Turbolister alternative

[HannaHolly]

Hi Gazza,
not everyone who uses eBid & would like an eBid lister necessarily uses Turbo Lister (especially since the problems in v2).
So would it not be better to have a fully working & functional eBid lister (equivalent of Turbo Lister) first, followed by a TL to EBid Lister converter as either a separate program or an addon. That way only the converter would need to be updated to take into account changes in categories on other sites.

I agree. I don't list on ebay so have no listings to 'convert'

[rupert691]

Hi Gazza,
not everyone who uses eBid & would like an eBid lister necessarily uses Turbo Lister (especially since the problems in v2).
So would it not be better to have a fully working & functional eBid lister (equivalent of Turbo Lister) first, followed by a TL to EBid Lister converter as either a separate program or an addon. That way only the converter would need to be updated to take into account changes in categories on other sites.

While we're on categories, Gazza you haven't updated any for ages, or answered any category changes/revamp requests.
hint hint

Morning all!

That's an excellent idea Gothicina.

I can't help but think that the most compatible format, (and most used, whether WYSIWYG or otherwise), for auction data, is HTML, although I've come to the conclusion that not all HTML is created equal! (Formats can, and do, alter slightly in different HTML editors).

It may be an interesting subject for a Poll to see who uses HTML editors, TurboLister1 or 2, or CSV.

Is it just me, or is anyone else seeing the same items on the 'Closing Auctions' panel (left-hand, on Forums) for the last couple of days? ~ Wish some of my items had got that much exposure! LOL!

All the best, Simon / rupert691.

[kengillam]

I create my listing in HTML and save them in notepad files then just paste them in when listing.

[johnwash1]

Hi everyone,

I know the lack of lister software has been a major downfall of ours . We made one attempt but it was innadequate so was taken offline.

We are making another attempt at updating the old eBid Lister software as we speak. Problems with it were that it required excel to be installed which kind of defeated the object and also there were problems with the version of .Net libraries that users had installed on their computers.

We have recently update the Bulk Upload system to allow users to upload in real time instead of emailing in spreadsheets. This should ease some problems.

The main problem of importing auctions from other sites is that we need a complete list of category matches. eg. We have 5735 categories currently and we would need to match the ID number for each of these to the ID number of the other auction site to allow for posting into the correct categories on eBid. We may set up a page where users can help us do this, the more people who help the quicker we can get this done.

Gazza

Whether it's inhouse or written by a user, since you're not charging for it for Heaven's sake make it open source so there can be peer review.

Converting existing TL ebay categories will be a major headache. Not only are there so few categories on eBid (understandable because eBay is so much bigger), there's only two levels. I really hate that, having to scroll through a giant list. For example 'Computer', why can't it be Computer, then Computer Hardware/Software/Other, then subcategories within those?

This 2-level scheme must be discouraging you from adding further categories in some areas, for fear of extending a lengthy list. More levels, please! And then more categories.

Personally I can do without a TL equivalent. I don't recall when 'Populate' was added, but I find that really really handy. It makes posting auctions using the single form a breeze. Thanks for that Gazza.

The reason I use TL on eBay is because it's quite important on that site to end auctions at popular times, so preparation ahead of time and then bulk uploading is very useful. Also they drop their exhorbitant fees a little on some Thursdays, so again it's handy to have a way to prepare and await the right time. But since those things aren't considerations on eBid I don't find myself wishing for a TL here.

John

[techsp]

Maybe a converter could be made to work on the more simple ebay ads. But the moment an ad uses a special format the converter will not cut it.
In my case for example there are many other obstacles:
Page and column width need to be adjusted from the 800+ px used on ebay to 614 px for ebid.
Most of my pages have embedded pictures, typically at column width. They need to be scaled to the smaller ebid format and uploaded to a hosting provider.
Because of latency considerations I use a website in the UK. So all picture links need to be changed, that includes the file name, 1 digit in there denotes the picture width, now 400 instead of 500 px.
Next there are links to ebay custom pages, need to point now to the correct ebid store/category.
Some paragraphs in the ad are specific to ebay and need to be replaced, email addreses need to be dropped.
Shipping needs to be recalculated. US ebay ads did calculate shipping to US and Canada only, other countries were covered in ads at non US ebay locations.
And there is more but it is obvious that a converter will not be able to handle all this. And the next convert from ebay might have totally different ads.
I used the converter available on ioffer several times. Only a small percentage of ads come through in usable form, you have to sift through a lot of junk. Only the feedback converter was a full success.

On Turbolister:
The main advantage is that most of the work is local, much less relying on connection quality. Latency occurs mostly only at the local level. Lost connections to the server and the consequences are not an issue outside on uploads or updates.
But the editor coming with TL is mediocre. No undo lets you lose work quite often. Better to create more involved pages outside TL and then just drop the code in.
And upgrades are a pain, render TL useless quite often, right now the case on one of my machines. And store category updates are time consuming.

Really, you can have as good if not better results over all by using a good editor, configure your ebid defaults for html and just drop the generated code into the ebid editor.

Existing TL functionality after all these years is somewhat disappointing. It might take a small company some years to have a usable product. Resources might better be spent on other things.
Or a feasible approach might be to use an existing editor and built an interface inside like WebAssist did with Contribute.
Another approach is combining an existing editor with you bulk loader spreadsheet, maybe combined with an Excel runtime. Or use one of the free Excel clones instead.

[katiyana]

For sellers who aren't crossing a lot of categories, you should be able to export your TL listings into .csv format, and then copy/paste title, description, image URL into the Ebid spreadsheet file. You could probably also copy price unless you plan on charging differently here.

I used existing Excel spreadsheets I had for Google Base & my prostore to create my Ebid spreadsheet, and it only took me an hour to do my 250 listings. BUT all of my listings are very similar not crossing lots of different categories. I can see where this wouldn't be as efficient for someone with lots of different categories.

Additionally, the category list in the spreadsheet doesn't match the site - so I did have to find some "closest match" categories for my listings as the eBid site category #'s weren't accepted by the spreadsheet program.