Auctiva Blog

As you may have heard, Auctiva announced today that it has been acquired by Alibaba.com. The acquisition marks a new, exciting chapter for the company, says Auctiva CEO Jeff Schlicht, who will remain the head of Auctiva as the company’s CEO.

In the 12 years it’s operated, Auctiva has grown into the leading provider of selling tools for eBay users and other online merchants, and this new venture will help Auctiva grow even more and better serve customers, Schlicht notes.

“I see this as not the end, but a new beginning with even bigger opportunities,” he says.

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Whether you use Auctiva for launching your listings to eBay, or list directly on eBay, there are a few things every new seller should know to build a successful venture.

One of my job duties here at Auctiva is to make sure new employees go through the entire process of listing on eBay using Auctiva’s tools. Even if they have sold on eBay before, it’s imperative they learn about our listing services and understand how all our tools work with eBay.

I’ve been selling on eBay for about 11 years, and there are many things I automatically do when I list and didn’t realize new sellers might overlook. I guess it’s just become second nature to me, and I assumed even new sellers would automatically do these things.

Of course, when I first started out, it was a lot easier to sell on eBay. There were fewer rules and regulations. Nowadays, including one word in your ad could get your listing pulled for some violation or another. Sellers need to be clear about what they are selling, how fast they will ship, what their refund policy is (if they have one), etc.

Here are a few crucial points I’ve noticed many new sellers leave out, or go totally overboard with:
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Detailed Seller Ratings, or DSRs as many of us refer to them, provide a “more complete picture of the member’s performance as a seller,” according to eBay. But I’m not sure how true this is. Recently, someone left me ones in each of the four DSR categories (item description, seller communication, shipping, and shipping and handling charges), but still left me positive feedback. How does that work?

I’ve never understood the true purpose of DSRs. I prefer the days when eBay allowed us to leave honest feedback about buyers. Today, buyers can anonymously rate sellers for things that are out of their control—shipping time, for example. Buyers don’t even seem to need a real reason to leave a low DSR score at all, so why have them?
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Call me Simon Legree, but I love receiving discounts, and I really twirl my ‘stache when I’m able to get a discount, or earn points on every purchase I make using a particular credit card or flying on a specific airline or renting a car from a specific company—because these really add up.

For example, my insurance company issued me a Visa card that accumulates “rewards dollars” on every purchase I make. Then, when I have built up an accumulation, the insurance company that issued my card lets me use my rewards dollars to pay the premium on any insurance policy that I have through the company.

My insurance agent told me about this, and it has worked really well for three years. I charge just about everything I buy to that card, every tank of gas, every dinner out, every video rental. For every dollar I charge, I’m building up reward dollars. It really adds up!
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After 31 days of listing, photographing, packing and shipping, Auctiva Communications Manager Robert Green won our In-House Summer Selling Challenge, in which he went head to head against our Product Analyst Rebecca Miller. Robert had 43 transactions in July and about $1,400 in total sales.

Rebecca, a seller of more than 10 years, kept the competition close, losing by just four transactions with 39 and total sales of about $900.

“It was a lot of fun competing, and getting a glimpse into the life of a serious online seller,” Robert says. “I had previously sold on eBay very sporadically—mostly when cleaning out the garage or replacing something that I thought still had some value. Approaching selling like a business brings a lot more responsibility, stress and work!”
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Am I the only seller that is so excited about Black Friday they actually have a “countdown to Black Friday” timer on their desktop?

Call me crazy, but I do love looking forward to the holiday selling rush. But before I can sell anything, I need to find what will be good—even hot sellers—months in advance. That means looking for trends now. Not in November or December. Now!

It was around this time last year when I noticed a lot of talk on the various e-commerce forums and Web sites about Zhu Zhu Pets. Zhu Zhu whats? I was clueless about what these robotic hamsters were, or why on earth they were in short supply and high demand.
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Hopefully you’ve noticed some of the features we’ve added to Auctiva.com in the last six months or so. Do you know where we go for suggestions for the features we should develop? Well, many times, the answer is you, our customers.

