Auctiva Blog

Here at Auctiva, we work closely with eBay to make sure we stay in sync with its policies and features, while providing you with the best service we can. As part of this close relationship, eBay employees occasionally visit our Chico offices.

Anytime eBay makes the three-and-a-half-hour drive from San Jose to Chico, you can feel extra energy in the air. Usually we don’t get more than a day or two notice before our guests arrive—which doesn’t give me much time to organize my junk—I mean, inventory. I have a mountain of shoe boxes, bags of Webkinz and Club Penguin plush toys, and stacks of anything and everything in my two cubicles—all waiting to be listed.

eBay’s most recent visit was last week. Most of their time here was spent in meetings with our management team, but our visitors did find a few minutes before they left to swing by my workspace and ask me a few questions about selling. I took it as quite a compliment to be a stop on their tour of our offices. And to be perfectly honest, I was a little nervous, too.

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Last month, we told you we were working to support eBay’s multi-variation feature, and I’m happy to report that now you are able to create multi-variation listings through Auctiva!

In fact, several of our customers are already using our software to create multi-variation listings. As someone who worked on the development side of our Multi-Variation Tool, it’s very exciting to see our customers using it.

When we first decided to support multi-variations, we took a good look at eBay’s process for creating these listings. It requires multiple clicks of the mouse to add variations. Our first thought was, “How can we make this easier for our users?” After all, Auctiva is known for simplifying, and speeding, the listing process.

Our solution? To integrate multi-variations with the current listing process our users go through. We’ve given users the ability to add multi-variations to a listing right from our One-Page Lister if they choose a category that supports multi-variations. To add a variation, users simply click our link to go to our Multi-Variation Tool, where they can decide if they’ll create variations manually or with our Variation Generator. The Variation Generator was designed so that you can quickly create and edit your multi-variations. It can greatly reduce users’ workloads by producing up to 120 variations at once.

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The seasons are changing. We’ll be springing forward in no time.

And for some sellers this will mean their inventory will begin to change. So you may want to start the spring cleaning early and bring out those summer-themed items you picked up on clearance last year. Stores are already stocking their shelves with colorful outdoor decor, barbecue grills and accessories are popping up and bathing suits are hitting the racks.

Planning ahead can mean picking up seasonal inventory at deeply discounted prices and selling it for a hefty profit later on. Our Product Analyst Rebecca Miller scored some summer shoe wear last year, and will soon be putting them up for sale.

The beginning of February is a great time to stock up on seasonal items to resell later. While much of the country is still shoveling snow off of driveways and sidewalks, thoughts are already turning to the warmer days ahead.

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Now that you’ve had the chance to digest the upcoming changes on eBay, do you know how they will affect your bottom line? Have you decided how/if you need to change your selling habits?

There are, after all, several factors to consider. So how do you go about deciding how to adjust to get the maximum value out of your listings while not breaking the budget on fees? Glad you asked. While I know there are lots of variables to take into consideration, I’ve come up with a few tips to help you in your quest.

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