Question
Vendio now has an auto-extend tool for eBay listings starting at $6.95 per month:
http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y05/m12/i16/s01
Vendio Launches Tool to Auto-Revise, Auto-Extend Active eBay Auctions
By Ina Steiner
AuctionBytes.com
December 16, 2005
Auction-management service provider Vendio has launched Vendio Reviser, a tool that allows eBay sellers to make manual or automated revisions to eBay live listings. Sellers can use the tool to extend the duration of active listings; lower reserve or Buy it Now prices as items with few or no bids get close to ending; edit titles, categories, or activate eBay marketing features on the fly in bulk; and create declining-price auctions that engage buyers waiting for the next price reduction.
Vendio is the second company that markets a tool that allows sellers to automatically extend active eBay listings. The first, from Ethical Technologies, caused controversy over the summer.
In August, eBay had banned Ethical Technologies from marketing its Sell-Through tool, determining that it violated the spirit of its search manipulation rules and complaining that it changed the buyer experience. By extending the listing duration, the seller pays one listing fee, but the listing appears on eBay's highly-trafficked "Ending First" pages up to four times in a 7-day period instead of once. In September, eBay abruptly reversed the decision and gave the green light to Ethical's Sell-Through tool.
Vendio said it has been using live revision capabilities in its Tickets Manager tool for a long time. Vendio CEO Rodrigo Sales said, "Based on the feedback of our customers specializing in different categories other than tickets, we determined there was a strong demand for a more robust solution with greater capabilities, which Vendio Reviser now fulfills."
eBay sellers can use Vendio Reviser while using other tools to manage listings. Vendio Reviser captures active listing information from eBay and stores the information on Vendio servers until the listing ends.
"Historically, eBay Developers have focused their attention on automating processes before and after an eBay sale, with little attention to live listings. Similarly, the majority of eBay sellers put most of their focus on listings before they launch and after their products sell," said Mike Effle, Vendio's Executive Vice President, Sales Management. "Based upon user surveys and our work with large-volume sellers, we developed Vendio Reviser to give sellers a new opportunity to make bulk and even automatic revisions to their listings on eBay. For sellers currently revising items individually on eBay, Vendio Reviser will help them revise hundreds of items in the time it used to take to revise just one."
Vendio is offering pricing plans for Reviser, starting at $6.95/month for 40 revised items plus 20 cents per additional revised item. All plans include unlimited revisions per item and free unlimited revisions to eBay Store items.
Vendio Reviser http://www.vendio.com/my/revise/promo_revise.html
Is this cheaper than Ethical's tool?
Blanche
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Where's the outrage? Oh where's the outrage? Sitting here patiently twiddling my thumbs waiting to see the so called "no it's not a personal vendetta but an unethical tool issue" people here with the same outrage shown before.
In September, eBay abruptly reversed the decision and gave the green light to Ethical's Sell-Through tool.
That's probably because Vendio said-"hey you FOOLS this is the same thing we're going to be doing and you said it was ok for us" so if you ban them for using the same thing then you're f*ing us
And PS-I took no sides-saw both.
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No outrage since it is available to everyone, for a price.
Just getting nickel and dime to death.
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auctionsage has offered a service since September.
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MGC, all the same arguements against the tool still stand
for and against it. ....but we are all taking pity on that dead horse-its a new thing around here ....thou shalt not whip a dead horse past dead x 2...
but ebay has made their decision to totally ruin the site, so it is up to us to work with it or move on, and this tool is now available to everyone, so it is not an ethical or moral quesiton any more, but the idea still sucks, I manually revised a couple last week because they mistakingly got launched as 3 dayers and I felt bad thinking if anyone had a snipe bid set for them, it would have sucked to come back and expect the auction to be over and find out it was extended.
This now shows me where ebay is going to add some dollars to their bank account, and possibly without us even knowing aobut it, how much of a cut per "extended auction" will they take from vendio?
OR...
a fee on top of vendios fee to extend said auction
either way, it looks like THE way to make some extra moolah from fees.