Our Auctiva Feature Center [link requires login] makes it easier for us to see what you want, and for you to request new Auctiva features. We still scan our Community Forums for ideas about what our users would like to see us develop in the future, but our Feature Center is a more efficient way to hear from you. It’s a place where users make suggestions and vote on potential new features. You can also see what features we have “on deck” and which have already been completed.

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From Rebecca

Things are looking up for Robert in our summer selling challenge. I’m not out of the game yet, though. It’s going to be a busy week and a half, but I think I can make the final score pretty close. In terms of actual items sold, I can beat Robert hands down. But in terms of total dollar amount, he may come out ahead in the end. Only time will tell… heh heh heh (evil laugh).

All this selling made me think about how much money in fees we will have paid when the dust has settled. I was able to list a lot of things in the first part of July when the free-insertion-fee promotion was going on, but I know Robert didn’t start his selling push until after that promotion ended.

A quick check on my current eBay invoice shows I’ve racked up about $50 in insertion and final value fees so far, and there’s still the PayPal fees I need to tally up. If I wanted to get real specific, I could calculate the amount I’ve had to pay on postage and shipping supplies. My bottom line is dwindling before my very eyes. I had better get a move on.

From Robert
This week, two things happened that have substantially changed my eBay selling activities. One, I’ve had a lot of unrelated responsibilities competing for my time. Two, as opposed to spending my time looking for inventory or listing products, this week has been all about order fulfillment.

I made more than 20 sales last week. Now I need to ensure products are shipped on time and reach their destinations in a timely manner. This requires time, some expense, organization and keen attention to detail.
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I returned from a relaxing extended weekend in Carson City, NV, recently to discover an e-mail from a recent buyer in my inbox. According to him, the item he had purchased from me was missing a vital component—and would not work without it.

I politely offered to send my buyer an identical replacement ASAP, no questions asked. It would eat any profit I had made on the sale of the first item, but I wanted to do my best to make him happy, and to do what I could to prevent negative feedback. Maybe I should have asked him to return the item first, but I didn’t really see the point for this rather inexpensive item.

But part of me wondered if he was just looking for a refund to his PayPal account. Call me untrusting if you want, but after selling online for more than 10 years, I’ve come across a quite a few buyers who are just out to get something for free. 
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From Rebecca

Well, it seems Mr. Green did have a card up his sleeve! It’s not over yet, though. There may still be a chance for me to win this thing.

I’m so confident that I’m not even going to list anything this weekend. We’ll see how this all pans out at the end of the month.

Maybe this 109-degree heat is making me think crazy thoughts!

From Robert

So, as Rebecca alluded to, the figures (in terms of both total number and value of sales) have swung my way this week. I took advantage of a spike in demand for a particular product (wouldn’t you love to know?), and a connection I had, and started listing like crazy.

This busy week left me with two points I’d like to share:

First, listing format and timing are huge. I sold several of essentially the same items this week. Because of listing format (and probably others factors that affected visibility in search results) and timing, I saw $40 fixed-price listings close without a sale, while an auction with a $20 starting price for the same item went for more than $60. I’ve learned a lot this week about attracting shopper traffic. It’s clear this is as important as any other element in the successful online selling formula.

Finally, it’s a lot of work communicating with buyers, tracking who has paid and who hasn’t, packaging, shipping, leaving feedback, fielding questions, managing active listings, and all of the rest an active eBay seller has to do. I truly appreciate what Rebecca and other successful (serious) sellers do. It’s easy to hear about a great find that was turned around for a tidy profit, and take for granted all the work in between (not to mention those transactions that took more time and effort than the profit—if any—justified). It’s also easy to forget about the insertion fees, shipping fees, listing enhancement fees, final value fees, payment processing fees, and myriad other costs that a seller has to incur.

I’m tired, but maybe that’s the same 109-degree heat talking. Have a great weekend!