Turbo Lister is an excellent tool for creating eBay listings. I recommend it even for the small volume eBay seller. Turbo Lister permits you to create your eBay listings off-line, which is extremely important if you’re on dial-up or are strapped for time. The Sell Your Item form on eBay will force you to wait for the next page to load (or if you’re going back to do a revision, the previous page will have to load all over again.) This results in a great deal of frustration and you spend more time waiting than creating your listings. Furthermore, some professions are required by law to keep a copy of every ad they create. If you’re in one of these professions, a tool like Turbo Lister can be essential for the day-to-day running of your business.
Even for a part-time seller, eBay can be very lucrative. Most people have a treasure trove of stuff in their house that’s going begging. This can be a great place to get your start selling, because you don’t have to invest in merchandise. Try your hand at selling on eBay, and see how well you do. It’s lots of fun to watch your auctions go wild; in fact, it can be addictive, so make sure you take frequent breaks, care for yourself and don’t let eBay take you away from your family. Turbo Lister is an excellent tool that will help you save time and energy on your listings so that you can make money and still have time for your real life.
Getting Started
If you’re not an eBay member yet, you’ll need to register. If you’re new to selling, you’ll need to set up a seller’s account by clicking on the “Sell” link on the front page. Then provide a credit card, or use ID Verify to complete your signup. It’s fast and easy. When you’re done, we can get started with selling!
Installation
Download Turbo Lister 2. Read the installation instructions. Turbo Lister 1 was retired in April 2007.
Account Set Up
Be sure to set up all your preferences in Turbo Lister 2. Enter your username and password before attempting to upload or import listings. Go to Tools > Options to set up your auction defaults. If you accept PayPal, you must enter your PayPal email address. If you use the shipping calculator, you must be sure to insert your item location, ship-to locations, services offered, etc. If you have a store, you must download your store categories. Record your specific instructions to the buyer and your return policy. These will appear in all your listings. Adjustments may need to be made for specific listings.
Creating Folders
Your listings can get lost in the shuffle if you only use the My Items folder provided by eBay. So it becomes necessary to set up additional folders to keep them in order. I create a folder for each day of the week that I upload listings. I also create store inventory folders. If you have a lot of listings to manage, you can even create multiples of these folders, like Friday1 and Friday2, or Store Inventory 1 and Store Inventory 2. I now use 1Sunday, 2Tuesday, 3Wednesday, and so forth, since this creates a more organized list, and the folders show up at the top of the window. When finished uploading listings, cut and paste them into the My Items folder. Take care when doing this, as you can easily lose your listing files. Cut and paste them twenty or less at a time, and be careful not to cut or paste anything else in the interim.
Creating Templates
One of the best features of Turbo Lister is that you can create templates to reuse over and over again. You can create templates from scratch, or use a listing you created to make your template. The templates folder appears at the top of the Inventory window.
You can use actual items which you have created for upload as a basis for these templates. Be sure to remove specific information for that listing and replace it with generic information, or you may end up with inaccuracies in your listing descriptions.
Use a promotional image like “We Combine Shipping” or your eBay logo as a holder image in templates. This prevents the listing from being uploaded with an image that is different than the item described. If you make a mistake, and forget to put your image in the listing, you can take your time to revise the listing with the correct photo.
Duplicate Items
The best way to work from templates when you’re creating multiple similar items is to create your template, then duplicate it. That way you’re not having to go through the entire menu to create a new item.
Select the item you created from a template. In the inventory view, click the Duplicate button.
Enter the number of items you would like to create. Better too many than too few. You can always delete extras.
If you find there’s a problem with your duplicate items, you can edit them in the Multiple Item Edit mode, or sometimes it’s simply better to delete all but one of the items, edit the remaining item until it’s how you want it, then re-duplicate the listing.
Import Listings from eBay
You can import your active, sold and unsold listings from eBay. When importing to relist, the item must have the same features as the original listing. If you want to remove expensive features such as border or gallery, then you must use the import only function, since items must be relisted with all original upgrades.
To import, in the inventory view, select File > Import Items.
Image Processing
Images should be optimally processed for the web prior to inserting them into Turbo Lister, since the program has no image processing capability. I recommend Paint Shop Pro; I use the program every day, and absolutely adore it. The newest version of Paint Shop Pro can be found at Corel’s Website. Paint Shop Pro XI is dramatically less expensive than Adobe Photoshop, and yet has much of the same functionality and is also exceptional for editing images for eBay.
Whatever product you choose should have certain tools. At bare minimum you will need Rotate, Resize, Crop, Clone, Brightness and Contrast Adjustment, Hue and Saturation Adjustment, and in certain cases you may also need Moiré Pattern Removal, Sharpen, Soften or other tools.
Whether you’re using eBay picture services or an auction host, the longest edge of your image should never be longer than 850 pixels, and probably should be considerably less. Always use JPEG or GIF format for your images.
Research
As always, you must research your items before creating listings in Turbo Lister. Use the advanced search engine on eBay, or use the MPire Researcher to get thirty days of free sales data. You must sign up for an account at MPire, but it is absolutely free. Or if you need a more powerful research solution, you can sign up for Marketplace Research Pro. Don’t bother with Marketplace Research Basic. It only goes back two weeks.
