OT: Who's better, Vendio or Andale?

fsjeter · September 23, 2004 3:26AM

Or is there a better option than these two for image hosting and auction listing? These two seem to be the most common. Any thoughts???

Scott

Heilmann · September 23, 2004 4:48AM

I can't compare the two, since I have only used one (Vendio), but I'm very impressed with Vendio. Hosting and listing services truly "even the odds" between full time sellers and part time eBayers, because of the extremely professional listings you can create.

Between eBay and PayPal fees, I can understand if a seller doesn't want to pay for a hosting and listing service ... but I think that is a penny wise/pound foolish approach.

mexisar · September 23, 2004 6:50AM

from a buyer point of view i dislike Vendio, you have to type in you mailing info every single time, i just ignore them and go to paypal and pay

ping4u43 · September 23, 2004 7:03AM

You might want to take a look at MarketWorks.com

damnyankees · September 23, 2004 8:31AM

I use sparedollar.com.Quick and easy!!

Mintstate · September 23, 2004 8:40AM

<< <i>Or is there a better option than these two for image hosting and auction listing? These two seem to be the most common. Any thoughts???

Scott >>

I've been using SpareDollar for a few years Referral Link
For $4.95 a month you get 50MB of picture storage, auction listing templates and many other features like the ability to schedule autions to start at a later time. They had some growing pains for a while but seem to have straightened things out. You can try it free for the first month.

Richard

magellan · September 23, 2004 8:47AM

Auction Helper is another program quite a few sellers use. I don't recall all the details of their fee structure but I used it exclusively a coouple years ago. The Auction Lynx feature is like Vendio's gallery.

fsjeter · September 23, 2004 10:09AM

I forgot about AuctionHelper. Their fee structure is definately better than Andale. You get 20mb of image hosting free with AH. That will cost $99.95/month at Andale.

Scott

EagleEyeKid · September 23, 2004 10:30AM

As a seller, I don't use either one of these. As a buyer, I hate both and auctionhelper. As soon as the auction ends, I usually pay within a few minutes with Paypal. But nooooo....not good enough; I still have to fill out all that crap for these auction hosts.

ctsoxfan · September 23, 2004 11:19AM

I used SpareDollar for a while, but I have to say, the quality of the service was AWFUL! The site was always down (which means your images are always down on Ebay), and you could never enter an auction listing during the evening because their servers were too busy to handle the volume, and crashed all the time. Not to mention, I tried to reach their support, and was treated rudely by the staff there. I guess you get what you pay for, but SpareDollar actually cost me money in time lost, and sales lost...

Mintstate · September 23, 2004 11:50AM

<< <i>I used SpareDollar for a while, but I have to say, the quality of the service was AWFUL!. >>

They did have a problem late last year when their equipment couldn't handle the volume of users they were picking up. Then a major upgrade the beginning of the year was a disaster at first. Everything has been pretty smooth for a while now though.

athleticsfan · September 23, 2004 1:02PM

Anyone try just using Turbo Lister and inserting their own HTML? I found a great ebay HTML tutorial at http://www.eobcards.com/tutorial3.htm#bgc. I'm by no means an expert when it comes tio computers however I was able to design my own ideal template in about an hour or so. As for the photo hosting there are dozens of sites where you can host hundreds of pictures with unlimeted ebay traffics for just a few dollars.

HTML tutorial

schr1st · September 23, 2004 4:54PM

I'm going the Turbo lister -> website hosting option. The costs are a bit more fixed, you can get more storage space for a cheaper rate (usually), and you aren't reliant on the other companies to adapt to changes eBay may make in their listing system. For those that want to go it alone, and don't have a background in HTML, I'd suggest the following:

1). Create everything you want to use for a template in Microsoft Word, then save the document as a web page to your machine.
2). open the page in IE, go to view sorce, and copy.
3). start turbolister, go to html view and paste that sorce code that you just copied above
4). Go to design view, and voila, you now have a template. Save the template, set as your default description, and you are good to go.

If you want an example, check out the following completed auction I ran recently. Not very fancy, but it's clean, easy to read, and more distinctive than going with no format at all. This is the second template I've designed this way (the first was lost when I had to reformat my PC), and they've worked well for me.

As for image hosting, you can get 2 GB of hosting space and 25 gigs of transfer from yahoo for about $12 a month, and they'll register your domain name for free. There are cheaper deals out there probably, but they dont' choke bandwidth transfers (artificially slowing transfer rates) and are pretty stable as far as hosting goes. If you need more, for you can get double the space and 3 times the transfer for $20. As far as I can see, either option gives you more and costs less than most of the auction management services that are out there. I'm planning on hosting any future auction images on my site instead of eBay's picture service in the future ( I didn't this time around because I was working quick, and it was easier to just upload through TL than to have to make sure links were working).

OT: Who's better, Vendio or Andale?

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