Hey Buddy Can You Spare a Dime or 12 Cents? : Auctiva Ask Sellers to Cough Up!

Like you John I have no skin in this game.

My main question is what exactly is Auctiva proposing to offer that justifies a transaction fee, let alone a listing fee. If you are paying for a service why are you paying for it again?

Sounds like paying to take your car to the car wash and having to pay extra for the water with another fee for the roller thingy that actually does the cleaning.

Channel Advisor they are not! CA keeps an eye on things, is proactive and um, advises. They devote considerable resources to research and development of best practices because successful sellers mean more $$ in their pockets too.

What bothers me the most is the 30 day deadline. Instead of listing items and making money, I'm scrambling to decide what to do and try out new services. It would've been much more reasonable to give us 90 days.

When I first heard it, I thought okay, I'd pay for this service, no problem. I'd gladly pay Auctiva a monthly fee, but my monthly charge under the new structure would be over $60 including the picture hosting service. Just can't do it.

I'm afraid this whole thing wasn't thought out very well. Did they really think we'd just go for this.

Waiting to see Auctiva's reaction to our reaction. I knew they would do something. Bingo....this morning an email from them, $180 flat rate from July 2009 until Dec 2010 paid up front for first 250 people that claim it. What? Not sure about that.

By my calculations it would be around 17 months at $10.58 a month and I wouldn't have to move everything, BUT I'm locked in until Dec 2010. Geezzz...

I tested Inkfrog and liked them alot. Received an email from them this morning addressing whether or not their fees will go up. A concern of many contemplating moving there.

They said, "I am happy to announce a price lock guarantee for all users who are currently signed up for InkFrog and who signup with us before Dec. 31st 2009. I will lock in your price of $9.95/month flat rate for our current services for at least 3 years!"

Plus there are several other options. Hosting my own pictures, etc. Okay, what is best for my business? Lots to think about. I'm not going to be hasty, but don't like the limbo either.

Appreciate your perspective on this John.
Thanks!

Totally agree with the crux of your message here near the end of the video. I might be talking up the particular service that I use, but definitely take your time in making your decision. In the end, Auctiva may be worth extra dollars if one of the other solutions doesn't do everything you want them to do or are just too hard.

As somebody who learned through making such a hasty mistake with an ecommerce service 5 or 6 years ago, I always take some cool-off time now.

John's message is right on target.

Cliff

Thanks for the size correction. You know us guys and sizes, LMAO. Although the size of picture storage in the age of unlimited photo storage all over the web should not be a true factor. No eBay has to pay EVER for picture storage. That really is a unnecessary expense in calculation in 2009.

john (ColderICE)

Mitzi is right, the image hosting fees alone were going to cost me $35 a month. My total monthly fees were going to work out to $70 per month, just for one of my two eBay accounts!

Because the change has to happen in such a short window, I've gone with InkFrog for now, but am also going to look into doing my own template, my own hosting, and my own e-commerce store down the road. I know there is stuff looming over us in three months, but during the interum while I get my own hosting set up, I am fine using InkFrog.

InkFrog made a tool that allowed me to move all 850 or so listings from Auctiva to InkFrog in the space of about an hour and a half this afternoon, doesn't get any better than that! So now I don't have to worry in the short term while I plan for the long term.

I am confused by Jeff saying we won't get charged for multiple accounts, because the Customer Support guy I got an email answer back from said we WOULD have to pay for multiple accounts. I think you might want to get some clarification on that one.

Frankly, I don't see how Jeff can justify taking a final value fee out of our listings. They have nothing to do with how much money we earn, they don't drive traffic to our auctions, there's just no way to justify that at all. THAT was the insult that was added to injury right there.

Thanks for this good info John!

Great video John, but you got one huge factor wrong - the image hosting. You said that you get up to 1 Gig before you are charged - it's actually 1 Meg. That's one measly MB - which is a handful of photos at best. Anyone who sells at any even semi-serious level will have to pay the $35 a month unlimited fee.

That is added on TOP of the plan fees - depending on which plan you choose. The plans are composed of different variations of monthly fees, listing fees, and final value fees. It is terribly complicated, which is driving people nuts, and the final value fees are really sending people over the edge just on principle.

CEO Jeff has said on the Auctiva forums that they are re-thinking the image hosting fees. Here's hoping they reduce them! All images that are on Auctiva after July 1st will be charged image hosting, no matter if you are staying and paying or if you are going.

For me personally the whole thing about eBay's Fall announcement is very interesting - could it be something that will affect other 3rd party providers? If us Auctiva folks go with Inkfrog or Seller Sourcebook etc., will we be in the same boat again come Fall?

I'm gunshy to go with any of them at this point. It will take me hours and hours to re-list my store items straight through eBay, but when I am done it will be eBay and only eBay that I have to worry about from then on - that might be worth the work. I don't know yet.

We were not paid affiliate money for any links on eBay.

Only when a buyer that was not on eBay clicked a link would we be paid. Additionally if the buyer started on eBay, came to our site, then went to back to eBay we were not paid.

We were only paid if the buyer started off eBay.

I'm posting my blog post about this tomorrow, but there is one main thing to remember.

ePN links that don't bring new traffic to eBay, ie: the ones Auctiva were doing, were ALWAYS against the rules. It was NEVER OK to put ePN links inside of listings, and make money from that.

But the ePN used to be REALLY bad at tracking that, and people were getting paid. So it's a wisening up more than a rule change.