We look forward to keeping you up-to-date there!

A new year means getting rid of the past and looking forward to the future. This is the prime time to reach out to your consignors and offer to sell their unwanted gifts, sporting goods, collectibles, musical instruments so they could purchase the items they REALLY want and need. Want more information about Mass Emailing from within AuctionSound? Look at our support documents here.
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What is new in AuctionSound?

Dashboard View?

We have modified the Dashboard with some very important and useful information. Previously, we only displayed the top 3 items under Active Items. Now, we display 12 items where you can hover over the image for more info. Also, managers now see the latest activity within the system from employee activity to items being listed, selling or not selling.

Click here for more details.
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Marketplace News

eBay

Listing Fees are omitted until February 28, 2013 for the following categories: Outdoor Sports, Winter Sports and Golf. This applies to Auction-Style and Fixed Price.

Special 5 cent listing fee until March 31, 2013 for Fixed Price listings in the books, music, movies, DVDs and video games categories.

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Amazon

How do I know if my products will sell well on Amazon?
This is the single most common question I receive from AuctionSound users. My first suggestion is to do your own comparison. Go to Amazon and search some of the products you sell to see what price point they are set at. If the prices are equal to eBay, you might be better off selling them on eBay due to less fees than Amazon. If the selling price is higher on Amazon, it might make sense to give it a shot there.

How can I get started selling on Amazon?
Simply go to Admin > Location to enable Amazon or Craigslist. With Amazon, you do have to have a store account which is $40 per month. Here are the instructions to setup your Amazon account with AuctionSound.

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Retail Sellers

For those that want to keep up with the latest and greatest technology launching this year, the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show is January 8-11 in Las Vegas. Not able to make it? Keep an eye on their website to see what launched.

Looking for the Valentine’s Day Hot List so you know what to sell (or buy for your loved ones)? eBay has a general list to give you an overview of what people will be looking for. Or, take a look at the top department stores for the best gift ideas or selling ideas.

• Macy’s Valentine’s Guide
• Dick’s Sporting Goods gifts for Men

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Shipping

BE SURE YOUR SHIPPING COSTS REFLECT THESE NEW PRICES

USPS rates are raising on January 27, 2013 of an average 6.3% for Priority and a First-Class stamp will now be $0.46.

UPS Ground increased on average of 4.9% on December 31, 2012.

FedEx Ground is increasing 5.9% on January 7, 2013.

• eBay recently launched Item Condition Notes for used items. In case you haven’t noticed it, this new box appears just below the Description box that you fill out when listing an item.
• Global Shipping Program – eBay has simplified selling to international buyers. If the item/category and seller are eligible and the seller has followed eBay’s steps to opt into this program, you can click a checkbox on the bottom of an item’s Shipping page and enter it into the Global Shipping Program.

eCommerce Storefront

Now is the time to start selling on your own website. It is simple to setup the storefront and list items on your own domain name. Go to Admin > Storefront and click Upgrade to Pro Storefront. Follow these easy-to-use guidelines to get you up to speed.

Pricing is separate from eBay, Amazon and Craigslist posting.

Important! Authorize.net has agreed to waive the $99 setup fee for any AuctionSound user who signs up for the rest of December! You will still see the $99 setup fee when activating your account, but this will be waived the following month. Click here to take advantage of these savings!

Listing on Amazon

If you are not familiar with listing on Amazon, there are some different guidelines to listing products. Not all used items can be listed and also certain categories require authorization from Amazon. If you want to start listing on Amazon through AuctionSound, go to Admin > Location and click the checkbox next to Amazon to get started. Follow this guide to help with this process.

Listing on Craigslist

This is the quickest and easiest way to market your products locally. Craigslist is perfect for listing unique items and items you would rather not ship. If you want to start listing on Craigslist through AuctionSound, go to Admin > Location and click the checkbox next to Craigslist to get started.

eBay News

No listing fees until December 31st to list items in the Sports Memorabilia, Cards & Fan Shop and Outdoor Sports categories. List/Relist those items now!

eCommerce Storefront

Months of preparation have gone into giving you the ability to list your items to your own eCommerce website. Not only can you list the same item on eBay Fixed Price, Craigslist and Amazon, but now you can sell your product on YourOwnWebsite.com. If this sounds like something you want to add right away, give us a call or send us an email and we will get you up and running in no time.

Listing on Amazon

If you are not familiar with listing on Amazon, there are some different guidelines to listing products. Not all used items can be listed and also certain categories require authorization from Amazon. If you want to start listing on Amazon through AuctionSound, go to Admin > Location and click the checkbox next to Amazon to get started. Follow this guide to help with this process.

Listing on Craigslist

This is the quickest and easiest way to market your products locally. List your unique items or items you do not want to ship here on Craigslist. If you want to start listing on Craigslist through AuctionSound, go to Admin > Location and click the checkbox next to Craigslist to get started.

