Does Auctiva offer a store where I can list items independent of eBay? What are the fees?
—Fettered in Fayetteville
Schlicht: For years, sellers have been asking us to do this and I've ignored them, thinking I could help them more by growing their eBay sales. Well, not anymore. I've heard your cries for help expanding your business off eBay and am very excited to announce our new feature-rich Auctiva Commerce storefronts. We are beta testing the Auctiva Commerce storefronts now. I encourage you to go try them out and give us your feedback. We haven't finalized the fees, but they will be very low, and the stores are very nice with all the features you'd want.
At the moment, I have an eBay shop and an Auctiva storefront. If I give up my eBay basic shop, can I still keep my treasured Auctiva store?
—Overtaxed in Oxted
Schlicht: We're in the process of creating something that can do that, and it will be on the site around the time we release our Auctiva Commerce storefronts. At that point you should be able to import your inventory into either site to list your items on eBay or your Auctiva Commerce store.
I know you are moving more toward a Web-based system, and I have also taken a hard look there, but frankly find your new system cumbersome to use. Perhaps as I use it more it will become easier to use. What are your plans for eBud and will it be possible to continue using it in conjunction with your new Web-based system?
—Offline in Oak Grove
As long as I can make money keeping the classic products such as eBud running, I will do so. Over time, though, fewer and fewer people are using them
Schlicht: As long as I can make money keeping the classic products such as eBud running, I will do so. Over time, though, fewer and fewer people are using them—to the point where they don't even make enough to pay one programmer's salary. At some point in the next 18 months, I'd anticipate the classic products starting to cost me money, at which point I'd give some notice that they'll be going away. It's simply too costly to keep them updated with eBay's constantly changing policies.
I would like to know how long my saved listings and photos will stay in Auctiva? Do I have to manually delete them? Is there somewhere I can put a date for these old listings and photos to auto delete?
—Archived in Aberdeen
Schlicht: We don't have a time limit, but we'd hope that you would clean them out as soon as you no longer need them, or at least every month or two. Saving listings in our system that you don't need anymore costs us time, money and resources, and increases our cost to run the site.
I use Auctiva all the time, and recently had a buyer that purchased insurance through you for something shipping to Australia. Am I to understand you insure items internationally as well as domestically?
—Indemnified in Imperial
Schlicht: Yes. There is a list of restricted countries on the terms and conditions page, but we support the majority of countries. Where countries are not supported, it's likely due to excessive fraud or poor postal systems.
Is it possible to get an Australian version of Auctiva, with Australian postage calculator and checkout? Currently, after I have listed an item, I have to go into eBay and change shipping and other things.
—Posting in Peak Hill
Schlicht: eBay is taking away third-party checkout in 2009, so probably not. We do support listing directly to eBay.com.au; you can choose the eBay AU option through the site selection box at the top right corner of the lister page.
I read somewhere that it's possible, for a small fee, to list an item on both eBay U.K. and eBay.com. Can you advise (me on) how I can do this via Auctiva?
—Doubled Up in Donna Nook
Schlicht: I think you are talking about the "International site visibility" option. You can find that in your marketing tools section on the lister page. You could also just create a second item in Auctiva by selecting eBay U.K. as your site at the top right corner of the lister page and just list the item again there as a real U.K. listing.
I sell books on eBay. The solution I—and I suspect, thousands of other book sellers—are looking for is to enter the English ISBN and receive as output synopsis, number of pages, etc. into a template page. It would be a service worth paying for. You could charge per book, and if the info was unavailable, offer credits if the person provided the information.
—Bound in Boswell
Schlicht: Doesn't eBay already do that through pre-filled item data? If you select a book category in our lister page for a book, a link appears under the category that says "Find Product." You can then enter the ISBN, and we'll send that to eBay so they can include all that data you've mentioned in your listing. I think this is a better way of doing it than including it in your description because it will then populate the item specifics, which some buyers might be using to search for items.
It would be great if you could give us the ability to grab product information off a site such as Amazon by just typing in the UPC code.
—Searching in Summerfield
Schlicht: That would be cool. For a lot of products, eBay already has that info (see my answer to the previous question). After selecting your category, look for a "Find Product" link below the category box on our lister page. If it's there, you can enter the UPC and eBay will pre-fill all the item data it has for that listing.
Have you any plans to make Auctiva compatible with Google Chrome?
—Technophile in Terra Bella
Schlicht: Not until it achieves about 20 percent or so market share. Until then, close Chrome, open Firefox and then use Auctiva. We just don't have the time, money or resources to support the next four or five small browsers out there. The cost is too high in times when we have a bazillion other things to be doing, thanks to eBay and its changes.
You can ask Jeff your own questions by e-mailing him at "AsktheCEO" at the Auctiva.com domain. Not all questions will be answered, but those selected will be published with Jeff's responses in future Ask the CEO articles.
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