What I want to share with you this week are seven really helpful eBay seller tools that can help you push your eBay business up a level. As you will know, it’s very important that your first main goal is to become a Powerseller and achieve Top Rated Seller status so that you can get all the benefits that come with these two achievements.
For basic PowerSeller status you must make £2,000 worth of sales and achieve 100 transactions in a 12 month period. Your seller dashboard will tell you exactly what you have achieved so far.
So, of you are not yet a PowerSeller, for you, reaching those goals will almost certainly mean making an increase in sales and making sure you give top customer service amongst other things and this in turn means that keeping on top of your eBay business is an absolute priority.
7 Super eBay Seller Tools to Boost your Profits
Anything that can make your daily tasks smoother, easier and less time-consuming is obviously very welcome and that’s why you should seriously consider using some of the wide array of eBay seller tools that are out there.
You may be surprised at just how many helpful eBay seller tools there are out there to enable you to streamline your business, from making sure your customers are kept informed on the progress of their orders to saving money that you don’t really need to spend.
Now, some of these are free eBay seller tools which can be accessed on the eBay website itself and others are third-party applications that may require you to pay a subscription fee. But, what I will say is this and the same applies to them all; in the long run these eBay seller tools will help you save time, streamline your business, make money and ultimately get things right.
So with this in mind, here’s a brief run down of my own favourite eBay seller tools for you to consider which I’ve called my ‘Super Seven’.
Some of these you may already be aware of but are currently not using, others may be brand new to you, but my advice is to check them all out to ensure you are doing everything possible to make your eBay business a success.
Here we go…
1. eBay Pulse
Personally, I couldn’t live without this great free tool which you can find on the eBay site itself.
Just click on ‘Site Map’ in the bottom right hand corner of any page and then look under ‘More Ways To Find Items’. Next click on eBay Pulse in the list.
Or you can use this quick link.
By utilising eBay Pulse you can find a very handy daily snapshot of current trends, the largest eBay shops and the most watched items, all in the category of your choice – simply use the drop down list to drill down as far as you need to through the categories and sub-categories.
This is perfect for research purposes because using eBay Pulse is a very easy way to discover hot items which you can then source from wholesalers and resell on eBay yourself.
You can also find out other important information such as who is the biggest competitor in your niche, popular searched for keywords and you can take a look at what the largest eBay shops are stocking and selling the most of.
By the very nature of eBay, trends change on a daily basis so it’s worth looking at eBay Pulse a few times a week when you are researching products to ensure you get the full, accurate picture.
2. Selling Manager Pro (SMP)
Okay, this next one isn’t entirely free I’m sorry to say, but it does only cost £4.99 per month – and you can currently get a 30 day trial.
I’ve been using SMP for over 6 years now and find it invaluable. What you’ll find is that as your eBay sales increase and your business grows, you will need an easy to use system that will track and manage your sales for you. And that’s where SMP comes in.
It’s perfect for you and will help you stay on top of your listings, sales and general admin tasks that need performing including automating your listings which will save you bags of time!
Here’s a quick run-down of some of the things SMP can help you with:
- Manage all your selling activities
- Manage your products including tracking your inventory and saved listing templates
- Provide sales activity reports that you can download
- Automate your feedback
- Automatically schedule your listings and relist any unsold items
There’s loads more to it as well – too much to list here, but you can find further information here.
3. Auctiva
This great site does have some overlaps with SMP but two of the best eBay seller tools that you get when you sign up to Auctiva which aren’t included in SMP are some great, professional looking listing templates – over 1,800 in fact – and the very popular Scrolling Gallery which you can place within your listings to show off your other products to potential buyers.
Auctiva costs from $3.95 (about £2.50) per month for their basic plan up to $19.95 (about £13.50) per month for their Pro Plan but, don’t worry, they do offer a free trial so I would advise that you trial it first to see which plan it is that suits you.
As I’ve mentioned, Auctiva will do many of the things that Selling Manager Pro will help you with such as listing scheduling and image watermarking but it’s worth comparing to see which suits you the best.
Personally I use both! Full details are here.
4. Bay Estimator
Do you know, I love this next tool because it’s so perfectly simple and can really help you attract more views and sales to your listings. What’s more – it’s free!
Remember, your title is the most important part of your eBay listing because if you don’t get your keywords right, how is your listing going to be found? It’s not! Especially now with eBay’s Best Match algorithms, it’s extremely important to get your title absolutely right first time and this is where Bay Estimator comes in.
This is one of eBay’s little-known tools which will look at the relative popularity of your title keywords and then estimate how well it will work.
Simply input your keywords and Bay Estimator will calculate how successful your chosen keywords will be in your listing title. An easy way to optimize your listings – genius! It is US based but don’t worry about that because the information it provides works with eBay UK with no problems. Try it for yourself.
5. Photobucket
Just a quick one this, because put simply, Photobucket is my hosting site of choice due to the fact that I find it so easy to use and navigate.
It’s completely free, easy to upload my photographs and link them to eBay and there is tons of space available in my personal Photobucket album which means I can store literally thousands of pictures if I want to.
Free hosting sites like this will always save you money on eBay because you won’t have to pay extra to use eBay’s picture services when you want to add extra images within your listings. Take a look.
6. Terapeak
This is a paid tool again I’m afraid – but it is extremely useful!
eBay used to provide a tool that was known as ‘Marketplace Research’ but this was retired and in its place we now have Terapeak which actually is also commonly known as ‘Marketplace Research’!
This is a must in my opinion for any serious eBay seller because the amount of information you can find through Terapeak is phenomenal.
What’s selling, who’s selling it, who’s making the most profit – it’s all there and it is simple to use and will ultimately help you with your product choices and to run a better eBay business.
There is a subscription fee which varies from £19.96 per month to £174.69 if you pay yearly and in my opinion this represents good value.
Currently you can get a 7 day free trial too. All the details are here.
7. Watermark your photographs
Now just a final tool that you might not know about. If you are using eBay’s picture services rather than Photobucket for hosting your images, you can now take advantage of their new watermarking service.
If you have experienced another eBay seller steal and use your photographs in their own listing you’ll know how annoying this is. But now you can stop it once and for all.
If you decide to add a watermark to your picture via eBay, you have the choice of using a camera icon, or using your eBay user ID and if your user ID is greater than 24 characters, it gets reduced to 24 characters. I’d go for the eBay User ID every time.
So, here’s how to do it:
• On the ‘sell your item’ form scroll to the Bring your item to life with pictures section which is where you add your images
• Click the Add or remove options link, and then select one or both watermark options
• Click Save
Yes, it’s that quick! And when your photograph gets uploaded your watermark is applied. Perfect.
So there you have it, my ‘Super Seven’ eBay seller tools for you to browse through. I’m pretty confident that these ‘Super Seven’ will be beneficial to your own eBay business and help you in the long term.