I don't mind optional items being increased in fees, I equal it to taxes on booze and cigarettes, I can choose NOT to pay it.
Answer
First off, Ina made a little mistake there. Vendio is the third company to offer an auction extender.
Anyone who read the big thread about Ethical this summer may remember a lady named Tobe Gold whose company had developed a similar tool about the same time and offered it for sale to anyone who wanted to use it. The difference with her company is that they don't advertise it.
The AuctionSage tool is NOT the same thing. True, it does perform the same function. But it runs on your PC and whether or not your listings extend when you want them to depends on whether your PC is up and running then and whether it is running ok.
The Ethical tool as well as the ones by Tobe's company (sorry Tobe, can't remember the name and I'm too lazy to go look it up) and Vendio extend the listings by access and use of the eBay API.
As to whether eBay takes a cut or not, that depends on whether the software was written using what eBay refers to as the "legacy schema" or the new "unified schema." Those using the old one still pay API access fees. Companies whose software was written using the unified schema no longer pay API access fees.
As Toyranch and many others (including me) have predicted, one of the new charges will be a fee based on the length of a listing. I predict that one-day listings will have no duration charge, three-day listings will be 10 cents, five-day listings will be 20 cents, seven-day listings will be 30 cents, and ten-day listings will still be 40 cents. I know this because one of my eBay invoices had these charges listed on it, although they did not charge those fees. Also, on at least two occasions, I was in the process of listing something using the SYI form and when I got to the listing review page, there was a listing duration charge. In both cases I went back a page and then forward again to find that charge gone. So they already have the duration charge mechanism in place apparently.
The new Vendio tool is interesting because they didn't just steal the extender idea. They took pretty much all of Ethical's unique tools and rolled them into this one tool. As for whether it's cheaper, that remains to be seen. At first blush, it seems to me that it will be cheaper to use. But I'm not sure how it would add up for large users who run thousands of listings at a time.
One interesting thing will be to see how eBay implements the duration charge. What I mean is, say you put up a seven-day listing and your item sells the same day. Do they charge you 30 cents because you listed it for seven days no matter what, or do they drop the duration charge completely because it only ran for one day?
If they charge you based on the duration you initially chose, then it will be very important for sellers to use some type of automatic listing extender ...
Jeff
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Jeff, I think "they charge you 30 cents because you listed it for seven days no matter what" is the correct answer. Do you really think eBay is going to GIVE BACK your money?
Blanche
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That's what I was going to say, but got sidetracked and questioned whether I should jump into another one of these threads lol.
eBay does however give you a refund when you revise your listing and put it into another price category, so it's not impossible. Then again, with more price hikes ahead it be easy to just stop refunding period as a hidden charge on top of the hikes that will get the most attention.
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I saw this today and was pretty much floored. I'm not sure I want to say a whole lot , except that at first look, the Vendio tool looks to be a bit more, basing it on what Ethical was charging. Some folks who were listing 500 Auctions a month were paying about $50.00. If you used Vendio's tool, it would cost you $6.95 plus .20 x 460 additional auctions, which is around $98.95. I would say the Vendio tool cost about double, however, you can also revise other things as well, at no additional cost, so it could actually work out to be the same.
However you look at it, I agree with Jeff. They stole just about every tool we designed.
The new Vendio tool is interesting because they didn't just steal the extender idea. They took pretty much all of Ethical's unique tools and rolled them into this one tool.
There are more that have yet to be developed. It was on the backburner for a few months. Now it's clogging my radar.
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Some folks who were listing 500 Auctions a month were paying about $50.00. If you used Vendio's tool, it would cost you $6.95 plus .20 x 460 additional auctions, which is around $98.95.
If you signed up for the Platinum Plan....then the cost for 500 would be $49.95.
Silver $6.95 40 revised items
$0.20 per additional revised item
Gold $9.95 100 revised items
$0.15 per additional revised item
Platinum $19.95 200 revised items
$0.10 per additional revised item