Trying to be more organized or to reduce your eBay selling costs? If either of these objectives is among your New Year's resolutions or your everyday goals, a good place to start is with managing your image hosting usage.
Though Auctiva's eBay listing plans offer generous image hosting space, the bucket can quickly fill up when you're busy adding lots of large images to your listings.
After the busy holiday season—and any time of year—you may find you have a bucket full of leftover images from sold listings. Auctiva lets you store those images for as long as you need them. But if you really don't need them anymore (e.g., the return policy has expired, the stock is sold out, etc.), it's a good idea to delete them. That way, you'll avoid accidentally overfilling the bucket and incurring an image hosting overage charge.
Monitoring your image hosting usage
Depending on your Auctiva service plan, your image hosting allowance may be anywhere from 100 MB to 2 GB. You can see how much image hosting you're using by signing into your account, clicking on the Images tab and going to "My Image Hosting Usage." This page will display your current usage and your peak usage during the current billing cycle.
For even quicker bulk image selection, you can show up to 250 images on a page and check the box in the header to select all the images as once
There are several ways to delete outdated images to keep your image hosting usage in check. We'll go through them here.
Note: Before deleting images, please double-check to make sure they are not in use in a live or scheduled listing or profile.
Manually delete images
The safest way to delete images is to manually delete them, one by one. While this way also takes longer, you will be less likely to accidentally delete an image that's in use in a live listing or a profile.
Now, if you have hundreds upon hundreds of images stored in Auctiva, you may be thinking we're crazy for even suggesting this method. But, it's not as overwhelming as it seems. At the top of the Image Management page, use the filtering options to identify images according to folder, name, age and status, and click Search.
Once you do this, the list should be less daunting. Now, you can scroll down, check the boxes next to those you want to delete, and click the Delete button.
For even quicker bulk image selection, you can show up to 250 images on a page and check the box in the header to select all the images as once.
Speed-delete with the Deletion Wizard
Want to make this whole process go faster? Using the Deletion Wizard, located under the Images tab, you can bulk-select images for deletion.
The wizard is not recommended if you have listings that renewed on eBay that weren't posted or relisted through Auctiva (such as Good 'Til Cancelled listings). Auctiva's system can't detect listings that were posted or renewed on eBay or another service. So, even though a listing is "closed" in your Auctiva account, it could still be active on eBay, but the Deletion Wizard won't know the difference.
So, while the wizard can be a tremendous time saver, be very careful not to delete images that are still in use somewhere.
Delete images when you delete saved listings
Being in the mood to get organized, you may have decided it's time to clean up your Saved Listings folder and get rid of expired listings you no longer need. While you're at it, consider saving time by deleting those listings' associated images in the same step.
When you use the Auctiva Uploader, you can mark images to automatically delete after 15, 30, 45 or 60 days
The new Saved listings page gives you the option to delete images at the same time you delete a saved listing. When you see the delete confirmation window, click the box to "Also delete images associated with these ads," and it's done for you.
The images will be deleted from all the listings where they were used—including other saved, active or closed listings. So, before clicking this option, make absolutely sure the images aren't being used in another listing you still need. When in doubt, use the filters to exclude images that are being used in other saved or active listings.
Set an Auto-Delete timer
Now that you've updated your image hosting usage, you can stay on top of it as you upload new images by setting a future date for automatic deletion.
When you use the Auctiva Uploader, you can mark images to automatically delete after 15, 30, 45 or 60 days. (This option isn't available with the HTML uploader.) Auctiva won't delete images that are detected in active listings. So, if an image is in an active listing tracked by Auctiva on the day it's scheduled to be auto-deleted, it will be skipped over.
This method works best if you know your images won't be needed after a certain length of time. If images will be used in Good 'Til Cancelled or other listings that will post or relist through eBay or another service, the Auto-Delete option isn't recommended.
As always, be very careful using Auto-Delete—you never want to delete images that are still being used in live listings.
Now you know four different ways Auctiva helps you manage your image hosting. To learn more about image hosting in Auctiva.com, please read our helpful FAQs. Questions specific to your account should be directed to Customer Support.
Auctiva EDU articles are for educational purposes only. Reader comments are not monitored by Auctiva Customer Support. If you need technical assistance or have questions specific to your Auctiva account, please submit a support request under the Help tab.