In February 2014, Tamebay co-editor Dan Wilson will be looking at starting an ecommerce business from scratch. Read all the Ecommerce start-up 2014 posts here.Start on eBay. Then branch out. The choice is yours. Dan’s focus is ecommerce success, profitability and efficiency. Check out his book: Make Serious Money on eBay UK, Amazon & Beyond.
Turbo Lister and Selling Manager/Selling Manager Pro
A key aspect of the ecommerce journey is finding and using the right tools to help your business grow and remain as lean as possible. It doesn’t get any easier and even if you’re selling stacks as a mature ecommerce concern, you’ll always be looking for tweaks.
So it pays to start early on in your selling career and my advice is to bag several tools right from the word go to streamline your business. Even if you’re only selling a handful of items (before ramping up) these will prove useful.
Turbo Lister
This is a listing tool that helps you list more items on eBay, more quickly. You can store much of the information that’s the same from listing to listing and insert it automatically. You can download it onto your machine (it doesn’t work with Macs) and also work offline of you want.
There are several key benefits. You can save and archive all your listings in case you want to use them again which one day might prove a lifesaver if you have a stack of templates. You can also bulk edit listings if something needs changing or adding across the board.
Now, it is clunky and it isn’t pretty but it is a free tool and well worth getting acquainted with. You can find out more here.
Selling Manager/Selling Manager Pro
Selling Manager is a monitoring and management tool that replaces My eBay as your seller dashboard. Several key benefits are worth using, even by quite small sellers. Firstly, bulk feedback will save time and you can also bulk generate invoices and labels as well as bulk relist sold and unsold items.
Selling Manager Pro is a bit different because it not just helps you monitor sales but also helps you list them by enabled stored templates.
But it’s the automation that’s the real attraction. You can automate feedback after your buyer pays, automate emails to stay in touch with buyers. You call also bulk upload inventory using .csv files and download sales history too for the accountant.
My advice would be to upgrade immediately to Selling Manager use some its bulk capabilities, not least because it’s free. Selling Manager Pro is £4.99 per month. But if you look at the automation and bulk activities it permits, it’s not a hard expense to justify.
6 Responses
Excellent Tip Dan. Turbo Lister is easy to use and works a treat.