BillsHobbyEmporium
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posted on April 1, 2006 08:56:01 PM
Well After searching around and digging into this and that I decided to go with Blackthorne Pro. SO far everything is good a couple of little things here or there but they are easy to figure out.
I was originally told by eBay idiot that I can do revisions to live listings on the Blackthorne to duration and price only and add text but can't revise the text etc. pretty much the same stuff the reviser does here. WRONG! I can do everything the reviser does here PLUS I can make line changes in the text and do it in bulk. I can revise anything and everything in any live listing I want to do it to with no limits on the amount of revisions. Amazing!
I also get a free subscription to eBays Selling Manager Pro (do I see a court case rising on copywrited names?) all for $24.95. The picture hosting that eBay does is $9.95 for 50 gigs, $14.95 for 150 GB and it downloads to Balckthorne so you can do everything off line. Oh I forgot with the SMP you get listing designer. There is also support either by email or I can call any of the numbers (store, Power seller) and talk to someone if I have to. The really good thing is that when eBay throughs out changes they are right there with them.
I revised all of my auction and FP listings tonight with it. Now all I have to do is get a template and start putting all of the photos back in. I will let you know how things go with it as I move along down the road.
Bill
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BillsHobbyEmporium
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posted on April 1, 2006 08:56:51 PM
I know it will take a while but that is the price I pay.
Bill
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dorrie
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posted on April 2, 2006 07:50:22 AM
Bill,
Where does one access the Blackthorn program? Is it on Ebay? Is total cost for unlimited amount of listings and image hosting $24.99?
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replaygames
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posted on April 2, 2006 08:48:10 AM
I just switched AWAY from Blakthorne... It's just insanely slow and buggy. I was always happy with Seller Assistant Pro, but they are discontinuing it in favor of that buggy Blakthorne crap.
I was at Marketworks before that, and now I'm just finishing up my switch back to them. They cost more, but I just cannot risk losing everything due to Blakthornes nearly hourly crashes.
"Where does one access the Blackthorn program? Is it on Ebay? Is total cost for unlimited amount of listings and image hosting $24.99?"
Dorrie, go to Site Map, and find the link for SELLER TOOLS. Blackthorne is listed there. Yes, it includes unlimited listings for $24.99.
There may or may not be a fee for image hosting depending on what you need. ONE image is free with eBay, but additional ones cost money (ten cents each I think). Naturally if you host your own images, that's free.
Go ahead and try Blackthorne, it does have a lot of neat features. But pay attention to the speed- is it going to actually improve your productivity or drag it down? Watch how often it crashes- do you really want to risk your business on this thing?
I really wish Vendio would get a good "round trip" import and export feature. That's the only thing keeping me away from them. If I send a bunch of time entering listings, I want an easy way to get them out again if I want to move.
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BillsHobbyEmporium
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posted on April 2, 2006 09:03:09 AM
I know about the Blackthorne problems they had on the early versions. I waited until they got the newer version which went out of BETA on 3-26. It is working fine so far (knock on wood) except I can not download the users manual. That is not a big deal because I was able to figure it out. I went to discussion on eBay last night and put a post in on it. Waiting to see what happens.
They themselves do not host pictures. If you are going to pictures in the text you have to use a hoster. Again I went with eBay on that for now.
Like I said I did the revising on all of the items I had listed in fixed price and auctions on my live listings that I did with Vendio. Took out all of there text and links etc. and put mine in for now. It did not take exceptionally long time but I like that fact that you can revise anything including line items in the text of the description with no problems at all and the revision was instant. There does not seem to be any API problems or anything at all.
It is not perfect but the again is anything. The start up was easy the longest thing was the importing of the eBay items. The whole thing including image hosting is on a 30 day trial so I will be just playing with that now and decide towards the end of the month if I am going to keep it.
You do have to constantly do the update thing and if a new version comes out you have to make sure you do a full backup before upgrading.
The whole thing is basically a glorified version of the new TL2 so it is all pretty easy to use.
Bill
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BillsHobbyEmporium
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posted on April 4, 2006 03:45:57 PM
Update on the Bpro,
OK I ran into some problems (who hasn't on anything these days) on 4-2. Posted about it and then did some research. Found out that I had to make an exception for it in my firewall because from what I can tell they have not gotten a signature for it from MS yet (eBay doing something with out paying for it? Imagine that! LOL). Took care of that and I went and checked my updates for XPsp2. There were some updates that diod not load when I get my auto updates from them (typical for MS). So I took care of all of that and then I deleated Bpro from my 'puter and reloaded it. Since then I have not had any major problems and if I had a little one all I had to do was restore the data base (quick fix) from a link on the drop down menu. I have been revising my store listings in a flash including any inline text and that runs very smoothly. The reviser is far superior to anything I have ever run across.
Have not done any store listings yet but I have all of the listings on there that I can copy from. I have been running auctions again and having them scheduled and they actually start at the time I specify. I update the ending times with no problem. If I see a problem with a word in the description I can change it very easily. So far so good for a very reasonable price.
Bill
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agate18
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posted on April 4, 2006 04:30:57 PM
I have been using vendio since it first came out. When it was free. so that is about 7 yrs. i have checked out most of the competition at one time or other. but i always came back to vendio. as some of you have already said. some programmes are way too slow. some have lots of bugs that cause many problems. every now and then, i check out some other programme. I cannot find one that will match or do what vendio does.
So far as i am concerned.i am just wasting my time looking for another programme when vendio does all that i want. the vendio crew have always done the right thing by me. and there is rarely a problem. if there is they do their best to fix it.
[ edited by agate18 on Apr 4, 2006 04:32 PM ]
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BillsHobbyEmporium
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posted on April 4, 2006 04:40:54 PM
Vendio is not bad. The best part is the image hosting (I might end up coming back for that) but it did not do everything I wanted to get done. I had problems trying to get things worked out and I usually do changes etc. on the weekend and no one is around (at least they do not reply). When I had the migration problem and after a week is was not resolved, I pulled the plug. I can't sit around waiting and using up precious time because liek I have said many times before time is money.
Bill
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neglus
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posted on April 4, 2006 04:48:07 PM
I think I have settled on a synthesis of Vendio and ebay. I list and do post sale management through Vendio. I move items to my store through ebay and import to Vendio for post-sale (I am going to make certain that the "unfiled" folder in My Images is empty before I import so I can dump the duplicate images that are imported since the ebay listing links to the original image). It's not ideal but workable.
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http://stores.ebay.com/Moody-Mommys-Marvelous-Postcards?refid=store
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BillsHobbyEmporium
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posted on April 4, 2006 10:00:46 PM
Neglus,
That is probably the best way to do things. It is not that much changing if the time comes that you have to.
Bill
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