eBay Sellers Squeezed with Auctiva's Move from Free to Fee

[aspkin]

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. In a letter to customers, Auctiva CEO Jeff Schlicht wrote, "We did not come to this decision lightly. This adjustment was difficult for us to imagine after four years of being a completely free service. We strive to provide you with the best service for your hard-earned dollars. The e-Commerce landscape is constantly evolving, and it has always been our promise to you to provide a full e-Commerce solution that will meet your needs today, tomorrow and in the future. As a result, we will have to begin charging for some of our services. " One factor that likely played a role in his decision was eBay's changes to its affiliate program.

Auctiva calls itself "eBay's largest third-party Certified Solutions provider," and says about twenty percent of the listings on eBay utilize an Auctiva feature. It's estimated over 1 million people use Auctiva tools, which include free eBay listing tools, image-hosting, templates, counters, and Auctiva Secure Checkout, which is seamlessly integrated with eBay.

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eBay Sellers Squeezed with Auctiva's Move from Free to Fee

[eBayNews]

Auctiva, an eBay Certified Solutions Provider that provides popular listing tools to eBay sellers for free will begin charging fees, it will tell sellers today. The company uses a number of ways to earn revenue, including third-party agreements, its shipping insurance program, and through revenue it generates through eBay's affiliate program.

Auctiva was mum on exactly why it was making the changes, telling its customers: "The e-Commerce landscape is constantly evolving, and it has always been our promise to you to provide a full e-Commerce solution that will meet your needs today, tomorrow and in the future. As a result, we will have to begin charging for some of our services. Despite this adjustment, we remain committed to providing you with great tools at a great value and we've worked hard to develop pricing plans that will be affordable for all sellers."

However, eBay acknowledged it was making changes to its affiliate program, as we report in today's AuctionBytes Newsflash:

Auctiva, Vendio and a few others "affiliatized" their seller tools, but eBay said the two programs have different purposes. Affiliate marketing is to drive incremental sales from people who aren't already engaged with eBay, and it wants to make a clear distinction between that program and the seller tools model. Other seller tools providers who are enrolled in the eBay Partner Network (ePN) affiliate program include InkFrog, AuctionSound, EZLister.net, Iwascoding, My StoreCredit, Seller Sourcebook and AutoRevo.

Note that eBay said seller tools providers enrolled in ePN are welcome to use traditional affiliate marketing methods to generate revenue, and then use that revenue to fund their seller tools.

There's a lot of news to absorb - you can read the full details in today's AuctionBytes Newsflash:

"eBay Sellers Squeezed with Auctiva's Move from Free to Fee" (link)

"eBay Adjusts Affiliate Program to Reign in Seller Tools" (link)

[SevnSins]

Not cool, I use Auctiva for all of my accounts.

[SevnSins]

Not cool. I use them with all my accounts.

Does anyone know of another that is free, and has something close to what Auctiva offers?

[oompaloompa]

had a quick look at auctiva community forum, seems like ebayers will be leaving in droves, inkfrog will possibly be better for high users in terms of costs. I will have a in depth read thru when ive got time, but seems like to qualify for the lowest or perhaps no monthly tariff (just 012c per listing?)you need to delete all you pictures and listings from auctiva before 1st july and start again, ie. stop all your multiple relists or they will come up with a higher tariff.

I will check it out but for me personally, I do use auctiva on some of my ebays but not all of my accounts, and it simply represents $$$$ extra on top of what I already pay to ebay/paypal, so Im not impressed.....

and no i dont know of another free tool that is independant from ebay and therefore useful for stealth

[beus]

I just knew this day will come when Auctiva starts charging us for their services. I only received the notification email today about their new plan.

"You are an important member of the Auctiva family. We are proud to have been able to provide you with our eBay listing and marketing tools for free. Because we value your business, we wanted you to be the first to know that, starting in July, our services will no longer be completely free.

We did not come to this decision lightly. This adjustment was difficult for us to imagine after four years of being a completely free service. We are dedicated to providing you with the best service for your hard-earned dollars. The e-Commerce landscape is constantly evolving, and it has always been our promise to you to provide a full e-Commerce solution that will meet your needs today, tomorrow and in the future. As a result, we will have to begin charging for some of our services.

Despite this adjustment, we remain committed to providing you with great tools at a great value and we've worked hard to develop pricing plans that will be affordable for all sellers.

