum. I have one question for you however?
I'm going to check out AuctionSage, however from what your post implies you can "Kind Of Schedule", a scheduled listing if you work the program Auction Sage provides you with. $69.00 a year is a absoloutly phenomenol price if this does indeed work.
I'm planning on running 40 auctions a day in the near future. My listings need to be ("Scheduled /Spaced) out an hour apart fro one another. I crunched some numbers and the $0.10 fee soon turns into a $112.00 a month.
If you could please clarify for me whether or not the above mentioned is possible with Auction Sage I would really appreciate it.
Best Wishes,
Ryan Lorello
posted on January 28, 2004 11:12:25 PM new
I don't think AuctionSage can help you there. All it will do is let you put some information in as to when you want to manually post the auctions.
I put 1-29, or 3-31 etc beside mine, then sort and release all I have decided I want to release for that day. I'm only running a few listings now as I took a few days to learn everything there was to know about several programs before deciding on AS.
John is wonderful in helping with anything you need help with. But, I don't think you could schedule the way you are needing to.
I'm running 100 a day soon. But am only uploading 50 each day now. I don't care if they are only a minute or so apart so it is working great for me.
posted on January 28, 2004 11:14:37 PM new
Channel Advisor will let you schedule any way you want to but I don't think you will be able to list 50 a day using them as the on line lister is very very slow!
You might give them a look though. They only charge $29.95 a month and they also host the pics. They will give you a free trial so you could test a few and see how it goes.
I used them for years but that was when I only listed 50 to 100 a week, not 50 to 100 a day.
I have spent the last 3 months looking at every possible program out there. Since I want to start listing 500 to 1000 a week there was no way I could afford a pay as you go plan, CA was too slow. But it wasn't the fees with Vendio. They don't put my inventory id (sku) number by closed so I never knew what I could relist and what I couldn't. Plus, unless I went in to save them my pics would disappear in 90 days. I sell one of a kind items and may hold 50% of them for FLD or specials. I need everything ready to go when I need it to and I need to easily find the ads to go with the items.
Auction Sage was the only program I found that would do all that. The scheduling is the only drawback, but since I don't mind mine being very close together what they offer works well for me.
I did love Vendio. And, if I didn't need the pics and ads and the SKU information they would have worked great, but then again, it would cost me $600 to $1500 a year instead of $69 so AS still wins out for me.
[ edited by lindajean on Jan 28, 2004 11:26 PM ]
posted on January 29, 2004 05:28:27 AM new
I beg to differ lindajean..I use Vendio and I can tell what I need to relist and my images are not deleted. We both sell postcards, so I guess it all depends on how you have things organized. I have everything organized to work with Vendio because, except for brief flirtations with Spare Dollar and Seller's Assistant, I have always used Vendio. Of course I don't use SKU so I can't address that issue.
Speaking of Spare Dollar....they have about cheapest rates around and you can schedule auctions .. have you checked them out Ryan? I haven't looked at them lately but used to be $4.95/month flat rate for the whole she-bang no FVF. If you are selling 40/day of the same item going off in one hour intervals SD might work for you.
posted on January 29, 2004 07:04:00 AM new
I took a peek at SD and they still charge a flat 4.95 a month for all the service..no FVF...problem I had with it is limited image hosting but postcards are very image intensive so I would think that the image hosting would work for others. I can't address reliability because I only used it for the month trial.
posted on January 29, 2004 08:41:14 AM new
Neglus: I know Vendio works for you, but I would NEVER rely on having to pick up my postcards to relist.
I have totally relied on SKU and "unsold" lists for relisting for 3 years now and have NEVER made a mistake with listing something that has already sold or I don't have.
If the numbers are correct, and everything falls into the right spaces on your software, all you have to do is run down the list to see what you want to resell.
While I could do that with Vendio, the only way to know what item I am shipping is to click on my picture to get my SKU number (same for pic and id). With Channel Advisor and with Auction Sage, that number is printed on the invoice I include with my item so everything is number driven.
I handle the actual postcard 2 times. 1 time when I list it and 1 time when I mail it And, that is true if it sits there through 3 relists over 2 years
While postcards are easy to deal with if you want to hold them and keep up with them through index cards or whatever, my record albums are not. These are stacked in shelves in my storage unit...totally out of sight. I have to know what is where and what I can relist on them so they are even more SKU sensitive.
Vendio just didn't give me that information. Channel Advisor did but didn't give me offline listing for speed.
Spare Dollar can't handle volume and I don't know about the SKu number I didn't get that far. I know they were having problems with duplicate listings the month I tested them.
I don't know if it is the accountant in me or the Virgo but I just hated having someone else delete anything I have anywhere until I am through with it. Especially for the fees I was paying. So, combined with the SKU problem, having my own webspace and software that I controlled (totally) was important. My ads look the same, my sell through is the same, and my fees are way way down. And, I have everything I need and a programmer who is willing to add features when he can to make it even better. He added 2 columns to inventory where I could enter anything I wanted in them for my information and sorting, changed the way categories were picked (so I could manually enter my numbers), put the SKU number on inventory page (for someone else who used that field for Vendor info), and many other changes to help us all in just the 2 weeks I have been there. When was the last time CA or Vendio made a change we requested in a day or a week or even a year. In my case....NEVER!
Just the SKU change I asked for from Vendio and the "don't delete my unsold" items I requested from CA would have kept me with either of them. And, I could have saved myself the 3 months of aggravation testing everyone else
posted on January 29, 2004 09:33:10 AM new
I know your system works for you Linda - wasn't trying to imply that it didn't. For me, trying to keep track of things by SKU's wasted too much time - I found I was almost anal about the numbers and wasted time that could have been put to better use listing and shipping. I guess because I have used Vendio all this time my system is designed to work within Vendio parameters and for me, that is "Date derived" until the cards are placed in my store. I relist from the Vendio unsold item list (by date) and move my postcards from unsold to relisted (by date). When the mood strikes me I move unsold relisted items to my store where they are filed by state or topic and sit and grow even older LOL. I only give things one relist unless a FLD comes along.
I found that visiting the Recycle Bin keeps my images ad infinitum and listings are never deleted (at least in the two years I have been listing) through Vendio.
I agree that SD isn't suited for our kind of listings but certainly works for many others and you can't beat the price. Double listing isn't a good thing though. UGH. They didn't have those problems when I used the trial.
I guess it all boils down to finding a system that works for the individual seller. Lower priced or even free systems might be out there but in the end they might not turn out to be bargains if they don't work for you. It sounds like you found a good solution for your requirements Linda, I hope the OP finds one for his!
And, that is true if it sits there through 3 relists over 2 years