What benefit is the Auctiva Store?

Hi, as I understand it Auctiva is an additonal set of tools to use only with eBay and not stand alone. i.e. its not a complete alternative.

Items are still listed on eBay and you need at least a basic eBay store to list in shop inventory format.

I tend not to use the Auctiva shop front much, as I do not need a fancy front end and I think it confuses buyers when they see my eBay one and the very different Auctiva display.

I save money on image hosting, supersize and scheduling using Auctiva and the support is good.

Sellathon, just siged up for basic but seems rather slow, worth it, not sure as yet.

You should get quite a few replies from older hands than I shortly.

Hi Deb,
I don't know about being an old hand, but I thought I'd share my thoughts. I currently only use the Auctiva store front to keep costs down. I know that some of the other members here use eCrater as a free shop front site and seem to like it. Since I'm just getting started, I'm still in the process of building my store up so it's not active yet, but that is a way to have inventory items without a cost.
As far as counters go, I don't use the Sellathon counter. It's just an added cost for me. I use Andale/Vendio. The counters are free, they can be hidden from the buyer and they can be set to automatically populate into each new listing that you run.
Hope this helps.

I'll add my two cents - I'm also a newbie to Auctiva and was confused about whether one had to have an eBay store in order to use an Auctiva store. The answer I received from Auctiva's customer service was no - you need to use eBay to list your auctions but you do not need to have an official eBay store. So it's true that Auctiva is not a stand alone storefront because it needs to interact with your eBay account and listings but you don't have to pay for an eBay store. Visitors thru eBay would access your Auctiva store from a link on the bottom right corner of the photo carousel showing your other listings. It will NOT appear in the usual visit seller's store link that would appear in the upper right box on your listing page. If people find you through your Auctiva store's domain address, they will view your eBay items in your Auctiva store's format where they can bid and/or check out from there. All your listings of course still appear in eBay in the eBay format but all you pay eBay for is the listing fee, gallery photo, and probably a couple other items that I don't use. Creating your listings through Auctiva allows you to use Auctiva as your host for photos and you can add up to 16 or so pictures in each listing for free (eBay gives you one free and charges 15 cents a piece after that), your photos will supersize for free, templates for listing designs are free, you can schedule/create listings to list at a later time, all sorts of things that eBay charges extra for. That's a nutshell of what I've been told in the last couple days but I'm still holding off cancelling my eBay store until I test drive this for a little while!

You do need a eBay Store, because the fees will eat your profit up is you dont, My ebay account was at $80 before I decided to get a store, and thats just with insertion fees, and gallery art. So Paying $15 a month is worth it, and Auctiva store just help bring traffic to your items with its Store, So Auctiva helps alot in marketing your items

Also theres alot of free tools out there that can serve the purpose of Sellathon, you just have to search the net

I must be missing something - you still have to pay fees for gallery art and insertion fees whether you have an eBay store or not.

me again I just followed your two links that you included in your reply to see how you have yours set up and the one you identify as your eBay store gets you to an eBay msg that says your store doesn't exist and the one you indicate is your Auctiva store gets you to your home page but when you try to view your items eBay says they're not there. Thought you should know.

quote:

the one you identify as your eBay store gets you to an

Ahh, eBay suspended my account a week ago, Ive been working on getting it back up, the links are in fact my signature, which is added automaticlly.

P.S. With a Store The insertion Fees Are alot less, I think the most I paid on an inserstion fee was .10 for a $360 item, and .1 cent for my image, compared to auction style listings where I paid(if I remember) around $5 for the incert, and .35 for the image, so big saving.

Now when they first suspeneded my account I thought it was something I had did to my store, because I had a nice store with many feature, at the time I had added a third Party shipping tracking feature, was editing item desriptions, and was just about to come ask auctiva member to rate my store, when I was eBay kicked me off. aparently I violated the VERO, and now have to prove ownership of every item I had listed before they suspened them.

So Please check out my page often, currently Im setting up a account with eBid.net, and it relativly free, and has many of the perks a eBay.

eBid.net