Auctiva listings - a beginners step by step guide : eBay Guides

PLEASE NOTE - FROM JULY AUCTIVA WILL BE MAKING A SMALL CHARGE FOR THEIR SERVICE

THE CHARGES WILL RELATE TO HOW MANY ITEMS YOU LIST AND HOW MANY PHOTOS YOU USE SO PLEASE CHECK THIS FOR YOURSELF BEFORE SPENDING ANY TIME ON SETTING UP YOUR LISTINGS 

Auctiva is a great tool to list your ebay items, it's easy to use and the features are extremely compelling:-

• you can choose from zillions of templates, some are wacky, others are more sober, templates are useful because they organise your text into neat sections with headings
  
• you can schedule your listings so that they close at the optimum time to have the most potential buyers looking, this means that you can write the listing at the best time for you and launch it later
  
• you can have the Auctiva scrolling gallery in your listings to generate interest in your other items and Auctiva host your images so that you don't have to pay for picture services and you can have 24 supersized images per listing

This guide gives you the information you need to use Auctiva, on first sight it may look to be a lot of detail but I've taken you through it step by step so you'll get the hang of using Auctiva with your very first listing. It took me a few bodged efforts before I got it all working perfectly and a guide by a real user would have been very useful at the time - hence this.......

Get started....

Go to Auctiva.com

You start by registering with with a user name and password, you may get messages asking if you want to purchase a domain name for your Auctiva 'store' or a custom template, you can close these messages and carry on - to see an Auctiva store look at someones Auctiva scroller (mine is probably the closest) and see the click here to see all of my items in gallery form link and you'll be shown an Auctiva store, this maybe useful to a seller that doesn't have an ebay shop but for an ebay shop owner it's pretty meaningless.

NOTE - If you don't want to have the Auctiva scroller put in to your current listings at the moment then you must disable it by going to the 'my account' tab and find the setting there

You'll be asked to generate an ebay token, this is OK, it just gives Auctiva permission to link up with your ebay account.

ANOTHER NOTE  - At this stage if you have live listings running you'll start to see them gradually disappear over the next few hours, DON'T PANIC and cancel Auctiva - this is because the Auctiva scrolling gallery is being embedded into your listings, they'll come back again within a few hours.

Profiles

The first job is to look at the profiles tab in the main horizontal bar. Profiles are the settings you can put together to save all of your regular or common features of your listings pages so that you don't have to keep typing out the same information, make the same choices or click the same boxes

Start with the one called Seller Details, click on the Seller Details heading, you’ll see a frame to put your words, click to change the box to show standard, this gives you full editing possibilities for your text.

Fill in the sections of your 'small print' that you want to use for your listings, these pieces of text will be in sections under headings on your Auctiva template, if you don’t use a section the heading won’t be seen. When you get to the end of the sections you need to save it and then give your seller details a title – this is because you may want to have more sets of seller details if you sell other products that are wildly different, let's say, make up and tyres - you’ll want a different set of information in the seller details as each product will need very different terms and conditions – it’s a wild exaggeration but you get the idea!

Then go to the Item Details profile, this shows you the listing page that you’ll fill in to describe your item - you’re not going to fill in the details about your product just yet – at this stage all you are doing is setting up the basic things that you’ll always be using, such as, maybe you'll always be listing Buy It Now listings, if so click fixed price at the top left of the page.

Then move on to the description box itself – maybe you’ll use the same few sentences in every description (my repeated sentence for my china is ‘it’s in excellent condition with no chips, cracks or crazing’) if you write them here now you won’t have to write them again with each item you list, you can always delete it if on occasions it isn’t suitable to have it there.

(Remember, don’t go on to actually write the description yet, this is just setting the page up for future use)

Ignore the photo selection boxes for now

The next thing do is choose the template – after you’ve picked the one you like you can set it to how the photos will be arranged, either horizontally, vertically, in pairs or whatever, try not to make the listing too wide though, 3 photos side by side can stretch the page, I think pairs are the best ‘shape’ to go in the listing, you can choose to have them above or below your description or to the side, the photos on the side make the description very narrow though, especially for a shop because the category list will narrow the page.

Along the same row as the template selection box is the place to click to have your sellers details inserted into the listing, if you don’t click it the sellers details that you wrote earlier won’t be present in the listing.
You don’t need to do anything with the template title box – when you write in the title of your item in the box at the top of the page it will fill this box at the bottom of the page without you having to do anything.

When you’ve finished all of this check it, give this profile a name (I call mine usual item details) then save it.

The next profile to fill in is the Marketing Details, this is to choose the extra features that you might want to use, these are all to be paid for in addition to your basic listing fee, the only one that is best to have saved for all of your listings is the gallery (anything else that costs extra you may want to choose at the time for a particularly special listing)  then check it,  name the profile and save it

The next profile is Shipping Details, you’ll need to enter your post code and location, then there is the choice to make about which countries you’ll ship to, perhaps you’ll always be charging the same amount for the postage? if so you may as well write it in the box and then you don’t have to do it again.

If the postage is by Royal Mail and the parcel is worth less than £36 you can tick the box to say that the parcel has insurance in the shipping and handling costs because that’s the value that you are covered for if you have to make a claim from the Royal Mail. The cover is always set as 100 x the value of the First Class stamp, there are restrictions however for cover for items such as jewellery etc so check on royalmail.com. Check it, name it and save

Last one is the Checkout Profile, you need to enter the email address that is connected to your paypal account and decide what other payments you’ll accept, there is a space to fill in some details about how to pay etc…and there is a returns policy box that you may have to consider, buyers expect a returns policy from a business seller so you can enter it there if it's appropriate to you. Check, name it and save.

