Auctiva, a provider of free tools for eBay sellers, has acquired Sellathon, publisher of eBay analytics tool ViewTracker. Auctiva will continue to operate Sellathon separately and plans few changes to the ViewTracker tool.

Wayne Yeager, who founded Sellathon in 2003, said Auctiva is a good home for Sellathon. "It's a good strategic fit," Yeager said. "Our customers will be taken care of and not exploited."

Sellathon's ViewTracker provides eBay sellers with traffic data - the same kind of data webmasters use to measure traffic to their own websites. ViewTracker works by inserting code inside auction listings. Every time a shopper visits a listing, data about that visit is sent back to the seller's ViewTracker account. Sellers can then see where the shopper came from, if they arrived by searching or browsing, what search terms were used in a search, and more. The data can then be analyzed to make better decisions about title-creation, auction starting and ending dates, and other strategic sales decisions.

The acquiring company, Auctiva, was founded by Jeff Schlicht in 1998 and offers auction management and marketplace tools to eBay sellers. Schlicht, whose company has 49 employees, said he will retain Sellathon's two full-time employees and one part-timer, who will remain in Kentucky. Wayne Yeager, who owned 100 percent of Sellathon, is no longer part of the company.

Schlicht has already made one change to the ViewTracker tool. The archive feature is no longer available, but he will extend the length data is kept from 7 to 14 days. He will also add an auto appender, which means sellers will no longer have to cut and paste code into their auction listings, rather, it will be done automatically.

As far as pricing, Schlicht said it is up for consideration. Currently sellers pay $49 for unlimited access for one year for tracking up to 25 simultaneous auctions at any given time, and Advanced and Enterprise users pay from $89/year for up to 250 simultaneous auctions, or $199/year for an unlimited number of simultaneous auctions. Monthly subscriptions are also available.

Auctiva will continue to maintain the Sellathon 10,000 website, a list of top eBay sellers (http://www.sellathon.com/sellathon10k).

Schlicht plans to market Sellathon's ViewTracker more aggressively. He said current customers should not expect major changes, though they should soon start to see faster performance.

http://www.sellathon.com

http://www.auctiva.com