Auction Autopilot Blog

When you first began your eBay business, I’m guessing you used the basic eBay listing form to sell your first item.   However, if you are like me, as sales increased, you soon found that you needed a more powerful auction management system.  At that point, you probably subscribed to Turbo Lister, which is fine if you are only handling small volumes of merchandise. However, if your business grows to the point that you are shipping several items a day from sales made on multiple websites, you need to consider a full featured auction management system.

Auction management systems are not free.  However, if you are moving enough product,  they are relatively inexpensive.  The best auction management systems include the following core features.

• Source and manage your inventory
• Accept and record payments
• Make and monitor shipments
• List items for sale on multiple sales platforms

The most well known auction management systems are listed below.  All these servives are web-based, so you can use them anywhere you can access the internet.

Auctiva is designed to help sellers list and manage sales on eBay, Amazon and Yahoo!  It is best suited for small businesses.

ChannelAdvisor provides an integrated system for managing nearly every aspect of an online sales business.  You can manage relationships with multiple product sources, sales platforms and marketing strategies.  This auction manager is very popular among Power Sellers.

Infopia provides an integrated auction management system for sellers who grow beyond eBay.  It also helps you sell on Amazon, Overstock, uBid, and more.

Vendio provides an excellent platform for launching your own web store.  It allows you to market your products on Google, eBay and several other platforms.  This auction manager is very well suited for small businesses.

Zoovy provides an integrated, complete business administration platform.  If you are a heavy hitter (or aspire to be one , Zoovy can help you manage your sales across several platforms, including Amazon, eBay and Yahoo!

eBay also offers its own auction managers.  The one draw back of eBay’s tools is that they do not help you grow beyond eBay.  As you might imagine, they do not provide an integrated solution, which can help you sell across other websites.

Moving your auction selling business to a hosted sales management platform is a big decision.  For many of eBay’s largest sellers, it has been well worth the effort.  If your auction sales are growing to the point that your time constraints and overhead are becoming a real burden, it may be time to make the move.

Tags: auction management system, auction manager, auctiva, ebay auctions, ebay business, ebay marketing, how to make money on eBay, how to sell on eBay, learn to sell on eBay, money on ebay, online auctions, overstock, selling on ebay, turbo lister, ubid

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 14th, 2009 at 7:27 pm and is filed under Ebay, Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.