The hardest thing about selling online is the service that comes after the sale. Just about anyone can upload an auction and have it sell, but the hardest part, once you really get selling, is managing the buyers and their expectations after the auction has ended.
One tool to help you manage your auctions is Trak Auctions from J White Computer. Trak Auctions is a completely free online auction management tool for eBay. Trak Auctions makes money from their image-hosting fees, but you do not need to subscribe to its image-hosting service to use Trak Auctions.
If you are using the Fast Photos software that I wrote about in the November 21 issue (http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y204/m11/abu0131/s04), it can be fully integrated into Trak Auctions' image-hosting. The first Mb of space is free and the paid hosting starts at 99 cents a month for 5 Mb. Details are on their site.
Trak Auctions can create and manage your listings from start to finish, including scheduling them to be posted to eBay. If you have multiple quantities of a product, you can schedule Trak Auctions to repeat any auction at a prescribed period of time, every day, every week, or hourly if you so desire. This is a great feature because you do not need to be at your computer to upload your auctions. It also has a one-page lister for all your auction information to create your auctions, and you can save any auction templates for future use.
Trak Auctions is an eBay Certified Developer. Members of the certified developers program use eBay's API (application programming interface) and get to see any changes to the eBay site in advance so they are able to adjust their programs before changes are made to eBay.
Some of the other features I like about Trak Auctions is that it will automatically send an invoice when your auction closes, there is no need to manually do this. It also has a fully integrated checkout feature so your buyers can proceed to your own checkout, make their payment and enter their shipping information. This saves you time because you do not have to double enter the data. You can also post feedback right from their site.
Trak Auctions is very full featured and would make a great management tool for any advanced eBay user. If you are an occasional seller, the advanced features might be overwhelming. For any serious seller, you should check it out. Once you have managed to get the hang of this application it will do everything that you need to do on eBay and more.
http://www.jwcinc.net
Look for additional auction-management tools on the AuctionBytes auction management chart at http://auctionbytes.com/cab/pages/ams and the eBay Solution Directory at http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?SolutionsDirectory.
