Auctiva backs down on worst of new fees for eBay sellers
Many eBay sellers now using free Auctiva services may soon have to pay, but not as much as first announced.
And a free 30 day trial of Auctiva’s marketing tools, including the widely-used ‘scrolling gallery’ of related listings, will still be available.
An estimated 20% or more of eBay sellers are thought to use Auctiva’s services which, for some years now, have been provided of charge.
Auctiva has relied, instead, on affiliate marketing income from eBay and deals with insurers and freight companies to earn revenue.
Now that it is all going to change.
Effective July 1, 2009, Auctiva will begin charging for most of its services.
Under the new arrangements, the least expensive option is the starter plan. It costs $US2.95 per month and includes 15 listings and 500mb of image hosting.
A new standard plan costs $US9.95 per month and includes unlimited listings with 1 gb of image hosting.
With each of the new plans, customers will have access to more than 1,700-plus Auctiva templates, visitor counter, scrolling gallery and other tools.
Users on the standard rate plan will also avoid paying any eBay listing or transaction fees.
"This new pricing structure offers our customers easy-to-understand pricing with no surprises or hidden charges," said
Spencer Smith, Auctiva’s director of marketing.
That may be so, but when Auctiva last month revealed its plan to introduce charging last month, it announced a more complicated, multi-tiered pricing structure.
The new higher rate plans were widely publicized, including on the high-profile and widely read Auction Bytes site.
An immediate backlash from Auctiva users resulted.
Even eBay bulletin boards in Australia saw a number of disgruntled postings about the move.
So whilst Auctiva’s CEO and founder, Jeff Schlicht, initially told Auction Bytes he was prepared and expecting to lose up to 30% of Auctiva’s users, he changed his tune quite quickly.
Poaching efforts from competitors such as Inkfrog may have helped Schlichts back-flip.
In any event the earlier pricing plans have now been dumped and Schlicht has apologized.
As he explained in a posting to a company blog on the 9th of June, he was wrong.
"If you're asking yourself, 'Why didn't they just use this pricing in the beginning?' the answer is that I thought our customers would like to have the choice of picking a tailored plan based on usage."
"We spent a lot of time developing our different pricing packages to best meet the needs of the many different types of eBay sellers who use Auctiva. Clearly, I was wrong, so we made changes."
Auctiva users who chose one of the higher-priced plans before they were pulled will have the option of keeping that plan if they wish.
All current Auctiva users are required to choose a plan this month.
Note: Auctiva also markets an ecommerce shopping cart software package for non- eBay deployments known as Auctiva commerce.
For more information go to
www.auctiva.com
www.auctivacommerce.com
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