Ebay Importer

[lavenderskytreasurebox]

I pulled in items from my eBay story, but in Ecrater, it didn't pull all of my pictures and put all of the items at a weight of 1 lb. I sold an item, but I lost money in shipping, because the importer didn't put the correct weight. Am I doing something wrong? Do you have to check each one and correct the pictures, weight, and wording?

[cosmicray]

The eBay importer is known to be a best-effort kind of deal, so yes, you should manually review all the listings that were brought over.

[tigercreekgifts]

Oh yeah, you have to edit each listing manually to add the photos back because the ones that do have photos, usually only brings over the default photo and not any others you may have for that item, and you need to edit your descriptions, make sure there is no lingo in there about auctions, best offer, buy it now, ebay, non-paying buyers etc. We don't have that stuff over here so if you have any of that in your ebay descriptions that got transferred over to and it needs to be removed so as not to confuse your customers here.

[lavenderskytreasurebox]

This makes it twice the work I was not expecting. Thanks for the info!

[MoonwishesStore]

Many of us came over long before there was an ebay importer, so we listed manually or copied and pasted. From what I have seen, many newbies use the importer and then never even look at their listing and then wonder why they have no sales. it is just easier to list manually, especially if you have a database with all the info. No data base? Make one!

[school-yearbooks]

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It's not easier to manually list 1,000+ listings than to use EC's eBay auto-relister. The EC sellers will have to check each listing for errors or missing photos but that is way easier than listing new listings.

I think the reason why there are eBay auto-relisters ( not just on EC ) is that many eBay sellers had ( or have ) an eBay store and then decide not to pay the high eBay store costs. They have sixty days to move the stuff or lose it altogether.

It works out well for everyone using it. EC gets a lot of new listings and the EB sellers get a way to move their EB stores in a few hours. The listing program isn't perfect but for a large amount of listing it is a good deal.



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[tigercreekgifts]

Something else I might add, not only do you have to move your ebay imports from the default category they are placed into during the transfer titled as "My ebay" to the correct categories you created in your store, but ecrater clarified for me that when the items are transfered they are placed into a marketplace category that closest resembles the category you had them in on ebay, and since ecrater has several categories that are different from ebay's you might want to also check out the list of global categories from the marketplace as there is a good chance that a handful of your transfer got placed into a similar but wrong category.

Like if ebay has a category just for build-a-bears and here we only have a category for bears in general, you may want to check and make sure the bears were placed in the bears category and not into the plush toys category on accident.

[MoonwishesStore]

[tigercreekgifts]

I agree with Moon. I have never used a turbo lister or the ebay transfer tool here, but I have had listings just mysteriously disappear from ecrater. They were not flagegd by the staff for any violations, and I did not delete them because I still had plenty in stock, no way I could have accidentally deleted 21 listings that were all from different categories, but they were gone without a trace. That starts happening to me when I have over 1,000 listings on ecrater.

So it does help to keep a list. I have not updated my list in quite some time because it still has all the products I lost to the fire last year and the products I donated recently, so I will have almost 3,000 items to sort thru in my inventory spreadsheet, but I think I need to take Moon's advice and update it soon. I am expecting another large delivery of inventory I purchased on wholesale soon, and I need to get my list in order now!!! Because I plan on doing this, ordering large wholesale quantities frequently to restock my store as quickly as possible and get back over that 1,000 products range.

[MoonwishesStore]

For those of us single handedly running our stores, okay hubby is a sounding board and helps with scanning, taking mail out when I can't walk, etc., we always will have a ton to do. Whether it is listing, keeping up with your database, ordering stock or sourcing it from other ways, being the entire shipping department, etc. etc. etc. Always plenty to do, but I well remember my first full years here, I manually listed over 5000 items and was selling the whole while as well. I never could have handled it without my Access database hubby developed for me. He tweaks it whenever there is something more I want to track as well, such as where sales on ecrater come from now so I can see if more sales come from the Marketplace or my promotions or just being found on the net. Helps me plan my work and what to focus on.

I guess that is why when people seem to always be checking their placement in the marketplace and google shopping etc., I wonder where they find the time. I have been trying to slow down somewhat this year so that I have time for other things in my life, but it is very hard to do during a slow month when I just 'know' if I could squeeze in an extra 50 listings each week, sales would pick up!

[tigercreekgifts]

Trust me Moon, I know busy. He and I have become best friends lately. Try taking required education courses at college for Microsoft programs 2 days a week, working at home on firewall programs and security, running 4 online stores, writing a blog, creating and selling art and photography and sharing it online on Deviant Art, keeping up with a youtube channel, making your own music and lyric videos to go on the youtube channel, keeping up with a facebook account for the fans of my music and art which grows by about 200 fans per day, which means constant instant messages, friend requests and comment to keep up with. I get like over 400 interactions on facebook a day easily. And top of all that, I am currently writing a book and I already have a publisher lined up so yeah, I am running non-stop to the point I make the Energizer bunny look lazy. LOL, but I love it. I would not trade it for lazy couch potato habits any day.

And to boot, I am getting a huge inventory shipment in soon and so I will have about 80 new products to list and photograph, plus I will be ordering a large shipment for my other ecrater store, and I need to correct my inventory logs right away.

[elpereles]

Never confuse an eBay Importer tool with any listing application/program. As far I can tell in eBay. Turbo Lister (program) is the best method and fastest to have a back up, edit, and list/post items in eBay. Lets not forget it works offline (not need to be online or Internet connection to work creating and editing).

[MoonwishesStore]

I wasn't even sure if TL was still around, but it sure helped us move over and showed proof that things that had been listed were no longer! I keep a close eye on my numbers so I think I would notice now if 30 listings all went AWOL.

[MoonwishesStore]

One of the hardest things to try and combat when it comes to selling on-line is the attitude that it is easy and doesn't require much work. Well it isn't easy and does require work. We get out of our stores what we put into it. I remember when Google first started throwing us curveballs. Some of the sellers here said that they had never promoted their store before and weren't going to start then. I have wondered how they did over the past few years. I was selling a lot my first few years here, but now even with lot of promoting my sales have never recovered to before Google's messing with things. If I wasn't promoting I think I would be lucky to get 5-10 sales a month.

[oakteakstore]

Keep in mind that every venue you sell on will have its own setup and you will have to adjust your listings accordingly. When you listed on eBay, you had to input information and it took some time to do. It probably takes less time here to list something from scratch than it does on eBay, once you get the hang of the setup. You can copy the format from other listings and just fill in the right information for that particular item.

Once I have the photos edited and ready to go, I can set up a listing in about 5 minutes.

I never imported things from eBay, so I don't know what is involved there. But others have all the information and encouragement you will need to get going and get your items seen on Google. Just keep coming back for any help.