Craigslist Best Practices:

Make sure you do not overpost to Craigslist and you list 15 items tops per day. If you list a lot of items, you may get flagged by the Craigslist community as being a spammer. Also, do not relist your items within a 3 day period or else Craigslist may ghost your IP address. Meaning, it will appear to you that the items are listed but they are not live to anyone else but you.

eBay’s current search engine is called Voyager and was developed in 2002. If you think about technology from 10 years ago, you probably don’t really remember that MySpace and Facebook weren’t household terms, you still received AOL update CDs in the mail and smartphones haven’t been created yet. When put in this perspective, a change is long overdue. eBay has added and modified this inflexible search engine to the point that it’s time to plant a new engine in place.

eBay hired 100+ developers in early 2011 to begin building Cassini, a “world class” new way of searching items. Cassini still does not have a release date but they are speculating the 1st quarter of 2013. While Voyager was built to scan through 100 million listings, Cassini uses an inverted index that resembles the back of a book which will make searching much faster and better defined.

Buyers will be able to personalize their search results based on Relevance, Diversity, Trust and Value. This way the results aren’t completely siding with the DSRs. If someone searched “Coca Cola” and wanted to see a full diverse selection, they would be able to see all different memorabilia and maybe not just advertisement posters.

What does this mean for sellers?

Relevance: You want your products to match how the buyer is searching. When writing your descriptions, think about every relating term that describes the product. When creating the title, use as close to 80 characters to describe the item. When creating the description, 1-2 sentences does not accurately describe a product. Make, Model, Year, Color, Functions, Functional, Quality, Measurements… these are some of the possibilities that can be used to create a well-rounded description to be well searched and indexed by the new search engine, Cassini.

Trust: This is based off of buyer reviews from the DSRs to each word used to review their purchase. If you have 5 buyers write “Good Product” and that is all, your review is simply “Good” and not excellent, great, trustworthy, etc. After a purchase, possibly contact your buyers with example feedback they can leave so you’re not left with only two words.

Value: In the eBay Market, you have to stay competitive with your prices. Not only is Free Shipping a quick way towards the top of the Best Match search, a lower price is too. At the moment, there is nothing released about how Auction-Style vs Fixed Price listings will be shown with the value results.

Overall

Ultimately, Cassini is a good thing for both buyers and sellers. When someone searches for an iPod, they don’t want the first result to show a car that has an iPod connection. Having a search engine that is not a decade old will produce the results both buyers and sellers need. Cassini will create a marketplace environment where everyone will enjoy the results as long as the sellers are following the above guidelines.

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Cross-promotion

The AuctionSound software is coded with your store in mind. Last year, we created a poll tofind out what features YOU wanted to see on our software. 42% of you asked for the option to list on Amazon; 36% of you wanted to sell through an eCommerce website. We heeded your advice: in one year, AuctionSound has transformed into a comprehensive posting tool that allows you to list your products on multiple channels!

We know that you need to maximize your sales this year in order to top last year’s goals. This is why our developers have worked to help you simultaneously post your products on eBay, Amazon and Craigslist. Once an item sells on one channel (or is manually marked as “sold”), it is immediately removed from the other selling channels.

If you plan on cross-promoting your items, a strong suggestion is to list them as “Buy It Now” or “Good Till Cancelled on eBay” items.

Disclaimer:

- Craigslist is an advertising channel – not a selling channel. You will need to manually remove Craigslist ads when their associated items are sold on other channels.

- By listing one item on multiple channels, you risk selling the item on eBay and Amazon at the exact same time. Also, if you are running an auction-style, you will still be charged Final Value Fees if you end a listing with bids.

Multiple Variation Listings

The time has come: we support multiple variation listings! (MVLs) After recoding how photos are stored in AuctionSound and rewriting our eBay posting process, we can import any current MVLs and retain the quantity of each variation along with their assigned images. The reporting aspects will be the same as Multiple Quantity Listings.

If you are interested in creating Multiple Variation Listings, let us know if you are interested in BETA testing this!

Are you ready to expand your business to a new online sales channel? AuctionSound is ready to manage your inventory and multiple quantities through eBay, Amazon and Craigslist. If you have an item listed on eBay and Amazon, once it is sold through a channel the concurrent listing will automatically be removed from the other channel.

Maximize your sales by expanding to a new marketplace!

Interested in starting? In AuctionSound, go to Admin > Location and click the checkbox labeled “Amazon” on the right. Then follow these instructions to start managing your listings on Amazon.com!

Inventory Reporting

Our developers have created a completely in-depth and separate report for businesses that do not do any consignment. Under Reports > Inventory, you will find an extensive report that you can customize for your online glance of the reports and also you can download the fully detailed Excel .csv file.

Inventory Cycle Count

To our clients work with mass amounts of inventory, we have created a way to get an inventory count per group and also overall. This way if you have the groups setup by shelf, you can easily do inventory counts to make sure your numbers are accurate.

eBay Token Not Required

Now you can use AuctionSound without having to set a token with eBay. This way, if you just want to list on Craigslist, Amazon (and soon to come) your website, you do not have to be integrated with an eBay account.

“Bonus for whoever can list over 50 items today! If everyone collectively lists over 300 items, I’ll get pizza tonight!”