Using Image Hosting with Turbo Lister
You can use Turbo Lister to upload your own local pictures directly to eBay picture services, use your own image hosting, or use Turbo Lister with an Auction Hosting Service like Auctiva. I highly recommend Auctiva since they are free and offer unlimited image hosting with no obligation to purchase any service. Other image hosting services include:
Village Photos
Inkfrog
Photobucket
Imageshack
Andale
Vendio
To use auction hosting with Turbo Lister, select the Change Photo Hosting option in Description Builder. Select Your Own Web Hosting and The Item Will Have a Picture Included in the Description. Turbo Lister may warn you that your previous pictures will be forgotten. Click OK. Scroll down and click the Click Here to Insert a Picture link. Cut and paste the URLs from your auction host image management page into the fields provided in Turbo Lister.
To use this option, your pictures must already be optimized on your auction host’s site. To optimize your pictures prior to upload, use your photo processing program to resize them so that the longest side is between 600 and 800 pixels long, depending on the resolution you prefer. Larger pictures provide better detail, but smaller pictures make for faster downloads. Look above for suggestions for image processing software.
Be sure to title and/or name your images appropriately so that you can find them easily on your auction host’s site. For example, on Auctiva, you can search for your images using part of the image name, and you can also organize them in folders. Photobucket will allow you to add a label to your images.
Using HTML/CSS with Turbo Lister
You can easily use raw HTML code and Cascading Style Sheets with Turbo Lister. At this time eBay only supports CSS within the table element. The HTML, HEAD, BODY and META elements are generated automatically, so never attempt to use them within the Turbo Lister HTML field.
Turbo Lister has a simple WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor. Its fonts, sizes and styles are limited. It can create HTML such as bulleted and numbered lists, and generate basic HTML code such as paragraphs and page breaks automatically. It can’t generate tables or other more complex codes. In order to use tables and other advanced HTML features, you must either generate them separately in an HTML editor, or type the code out manually.
I use Frontpage 2002 for most of my HTML needs. Microsoft unfortunately no longer produces Frontpage. Other HTML editors are available for a discount on eBay, including Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe GoLive, NetObjects Fusion, Namo Web Editor, and Macromedia Contribute.
Some useful HTML tutorials and CSS tutorials are available at the World Wide Web Consortium.
Turbo Lister Templates
There are both free and paid Turbo Lister Templates available on the web. Some of the templates out there, frankly, are awful. So you have to be choosy. Here are some of the best ones I’ve seen.
The Seller Sourcebook: Requires a monthly or yearly subscription. Includes auction hosting and Turbo Lister compatible templates, access to a newsletter, software and resources.
The International and Independent Turbo Lister Forum: These templates are free, but the site is in German, so you may have some difficulty navigating. This link takes you directly to the page with the template selection.
Many eBay sellers also sell Turbo Lister Templates. Never buy them sight-unseen, and never buy or download templates in an executable file; these can put trojans, spyware and viruses on your computer.
Listing Designer
You can use Listing Designer with Turbo Lister easily. However, it should be kept in mind that eBay charges $.10 each time you use Listing Designer. By using your own CSS or HTML, or a free Turbo Lister template, you can create your own listing design which can enhance buyer confidence, and save ten cents each time you recycle it. This can be very important for keeping your listing costs down.
eBay automatically generates the HTML, HEAD, and BODY elements of the listing page, so you should never include these in your description. All CSS must be within the TABLE element. You must use an embedded CSS as eBay does not support external CSS for listing descriptions.
Preview Your Listings
Always preview your listings in Turbo Lister prior to upload. We’re all human, and we all make mistakes. I almost always find mistakes in my listings before uploading them, even when I’ve done my best to create the listings accurately and completely.
In order to preview your listings in Turbo Lister 2, the items to be previewed must be selected.
Managing Your Listings
Turbo Lister can run slowly if you have a tremendous number of listings recorded in it. It’s important to prune the listings every now and then to keep it running at optimal efficiency. Create your own system for managing your listings. I keep a record of every listing I upload. However, the import function can result in duplicates of listings appearing in your files, so watch out for this and delete the excess listings on a regular basis.
Another way to speed up Turbo Lister 2 is to delete the Activity Log and compact your database. To delete the Activity Log, simply click Activity Log, select all items and click delete. To compact you database, select Tools > Compact Database from the menu.
Relisting from Turbo Lister 2
Recent changes to Turbo Lister 2 (as of May 2007) have altered the way you relist items from the interface. There used to be a button in the Waiting to Upload view which would permit you to selectively download the items you wanted to relist. The new interface has a section called Listing Activity which supposedly you can synchronize with your current listings. I have found that it doesn’t work properly, and fails to download all of my items. Also, it organizes them by start date rather than end date, making it impossible to find exactly the item you’re looking for.
This makes it extremely difficult and in some cases impossible to relist from Turbo Lister 2. I recommend that until these bugs are worked out, you use a different method to relist your items for sale. I have been using Selling Manager, which comes free with my eBay store.
Recent USPS Changes
On May 14, 2007 the USPS underwent some major changes to their available services and fees. In order to properly list your items with these changes, you must update the program. To manually update, select Tools > Check for Program Updates from the menu.
Synchronizing with Current Listings
Turbo Lister will now sync with your current and scheduled listings. Select the Listing Activity window, and then select Active Listings. Press the Synchronize button in the toolbar.
Backups
Backups are extremely important when using Turbo Lister. This will create a saved, compressed file of all your listings. Turbo Lister will automatically prompt you to make a backup when downloading updates and when closing the program, if it’s been a while since you backed up. Always create a new backup file name when using this function.
Support
If you encounter errors, check out the Turbo Lister Forum on eBay’s Community page, or contact eBay for support.
