Free Auctiva Alternatives: Online Auction Software for eBay

Thousands of ebay sellers were recently angered by Auctiva.com's recent move to charge for their previously free service. I was in fact one of these sellers.

Of course, Auctiva's service was never free, we all openly promoted their services and included their widgets on our listings, in fact Auctiva was profiting from their affiliate links through ebay partner network that were included in every widget.

Supposedly, ePn's recent policy changes has dramatically effected their profits and they are now forced to charge for their previously free service.

Well, really its Auctiva's right to charge for their hosting, scheduling and template services, they certainly were useful. But, I was willing to put up with a stodgy interface, no customer service, poor base templates and frequent pop-ups and up sells when I was logging in for a FREE service.

BUT, They certainly are not deserving of any monetary rewards for there same tired service. You want money Auctiva!, make something worth paying for. So lets look into some Free Auctiva Alternatives for ebay sellers.

Well as I sell many, many items in many different niches. I had the inventory to test out the top contenders for Auctiva replacement.

Keeping in mind, I'm not sticking to just free services in my search, the ease of scheduling, one touch image hosting and a central inventory control are very cost saving. Time equals money and these tools save a lot of time not to mention ebay fees for scheduling and hosting.

Auctiva Alternative 1:

First I tried the Seller Sourcebook,

A quick list of their services, shows that they are equal to Auctiva in their offerings, they have a scrolling gallery and they assist you in creating a coordinated brand identity (scrolling gallery, auction template, store, about me).

• 500mb Image Hosting:
• Ability to post listings directly to eBay.com, eBay.co.uk
• Free Scheduling:
• Free Product Showcase on eBay:
• Template Library:
• Online Listing Generator:
• Ability to use with other auction sites:
• Use of Coordinating About Me Pages:

I tried their service at $8/month, and was completely satisfied immediately, the interface was easier to understand than Auctiva, they had a scrolling gallery which I have a soft spot for and If I wanted to I could export the code for use at various other auction sites.

You can try the Sellers SourceBook by going to the address below.

http://www.sellersourcebook.com

Although this is an article about FREE solutions, If you are a real seller with goals of success in eBay and you are not using a seller solution (which means you are spending tons of time listing, emailing and designing then I highly suggest at least attempting the trial offer of the Vendio Platform: Free for 60 days, if you forget to cancel your out 10 bucks, oh no! but I believe you will be amazed at its ease of use, actually most of you are my competitors so maybe you shouldn't use this, just use turbo lister, more loot for me!

I was quickly impressed by Vendio, the main caveat is the ability to create inventory items in a central inventory list and then push the item into my FREE web store, list and schedule to ebay or even send to my Amazon Sellers account.

In addition, end of auction emails, paypal and google checkout integration, automatic customer tracking (build your email list) and the main joy. clean, well designed theme based templates for your stores and listings.

So my recommendation

VENDIO, free web store...

or 9.95/month for the full set of stuff, they offer free trial periods on all their services and for a little while longer all Auctiva users are given a free trial for the rest of 2009.

Some unique Vendio options,

• the ability to create coupons and promotional codes for your customers
• create widgets for your blogs and pages of your vendio items
• Vendio can be viewed on iPhones!

Beautiful Scrolling Gallery options

Vendio has some truly well designed scrolling gallery options, very clean and Web 2.0 unlike Auctiva's antique, clunky Netscape like themes

eBay articles on cheaper shipping and postage printers for paypal

Getting started on ebay

Although, I feel it's a great too to be able to use base templates in your listing, i do strongly feel that any serious seller, should take the time to redesign these templates to include their own custom touches, store logos, headers, you know character!

If simple html coding isn't in your toolbox, at some point you should purchase a custom template or hire someone to create one for you. All of the mentioned alternatives have options for inserting your own custom templates and html