I know the money that I’m saving on insertion fees I can spend on my listers and give them a little bit of a kickback for working hard. But what about when we receive the emails from eBay Bucks that is targeted towards the consumer? There is a special today (May 17, 2012) for all eBay buyers to receive double eBay Bucks with Electronics purchases of $50 or more. Generally I would ignore these messages because I’m not buying anything today.

“But what if I want my Electronic items to be found higher on the Best Match through eBay?” This is where you might consider offering Free Shipping on your electronic items that are over $50. Once you do this, that will raise your items 1 more notch towards the top of the Best Match. Obviously the lower the starting price the better, but I have to make sure the profit margin is there and my consignors will be happy with the sale price. Would this be worth the time and effort to go through? Can I potentially change the buyers of these single electronic products into buyers of multiple products in my store?

What are your thoughts or experiences on this? Have you tried changing your items prices and shipping based on the eBay Bucks emails you receive?

eBay Changes :: Return Policy

eBay is retiring some Return Options on Wednesday, May 2nd that may affect your listings. 3 and 7-day Return will no longer be accepted as well as “Merchandise Credit” and “Exchange”.

AuctionSound has a way to modify your Return Policy options in bulk. Go to Admin > Defaults, scroll down to eBay Returns and you will now notice an Update button to change all item’s Return Policies.

eBay Changes :: Categories

On Tuesday, May 1st, eBay will be modifying quite a few categories which may affect your relisting process. If you are trying to relist in any of these categories and the listing will not launch, you will have to reselect the category you are listing in as it may have changed when you previously listed the items.
http://pages.ebay.com/sellerinformation/news/classificationspring2012.html

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What is new in AuctionSound?

Amazon Integration

We are in the Alpha stage of testing Amazon selling and shipping this week but we should be ready for Beta testing towards the end of this week. Currently, everyone has access to activate Amazon and Craigslist to their account by going to Admin > Location.

Interested in selling your products on Amazon? Create an Amazon Professional Sellers Account and begin cross-selling your products today!

Auto Relist

Auto Relist will be reactivated on Tuesday, May 1st. Therefore, if you had listings that had Auto-Relist on, they will resume relisting starting Tuesday. If you have items currently in Unsold, those items will not automatically be relisted and you will have to schedule those items to be relisted. But if they were to go Unsold again, the Auto Relist will resume working on those items.

Orders Page

Launching Tuesday, May 1st, we have replaced Sold and Paid with Orders. The Orders page will separate your items that are ready to ship by channel (eBay, Craigslist, Amazon, In-Store). In addition, buyers that purchased multiple items will be combined so you can produce a single Packing Slip as well as mark all items as shipped. If you ship with an outside solution, we added a simple Copy button to copy the buyers address.

Craigslist Posting Requires Java Update

If you are trying to post to Craigslist but the Preview page will not launch, you need to check the version of Java that your computer has installed. Click this link to find out if you need to update your current version: http://java.com/en/download/installed.jsp
If you do have the most up-to-date version, then the Java Plugin may be disabled on your browser. To check and see if your browser has been deactivated or blocked, please visit http://java.com/en/download/help/enable_browser.xml

eBay Changes

Return Policy

Starting the first week of May, eBay will retire 3-day and 7-day return windows and “Merchandise credit” and “Exchange” refund. This can be changed in AuctionSound today if you go to Admin > Defaults and scroll down to eBay Returns. You can still offer No Returns but to land your item higher in the Best Match search, your best bet would be to select 14-day return or later, 1 day handling and a money back return option.

If you have a lot of Good Till Cancelled items that would need to be revised, AuctionSound now has a way to modify your Return Policy options in bulk. Go to Admin > Defaults, scroll down to eBay Returns and you will now notice an Update button to change all item’s Return Policies.

eBay Changes :: Photo Requirement

Starting this fall, eBay will require at least one 500px photo in every listing. Stock photos for used items will no longer be allowed. Borders will no longer be allowed either.

eBay Changes :: Reducing Duplicates

Starting May 28th, sellers with Fixed Price listings will no longer be allowed to list the same item as an Auction-Style listing with a Buy It Now price and vice versa. Feel free to read eBay’s full guidelines on this policy.

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What is new in AuctionSound?

Upgraded Hardware and Software

As the internet changes its complexity, AuctionSound is keeping up to make your selling experience as smooth as possible. We have upgraded our hardware and the software we use to be able to process information faster.

Orders Page

Initially we announced this would be available in late February but we want it perfect for you so the new launch date will be right around the corner. We have had a group of stores beta testing it prior to launching it live for everyone.

We have been working on a new page that will replace the current Sold and Paid page. The Orders page will separate your items that are ready to ship by channel (eBay, Craigslist, Amazon, In-Store). In addition, buyers that purchased multiple items will be combined so you can produce a single Packing Slip as well as mark all items as shipped. If you ship with an outside solution, we added a simple Copy button to copy the buyers address. This Orders page had to be implemented before we continue working on Amazon Full.

International Shipping

When shipping Flat Rate internationally, we modified the shipping method to be able to specify separate amounts per country/continent the way that eBay offers. We also included the ability to modify your Exclusion list. Meaning, if you do not want to offer shipping to a certain country, you can exclude that country when offering “worldwide” shipping. Set defaults to both under Admin > Defaults.
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