We want to make this transition as easy as possible for you. We will begin implementing the necessary changes on our site to accommodate our new pricing structure during the first week of June. As a valued customer, you'll have 30 days to evaluate and select a pricing plan, and we'll even help identify your best plan choice.


Fair & Flexible Pricing
With much time and careful consideration, we have developed five pricing packages to best meet the needs of the many different types of eBay sellers who use Auctiva.

We will help you select the plan that will offer you the lowest rates. If you are a smaller seller, we have a pay-per-use plan with no fixed monthly fee. Most customers who choose this plan will only pay a couple dollars per month. If you are a larger seller, we have affordable plans to fit your business model as well. We are confident that Auctiva is still the best value for you no matter what your business size.

Your Best Plan Choice
If we have 60-90 days of eBay sales data for you, we have already done the math to identify your most affordable plan choice. Once the site is fully released you will find that plan marked for you in our plan choices along with the numbers we used to reach that conclusion¹.

Where to Get Answers
No doubt, you will want to learn more about these pricing plans. You can view the new pricing plan comparison table here. We are also posting anticipated Q&A and a schedule for webinars in the community forums and monitoring them all weekend to help you get your questions answered.

Your business is very important to us. If there is anything we can do to ease this transition for you, please contact Customer Support. "

[beus]

Once the new policy change is reflected on the site during the first week in June, customers will have to choose from one of Auctiva's five new plans. Plans range from one with no monthly fees and three free listings per month for occasional eBay sellers to another for high-volume sellers that will cost $24.95 a month and includes a free Auctiva Commerce off-eBay store.

[Jonas]

Question is.... will auctiva be using its whole paying thing to link accounts?

And what are free alternatives that allow you to do checkout connected to your merchant account?

[eseller]

will auctiva still have FREE features?

I read they email and browsed the site but I didn't find a clear price plain - If I could list for free off feebay and get that cool scroller I would be happy with that - What features will the charge for and what will remain FREE???

If they are gonna try to charge everybody they are in for a BIG TIME loss in sellers - they should just run ads for income - charging the users is lame in my option after being FREE for so long

[beus]

For High Volume Seller's:

$0.00/listings
1.75%/transactions
$24.95/month

[trig]

there must be other options --yes?
different sites I mean.

[Jonas]

The only thing I need with auctiva is eBay checkout linked to authorize.net that eBay can't see. That's all I need. And heck, auctiva often does it wrong and buyers can't pay through it.

[Here We Go Again]

Auctiva's New Pricing Plan:

[vetus]

Seen that coming, that's one reason i have always stayed clear of auctiva.

[oompaloompa]

checked it out
for occasional users, its a bit confusing, their 3 'free' listings per month, dont add any extras like templates or commerce features, these 3 incur a 1.25% final value fee.

so free is not exactly the right word, really is it!

[Lyda]

I use dial up for my Stealth accounts,so now I will either have to pay up or list on slow dial up if I don't want to get linked. And your photos could not be linked with Auctiva..Now, even if I go with dial up listings, there is danger Ebay can get me linked by photos? Any other solutions?

[SaiJin]

Hmm... I only use 2 ebay accounts that's linked to 1 paypal under 1 WIndows user acc.

So for my setting how about using:

1. Turbo lister.
2. free image hosting service for both accounts.

And when I need to dump those 2 accounts, delete the entire windows user acc and start over.

Would this be good enough? And so that TL doesn't link it to my old accounts when I redownload it?

[SevnSins]

Haven't tried it yet, but this could possibly be an alternative in the near future.

Auction Zealot - Free eBay Listing, Image Hosting & Templates Help - Lister Software, Design Tools & Picture Service

[oompaloompa]

if you stay with auctiva, how about just paying with the paypal or vcc liked to that ebay account only, under the user window you always use for that account..

[sowhat]

I'm always baffled when free services start trying to charge, lol. Don't they know no one will ever stick around?

I will do like Lyda and just post directly onto the ebay site using dial up. At least until we all find another free auction site to list on. I will keep my eyes open and let everyone know if I come across another free site.

[Jonas]

Auction Zealot looks like a good replacement for listings.

However what I and a lot of people use Auctiva for is Auctiva checkout. We need a free replacement for integrating authorize.net and eBay where eBay doesn't see our authorize.net account or merchant account.

[ketchup]

questions for those of you who use auctivia: how is inkfrog? Can you use it with multiple accounts? Is it similar to auctiva in avoiding linking?