Five Useful Online Tools for eBay Sellers
by Leeia Ladipoh on March 13th, 2008
If you have started your own online eBay business, you may have noticed that the constant circle of listing items, selling them, sending out invoices, receiving payments and relisting items for sale can take quite a bit of time out of your schedule.
If you are listing items one at a time, going page by page through the eBay program, this slowdown in your business life is even worse. While you may love the profitability of eBay, you may also wish for an easier, and less time consuming, way to take care of your online inventory.
Thankfully, there are many online tools to help eBay sellers through every step in the process. For many of these, you do not even have to waste time looking – they are available on eBay itself, in the Seller Tools section.
Here’s a look at five of the more popular online tools for eBay sellers:
* Turbo Lister – When you need to list a large number of items – and fast! – Turbo Lister may be the program you want to try. Turbo Lister allows the bulk upload of multiple items on eBay. Once you download the program, you will be able to put in all the information about your products from your offline computer.
Once they are ready to go, you can go online and have the system automatically upload the whole lot. In addition to bulk uploading, Turbo Lister also aids in customizing of your eBay sales pages to be more attractive to prospective buyers.
Turbo Lister is a free program offered by eBay.
* Selling Manager – Taking things to the next level is Selling Manger. This program comes into play when your listings are running and helps you keep an eye on them. From monitoring your listings to printing bulk invoices and shipping labels, Selling Manager can speed up the process.
It can also help you generate bulk feedback to keep your shoppers happy. Additionally, the program will help you get your items back on the market with bulk relisting of sold and unsold items.
If you have an eBay store, Selling Manager is free. If not, it costs $4.99 per month to use.
* Selling Manager Pro – In addition to all the offerings of the Selling Manager program, Selling Manager Pro offers bulk and automatic listing capabilities, as well as the ability to send automatic e-mails to your buyers when they purchase an item.
The system will also let you know when your inventory is getting low on the bulk items that you have listed. When it comes to paperwork, this program will print out profit and loss reports and offer sales data spreadsheets.
This program costs $15.99 per month – unless you have a featured or anchored eBay store, in which case it is included.
* Blackthorne Basic – For middle-level sellers that list at least 2-3 dozen items a month, Blackthorne Basic is a good option for all-inclusive eBay product management. Once the software is on your system it will become an all-in-one program where you can create bulk listings, watch those listings and sales and respond to your buyers.
Instead of having to sort through the pages on the eBay website for all these functions, Blackthorne Basic allows you to complete these tasks from an interface on your computer.
This system will also keep track of your customers’ information and allow you to customize sales reports at a price of $9.99 per month.
* Blackthorne Pro [link to http://pages.ebay.com/blackthorne/pro.html] – In addition to the offerings of Blackthorne Basic, Blackthorne Pro adds the feature of inventory management, so you will always know what is in stock. It allows multiple users to work on the system at a time. This program is primarily for businesses that have designated more than one employee to the task of listing items to sell.
Blackthorne Pro also offers upgraded design features to create listings that will stand out and grab the attention of prospective buyers. This program costs $24.99 per month.