Auctiva to begin charging eBay sellers fees

[ICToys.com]

Auctiva, one of the most successful eBay service providers, will begin charging fees to sellers in July, four years after it had gone to a free model. The move will affect the profit margins of eBay sellers who currently don't pay for Auctiva's listing tools. Auctiva CEO Jeff Schlicht would not comment on why the company was instituting fees, but one factor that likely played a role in his decision was eBay's changes to its affiliate program.

http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y09/m05/i28/s01

[ICToys.com]

See related article:

http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y09/m05/i28/s02

[dmhcollectibles]

sux bigtime.

Not cheap.

[biggfredd]

inkfrog starting to look better

[WayOutWest]

worth noting, if you have more than 1mb of images stored on their system, they will begin charging a fee for it.

[dmhcollectibles]

I'm so happy I stopped listing on ebay more than a year ago!

[BTPS]

worth noting, if you have more than 1mb of images stored on their system, they will begin charging a fee for it.

OMG -- how can I tell how much space I use on there?
I have YEARS and YEARS worth of images stored there.

[Southern Jewel's Fab Finds]

BT,

I know this won't help you now as your images are on Auctiva....you have hosting space? Right?

There's a way to use Auctiva and use the url of your own domain hosted images. Those images will stay there as long as your hosting is paid. (I use Flexwebs/Andy)

I also have storage built into my internet provider, Verizon. I also had storage built into my previous internet provider, Road Runner.

I feel for you as I know you went through this already when Sparedollar shut down.

The last years changes have really hurt the third parties that serve eBay.
I feel for them....ALL of them.
And now, eBay is cutting out affiliates...cept for the Big Dawgs of course.

footnote: I've luckily been with Auctiva since before Sparedollar was purchased. All of those months/years/half a decade with great service from Auctiva and no fee have certainly lined my pocket, service has been great and I most certainly hope that ALL of the third parties come away unscathed.

[biggfredd]

SD never shut down, it sold out to Inkfrog, which allowed much more hosting space.

[BTPS]

I know this won't help you now as your images are on Auctiva....you have hosting space? Right?

I use Auctiva as a back up for ALL my stores.
I think I have 5 different Auctiva accounts.
This was a great way to keep my descriptions with my images and then copy and paste to other sites.


One of my account - I have over 3000 listings, over 4200 images

[Rick Bradford]

Well, this stinks. I was hoping it wouldn't actually happen.

Did anybody get the "letter to customers" Auctionbytes references? I didn't.

From the first link:

Auctiva is offering a "Free Marketing Tools" plan that includes the Scrolling Gallery, 1 MB of image hosting, Sellathon counters and auto-marketing emails.

The Professional Seller plan will cost $34.95/month plus 12 cents/listing, with zero transaction fees. It includes a free Auctiva Commerce store, and fees are capped at $250/month. A High Volume Seller plan costs $24.95/month with zero listing fees and a 1.75% transaction fee - Auctiva said this is good for sellers with high listing volume and low average sales price.

The Part Time Seller plan costs $9.95/month plus 6 cents/listing and a 1 percent transaction fee. It includes an Auctiva Commerce store for $4.98/month.

The "No Monthly Fee" plan for casual eBay sellers costs 12 cents/listing and a 1.25 percent transaction fee.

Auctiva's Image Hosting plan will be free for the first 1 megabyte of storage, and $1.95/month for between 1 - 5 megabytes of storage up to $34.95/month for over 250 megabytes of storage. There's also a Big Ticket Seller plan. Auctiva said templates come free with all plans, but cost $4.95 for people who do not list with Auctiva and do not want to select any of its pricing plans.

I want to know the criteria for a "casual" seller, a "part-time seller", etc.

The Auctiva website still says free, free, free.

[Rick Bradford]

Inkfrog is 10 bucks a month, right? Wonder if they'll be adjusting their fees soon?

[Southern Jewel's Fab Finds]

SD never shut down, it sold out to Inkfrog, which allowed much more hosting space.

That's what I meant, SD was sold along with its members to Inkfrog.

Thanks for catching my wording.

I do not begrudge anyone the chance to build a site and make a profit.

