Going Once, Going Twice, Sold!

Online auctions are no longer cyber garage sales; they're businesses that must be managed

By Lisa L. Sweet
January 25, 2000

With the advent of eBay, many folks cleaned out their garages and jumped on the online auction bandwagon. However, since the auction circuit has matured, many entrepreneurs have started businesses selling everything from antiques to Beanie Babies. According to eBay, 4 percent of their registered users account for 80 percent of their sales, which clearly shows that the majority of sellers are real businesses rather than casual sellers.

Whether you're starting a business from scratch or using online auctions to expand your customer base, managing auctions can be a full-time job. You must grapple with everything from designing your ads to dealing with the particulars of the auction host (be it eBay or Amazon.com) to implementing a system for tracking payments and shipments.

Until recently, auction management systems were geared toward buyers. But that's changed with Andale's new auction management services. Using a browser, you can manage your auctions from A-Z; design your ads; store up to 100MB of images (for your ads) for free; submit your ads to eBay, Amazon.com, and Yahoo auctions with a few clicks; and track auction status, inventory, sales, profits and more. The service is free until March 1, 2000; after that, the cost will range from $1 for transactions up to $25, to 1 percent of total transactions over $500.

Get Ready To Automate

Creating an account with Andale is extremely easy. Log on to their site and you're presented with a three-page document entitled, "Getting Started with Andale." This provides you with everything you need to know about their services and what you can expect. The tabbed user interface clearly displays each step to take. Beginning with the Start tab, I filled out a short one-page template with my eBay and Amazon.com account and password information. When I submitted the form, Andale's system polled both eBay and Amazon's systems to verify my log-in information and pulled details about any current auctions into the system. I then filled out several other pages covering payment methods I accepted, shipping options, local sales tax, whether I wanted to include my company logo or Web site address in my ads, and such.

At the inventory tab, I entered descriptions of each item, how many I had in stock, how much I paid for the item, and what its value is. I could then group auctions into different folders, which made tracking results by category much easier.

Ugly Doesn't Cut It

Creating professional looking ads is vital, but you don't want to spend hours doing it. Creating an ad using eBay's tools is tedious; finding and attaching images is an even bigger pain, especially if you've stored them all over the Web at free storage sites. (If you use eBay's suggested image storage vendors, such as PixHost.com, you'll pay 50 to 80 cents per image per month, which can really ad up.) With Andale, you can store everything (well, up to 100MB) in your own vault for free. Uploading images to the vault is a snap – simply enter the image file's name and location on your hard drive. And because large, slowly displayed images are a good way to drive away customers, I loved how Andale's vault shows the size of a file as well as its estimated load time via a 28.8Kbps connection.

Everything you need to create ads for eBay, Amazon.com, or Yahoo auctions is here. There's an Express Ad Toolbox template for simple ads and a Deluxe Ad Toolbox that lets you enter more information about the item for sale. I used the Deluxe version for several eBay ads and found the templates extremely easy to complete, because the fields directly coincided with eBay's format, from item categories to ad pricing. I could also choose to display one or more views of the item in the ad. You can spruce up ads with 10 different backgrounds, embed a link to a manufacturer's Web site, and add other information, such as an item's age, condition, and retail price.

Once you create an ad, you can either submit it to the auction site immediately, or schedule it for posting at a later date (up to 14 days in advance). This is a great option if you have a stockpile of an item on hand and you don't want to flood the market. Once you create your ads, the ad archive shows which ads are open, closed, and delayed. Simply click an ad to edit and relist an item without having to recreate the ad from scratch (as you would with eBay). And like the image vault, you can create folders to store ads by category.

Once your auctions are live, click the Live Sales tab to track them. You can see the current bid price, the high bidder, and time remaining in the auction.

Congratulations, You've Won!

When a bidder wins one of your auctions, Andale sends them an e-mail from you with the news. This e-mail contains pertinent item information and directs the winner to a page (referred to as your storefront) where they enter their shipping and payment information. You can also include a link that directs bidders to your other open auctions. Note: Andale doesn't process credit card orders, so you'll need to rely on your current merchant account.

Click the Post Sales tab to find where you track the sale. In the My Tasks and Buyer's Tasks areas, you can see what needs to be done to complete the sale, such as if the buyer has submitted their shipping information. Once you receive payment, you must check a box; ditto once the item is shipped. Andale ties into FedEx, UPS, and USPS rate calculation systems, as well as iship.com, which compares and calculates the least expensive shipping method.

Once you've completed a sale, you'll find all of your customer information under the Customers tab, such as e-mail address, item purchased, and date of purchase. Click the Compose button and you can e-mail customers about sales or new items you'll be listing and even include a link to your current auctions. You can also search your records for repeat buyers, transaction status, or by using key words to determine who bought what.

Naturally, the bottom line is making money, and the Finance tab lays out how much you've sold by customer, item, auction, close date, and final price. You can also sort by date or eBay, Amazon.com, or Yahoo auctions. Although this module is not currently integrated with the inventory module, which would let you quickly calculate profits, Andale may do so in the future.

January marks the debut of this service and while I noticed a few small glitches in the interface--notably, the need to reload the page for changes to take effect--the service shows great promise. And since Andale heavily relies on customer input, you can expect to see weekly improvements and enhancements to the feature set and user interface.

© 2000 Lisa L. Sweet. All rights reserved.
Lisa L. Sweet is president of Edgewood Consulting Group and specializes in consumer and business e-commerce technologies, products, and trends. You can reach her at lsweet@edgewood-group.com.