eBay Hacks

Streamlining Listings

Use eBay Turbo Lister to upload more listings in less time.

The Sell Your Item form introduced in Chapter 4 is a simple but limited auction listing tool, adequate only for creating a few new listings at a time. It’s hopelessly cumbersome for anyone needing to upload a large number of listings or otherwise automate the listing process.

eBay’s own Turbo Lister application is what they call a “bulk listing tool,” but in many ways it is simply a more convenient way to create eBay auctions. Turbo Lister, available at http://pages.ebay.com/turbo_lister, is completely free to download and use, and operates on any Windows machine (Mac and Unix are not supported).

Tip

Although Turbo Lister provides all the same listing options available at http://www.eBay.com, it sometimes takes a little while (often a few weeks) for eBay to update the software with new features and categories. To make sure Turbo Lister is always up to date, go to Tools → Options → Advanced Options, and turn on the “Automatically download updates when I start the program” option.

Setting Up Turbo Lister

One of Turbo Lister’s biggest strengths is that it effectively eliminates the need to enter the same information again and again. Before you use Turbo Lister, take a moment to specify default values by going to Tools → Options, as shown in Figure 7-1.

Figure 7-1. Use Turbo Lister’s Options & Preferences box ...