Ebay 2016 Fall Update, Aka Death To Turbo Lister

Hey All,
ebay's dreaded seller update is out for the fall. Most of it luckily is rather mundane and doesn't apply to stamp sellers. Most of it applies to commercial sellers or they just "rearranged the deck chairs on the ship". Aside from one fee change for those who use reserve prices, the fee structure stays the same - whew!

However ebay is going to push their ebay Seller Hub as they are doing away with support for Selling Manager and Selling Manger Pro. Also Turbo Lister will bite the dust. These changes won't be put into place until June 2017 so sellers have time to adjust, find alternatives, etc. There's no mention about third party listing programs, but there's alternatives like Sixbit (not free) and probably others. It will be just strange to use something different since I've used Turbo Lister, warts and all for so many years. I made it work for what I wanted it to do. We'll see if there's something better (and without a fee attached).

http://pages.ebay.com/sellerinforma...r-tools.html

Once TL is gone, there won't be a way to have an archive of listings, since ebay online deletes them after 90 days.

Sometimes, after I've offered something there for a while, I stop offering it and wait a few months (sometimes longer). I'll be very, very sorry to lose that option, unless they build something in like that into the new Seller Hub (but I'm betting that's doubtful).

Unless I'm rushing to get something new listed on ebay (like I'm trying to do today, to take advantage of a listing sale), I will prepare listings through my database, so that I have an archive that way, as well as be able to prepare bulk listings for other venues, too. But the ebay listings always seem to require some extra little tweeks, so once the listings are up, running and looking good, I make sure to sync them via TL so that I have an eBay-acceptable version.

As much as I didn't love it, I will hate to lose that tool.

It also appears that ebay is transitioning to no 'active' content of code in the listings next year (no JS, Flash, etc.). Although I don't use active content in my listings I've noticed a lot of the third party listing apps use it.

This change is probable not ebay's 'fault'; I assume they are making this change so that the pages display well on all mobile devices and their operating systems.
Don

Don, I'm not sure if I'm recalling correctly, but I *think* I remember reading that ebay is dropping active content because Google will stop presenting those pages in search.

I'm sure someone who follows this more closely than I will offer some amplification.

Interesting, had not heard that. Google is definitely dropping support for Flash in the next version of the Chrome browser.
Don

Maybe that's what I'm confusing it with.

I'm definitely not the go-to guy on this subject! lol

"Now that Seller Hub enables you to create professional–quality listings, as well as edit and upload listings in bulk, ebay will discontinue support for Turbo Lister after June 2017. While the experience will be different, we will ensure all key functionality in Turbo Lister will be available in Seller Hub. This includes extending our new feed platform to enable offline editing with tools such as Microsoft Excel."

From the tail end of ebay's update. I guess it's going to be time to figure out what Seller Hub is all about.

I have tried the Seller Hub several different times. Unfortunately, it hijacks the My ebay Selling page, the only ebay page I use with any regularity. After TurboLister inexplicably lost a couple of listings when I hit some random key, I switched to Selling Assistant Pro after meeting John Slocum at ebay Live in New Orleans in 2004. I never looked back. Apparently TurboLister moved from a locked Access database (with a somewhat known password) to some proprietary data store. SA Pro morphed into Blackthorne and then SixBit. I did test TurboLister for a client with about 50,000 listings. It was a near death experience. One final horrible malfeature in TurboLister is the inability to export running listings.

Having to pay for SA Pro, Blackthorne and SixBit has been worth the money and more, just in time saved processing orders, not to mention that I have complete sales records back to mid 2004, including sales of ebay items sold at stamp shows. The other major advantage is the ability to import listings into SixBit from an Excel spreadsheet. I wrote code to do this years ago, but import is now well supported in SixBit. Avoiding using ebay web pages on a regular basis is also a huge benefit.

I won't miss TurboLister or Selling Manager Pro, but I will miss the My ebay Selling web page when tracking active auctions.

Dam it I hate their ebay Seller Hub it is the worst thing they came up with its slower to navigate and messy compared to seller manager pro. I hate how they force these changes on sellers when things worked well the way they are now