BTW, check who hosts Inkfrog's image hosting. 

[Rick Bradford]

The site proper still says free, free, free but there are links to the new info in the forums:

http://community.auctiva.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/196105921/m/879105921

Pricing Plans (why is this graphic so small?): http://www.auctiva.com/edu/entry.aspx?id=Pricing-Comparison-Matrix

I don't understand the "Free Tools" plan. You can't list auctions with it.

The idea of paying "transaction fees" to the listing service makes me queasy.

Also, eBay is in the process (presumably) of making images free across the board. They're already free in certain categories and free in all other categories if you've got a Premium store.

[VintageSilver]

Yikes, their community forum is hopping - and not in a good way.  Poor Jeff, he's got his work cut out for him  (you're safe here, Jeff    )

I have never had a problem using Auctiva - and since I no longer use them for anything buy image hosting - I don't have a need to continue there - I've just been too lazy to move what remains there over to my own site host.  Guess I have another summer project.

I hope they find some common ground with the seller who need the service, but can't see their way clear to paying listing fees or final value fees on top of ebay fees.  I don't list on ebay any longer, so those days are behind me - but I know many still balance their books monthly based on fees...

[Rick Bradford]

It seems most people are really worked up over transaction fees. Think those will end up being done away with to faux-satisfy the users and make the new fees look better? Although if Inkfrog remains $10 per month then there won't be any comparison and they'll be having a field day.

Even if I could bring myself to pay $10 per month there's no way I'm paying more than that or for listing/transaction fees on top of what eBay and PayPal already take.

[Rick Bradford]

Some very good questions from a poster on page 2 of this Auctiva thread. Let's hope they get answered tomorrow.

I am still researching all of this but I am simply astounded. My questions:

1) Will I only be charged a listing fee when I post a new listing via Auctiva? What about all of the GTC auctions I posted in the past? Are you going to charge me when they relist every month automatically by ebay?

2) Transaction fees: Basically same question as above. Are transaction fees only going to be charged on listings posted after June 1st via Auctiva. What about the 800 listings I currently have running and were posted in the past? Are you trying to charge me FVF fees on listings I posted via Auctiva in the past?

3) I think I get the jist of the image hosting but that's down right wrong is certain aspects. It's one thing if we could all move our pictures, host them ourselves, etc. What is wrong about it is all of the GTC canceled listings I have running that already have sales. These can not be edited and I am forced to pay unless I want to end all of my listings and start from scratch.

4) Templates: What happens to all of my existing listings that are currently running and have templates associated with them? Are all of my current listings going to break if I don't pay you for the templates. Or do I just have to pay going forward?
 

[Southern Jewel's Fab Finds]

4) Templates: What happens to all of my existing listings that are currently running and have templates associated with them? Are all of my current listings going to break if I don't pay you for the templates. Or do I just have to pay going forward?

The new playground with eBay (which might be the old playground) had tabs and there was no way to use a template.

Remember...they had a tab of TOS, Shipping, etc etc.

eBay was going to the catalog look of Amazon.

It was predicted that templates and eBay would be no more within the coming year.

Might still be true.

[Rick Bradford]

Could be. But we have tabs now and templates are still being used. If eBay does away with templates who knows when it'll be (they're Amazonification has been a very, very slow process).

[Southern Jewel's Fab Finds]

Could be. But we have tabs now and templates are still being used. If eBay does away with templates who knows when it'll be (they're Amazonification has been a very, very slow process).

Thanks for the input Rick.
I was just on eBay (not signed in) and viewed several auctions/buy it now and they didn't have the tabs.

I'm SOOOOOOOOO out of touch with eBay.

Update: I just signed into eBay and out of the five auctions I viewed in different categories, none had tabs.

Children's clothing.
Vintage Nightgowns.
Books - Nonfiction
Sunglasses
Cellphones

Are the tabs still random? Because I darn sure didn't see them. Or are they category specific?

Not having sold on eBay or purchased anything on eBay for a year, I haven't kept up.

Weird.

It might help those that are very comfortable with eBay consider moving to an eCommerce store and try their hand at their own site.