That’s all of your profiles completed, the thing to do now is click on the profile tab again at the top of the page and click Master Profile, this groups all of these individual profiles together in one Master Profile.

When you’ve done this go to your  my account tab > account settings and you can set the default profile to be your Master Profile – this means that every time you start a new page to list an item the Master Profile is loaded on to the page already for you.

Editing profiles

If you need to edit your profiles at any time in the future you need to click the manage profiles link

Writing your first Auctiva listing

Click the new listing tab and you’ll see that the Master Profile choices you made have been filled in for you.

Decide if you want to keep the type of listing (auction or fixed price) that is saved in the Master Profile, change it if needed

Write your title, making sure that you think like your buyer would and write the words that they are likely to search, only use words like ‘pretty’ or ‘beautiful’ if you’ve got space left after typing in better keywords

Next thing is the ebay category choice –

You can choose this by 2 methods, you could Browse, click this and find the category you want by searching along the various sections until you find the right one or Search, type in the main keyword that you're listing and it will show you where most current listings are with that word in the title, you can make your choice from these.  When you are back on the listing page make sure that the category you chose is indeed the correct one that you need.

The next bit is SO IMPORTANT – fill in the item specifics, this helps the buyer find your item by giving more details that he can search for so it’s essential that you remember to fill this part in especially if your item is in a large category like clothing or it will get lost. The choose item specifics link is just a little blue sentence and it's VERY easy to overlook it and start writing the description so get into the habit of clicking it each time.

The next boxes you come to are for your shop categories (if you have a shop that is..) choose the one that you want your item to go in, when you write more categories for your shop you’ll need to update the ebay settings in the my account tab

Write your description in the box giving all the details that a buyer will need to know about the item, be as clear and as concise as you can be and describe it well.

Then add your photos, there is an upload link so you can pick up the photos from your computer, they are stored in Auctiva until you delete them.

Pick your gallery and ebay header images, choose the best shot you have for a thumbnail photo, it’s usual to have the same image for both places.

The next thing to do is enter your price, amount of items offered and duration of listing.

The template should be shown as a thumbnail and the title of your seller details (that you saved in your Master Profile earlier) should also be showing in the box, the template matching scrolling gallery box should already be ticked, this means that if your chosen template is in red, the scrolling gallery will be red too.

The next sections of the page need to be maximised to open them up for you to read them, some of the details will have been filled and saved when you profiled them earlier so just check that they are relevant to the listing you’re doing now and fill in the other parts that need to be done for the particular item that you're listing now.

When you get to the end of the page click to see your ebay fees (they may not be 100% acurate because of ebay changes that Auctiva haven't put into their system like cheap listing days etc...), then preview and check everything over, the item specifics won't be visible in the preview, they only show when the listing is live. When you’re happy with it either save it to post later, post it (launch it to ebay as a live listing now) or schedule it for launching on another day or at a later time.

To schedule the listings

When you click on 'schedule' you'll be taken to a page where you'll see 'posting date' on the top left hand side of the page - click on this date/time and a calendar window opens up, you can choose the date and time from there, if you're scheduling a batch of listings you can set them to list at timed intervals which is very useful.

Saved listings

When you look at your list of saved listings you’ll see an icon under actions that looks like a stack of files, this is to make an exact copy of the listing that you just wrote out – this is really good to use if you are listing a lot of the same items that are slightly different because of size or colour etc so you just need to make minor alterations from the first listing to the second and so on...…be sure to remember to check that the items specifics, price or postage costs are OK for this second listing, you may need to change it, it’s very easy to get carried away with cloning these listings at great speed (ask me how I know this!) and you forget that even though the description is the same the other details may not be.

Fine tuning Auctiva

When you are used to finding your way around Auctiva you can do things like change the text on the  scrolling gallery so that it shows your own custom message, maybe you’ll publicise a special feature of you shop or whatever, the text will alter on all of your listings within an hour or so.
You can change the colour or position of the scroller too, maybe you want to copy your shop colours? this change will only show on subsequent listings not ones already live. Both of these changes can be made from the Store tab

If you ever change your ebay password you'll need to generate a new ebay token to link Auctiva up to your new ebay password, this is done in the ebay settings link

Go to my account > settings to fine tune the details of your account such as how many listings are shown on each page, I set all of these to the maximum allowed so that I'm not constantly changing pages to see all of my work - there are other settings too eg when the clocks change for BST, it's essential that you remember this if you are scheduling listings around when the clocks go forward in the spring or back in the autumn - if you forget the listings will close at the wrong hour.

It's worth noting that Auctiva have a maintenence time on Friday mornings (UK time) so you won't be able to work on your listings and the scrolling gallery is empty too while they have the site up on the ramps.

There are many other tabs and features on Auctiva that you can explore later but for now, you should be up and running with your first batch of Auctiva listings, once tried you'll never go back!

I've written another guide to briefly demonstrate the really useful bulk editing options with Auctiva, also a guide to change a photo or template in a live Auctiva listing.

I have written a couple of other guides that may be useful to a new seller, please take a look

This guide is still being edited so if you see any typos or errors then please let me know - also there have been a few votes for 'not helpful' I'd really like this guide to be perfect so if there was something that I didn't explain fully or glossed over then please send me an ebay message and I'll do some more work on the guide.

If you have found this and my other Auctiva guides useful please vote for them because the more votes they have the more visible they become and therefore more eBayers will benefit from seeing and using them

Gillian