Other Seller Software
Saturday 07 November 2009
by SaleHoo.com
My name is Andrew. I'm a single parent with a son and two older girls. I've been working a 7-5 job for the past few years to try to support my family and a 50-60 hour week is not the best way to spend time with your family. My children are growing way too fast and their life was passing me by and there was nothing I could do. I was desperate. When I found out about SaleHoo, and joined, I was amazed. I started an online business in no time. In as little as two-three months, I had easily matched my original salary. A month later, I quit my horrible 7-5 job, and ever since then, I have been spending nearly the whole day with my family, an now I can drive my children to school and pick them up. I've never been so happy in my life. Thank you so much SaleHoo!!
Want to be the next SaleHoo success story?
In last week's newsletter we had a look at the tools that eBay provides for power sellers.
Well you needn't rely entirely on eBay for seller tools! There are now plenty of independent companies offering their own specially-designed products to help you run more effective and efficient auctions.
This week, we're going to have a closer look at what independant companies offer, before moving on to learning about the criteria you need in order to choose the right product for your needs.
AndaleRemember the counters that you can put on your eBay auctions? These are provided by Andale free of charge. But that's not all Andale offers to eBay sellers. They have a whole suite of products dedicated to enhancing sales and making your life a whole lot easier. In the last year, Andale sellers were responsible for approximately $3 billion in gross merchandise sales online!
Here's some other tools they have to offer:
Andale Lister Pro
Andale Lister helps you to create the 'look' of your listings with ready-made backgrounds. A simple spreadsheet-based interface allows you to focus on volume and managing your business with integrated solutions such as UPS, QuickBooks, and endicia.
**Tip**
It's vital to automate your business to increase your sales. As your business grows you will reach a point when it becomes inefficient to do everything yourself. This is where software becomes absolutely essential. eBay powersellers all recommend that you constantly search for new ways to improve your business.
Andale Images
This tool helps you to create powerful, attractive product displays for your items. Andale Images allows you to load and edit your images, set controls, optimize your file size and create a photo album of up to eight images showcasing multiple views of your product.
Andale Checkout
Checkout simplifies the whole end-of-auction process by requesting payments as soon as the auction is over.
It's directly integrated with eBay's Pay Now button and allows buyers to track their order status and shipment.
Andale Gallery
Helps you cross-sell your other items in every ad to keep bidders shopping with you. It allows you to create categories for your gallery based on eBay categories - or set up your own. Add you company logo, welcome message and contact information to your Gallery.
Andale Customer Manager
Organize and manage your customers with ease. Andale Customer Manager allows you to create custom email lists and manage your mailing lists.
Andale Reports
Monitor your financial performance, analyze customer behavior, manage your costs, and learn which marketplace is working best for you.
Packages
It's highly likely that you'll be needing more than one of these options, so Andale provides a number of package options. Depending on your listing numbers, packages range from $10.95 for 40 listings per month, and $229.95 for 1100 listings per month.
Auction Hawk
Auction Hawk provides a number of image hosting and hosted auction-management tools.
You can choose to just have your images hosted for only $12.99, or from a series of plans.
These range from the Basic Plan which provides 100 listings, 25MB of storage and 1,000 images for $12.99/month to the Unlimited Listings plan, which provides unlimited listings, 500 MB storage and 20,000 images for $89.99 per month.
Sign up for a 21-day free trail at http://www.auctionhawk.com/html/signup.html/
MarketBlast
This is a software product targeted at large volume Powersellers.
For $149 you get a product that helps you to make your listings stand out, provide excellent customer service, see easily what items sell best and which items are more profitable. You can also easily create listings, manage all your product sourcing activities and much more.
A free but limited-feature demo version is available to download.
Vendio
Vendio provides competitive image hosting rates starting at $2.95 for 3 MB right up to 10 GB for $49.95 per month.
They have two Sales Manager products customized to meet different seller needs:
The Inventory Sales Manager is for merchants who sell multiple quantity items (this won the eBay star developer award 2005).
The Merchandising Sales Manager edition is for merchants who sell unique items.
There is no free trial, but a 14-day money-back guarantee is offered.
iRun
A $39.95 monthly fee gives you unlimited access to a professional template gallery, you can build your own store and shopping cart with IRUN's ecommerce tools, real time traffic reporting to view your site's visitors and history, create a variety of different pages such as downloads, news, FAQs, contact, gallery, photo album, and products, plus much more.
iRun's website builder is also a fantastic tool. It teaches you how to edit your site in HTML, set up a visitor poll and heaps more. Give iRun a 30-day trial run with no obligation.
But they all seem so similar to me...How do I tell which seller tool is going to be best for my needs?
If your mind is in a whirl after reading about all these 'similar but different' products, then I sympathize!
With so many offers to choose from, all at different prices and with varying features, it seems almost impossible to know which one is going to be the right one for you.
One way of carrying out and evaluation is to download the trial version and give the product a go.
But for the time-poor among us (and it's quite likely you will be if you are considering software!), trialing 3-4 different software options is just not viable.
So how can you make a quick but wise decision?
Firstly, it's helpful to make a list of your requirements before you start.
Details are important: How many items are you selling per month? Are you planning to increase this amount? How many images do you want to display? Do you want to build your own website or enhance the one you already have? Are you planning on sending out email newsletters to your customers? Are you testing two different products and need to compare statistics? The list goes on...
Your list is important because you will have to choose between three different types of auction software and decide whether you need one or all of these options:
- Market Analysis - This type of software helps you to see what products are selling best by generating timing, sell-through and enhancement statistics.
- Auction Management software - Manages your emails, customer list, feedback, payment and shipping.
- Listing Enhancements - Detailed bidder statistics (to fine-tune auction listing), gallery listings, design tools, interactive pictures or video (to showcase high-value products), and real-time chat (to provide instant customer service).
Software versus Hosted Services
Another important distinction to make when choosing your product is between software and hosted products.
Software products are downloaded and saved onto your own computer so your auction data is stored on your own hard drive and you can use it without being connected to the Internet.
Hosted (or online) products are accessed via the Web so you can use the service from any computer, but you need to stay connected to the Internet while using it. This is a big disadvantage if you have a dial-up Internet connection, or if your connection is slow. On the plus side, you don't need to worry about your own computer crashing or getting a virus, as your valuable auction data is stored on the vendor's computers rather than your own.
The Evaluation Process
Now we get down to the nitty-gritty of your evaluation.
- Compare each product and its components against your requirements. Your main concern is to find a product that meets all your needs. If it has some nice little bonuses then that's fantastic. Just make sure that you don't get carried away with cool features that you don't necessarily need. I'm sure I don't need to remind you that overspending is the major reason why entrepreneurs fail in their first year of business!
- Check pricing. All the tools above require either a one-off payment or a monthly fee, but some other products you may come across may have other, less straightforward pricing systems. Packaged deals are likely to be the easiest to budget.
- If you don't have time to take a trial, try Googling the product name to see what other people have to say about it.
- If you have a particular question that isn't answered on the website, then email the vendor to ask about the product directly. The speed and helpfulness of the reply is a good indicator of the support you would receive as a customer.
In sum, good software can make a huge difference to the efficiency of your business. Just be sure to do the research before you buy to make sure you're getting the best deal.
**Top Tip**
Don't forget to compare eBay tools against independent offers.
Workbook
- How many items do you think you would have to sell per week before you needed to invest in software?
- Do you think there are advantages to using seller tools from outside eBay? Or vice versa?
Useful Links
Want to open your own store? Find out how next week!
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