I’ve been using MarketWorks as a listing/auction management service for a lot of years without any problems. Then, within a nine month period, they inadvertently deleted all my images from their database. The second time it happened I began looking at other services that provided the features I needed.
Over the last few months I’ve registered with several management services for their free trails. I never got to the point of actually listing an auction with any of them because once I got into the actual day-to-day workings of each, none of them offered all the features I viewed as ‘must-haves’.
Then two weeks ago I decided to take a look at InkFrog. After poking around it’s insides for a week I didn’t find any of the drawbacks that all the others had, so I decided to take them for a test drive.
I used InkFrog for the twenty-six items that are currently live on eBay and for twenty-one more that will go live later today. I won’t get a ‘real time’ look at how InkFrog handles after-auction duties until later tonight, but if no problems pop up tonight, I will definitely be using InkFrog on a full-time basis.
When compared to MarketWorks, here are the Pros and Cons I’ve found so far with InkFrog:
Pros:
- It seems to take less time to up-load images to InkFrog (this may be just be my imagination)
- One screen is all that is needed to complete a listing with InkFrog. MarketWorks requires switching back and forth between at least two, and sometimes more, screens
- With InkFrog, selecting a store category for eBay store listings is much more intuitive and faster
- When you select an auction category to put your item in with InkFrog, if there are any Pre-Fill options for that category, InkFrog automatically provides you with them. With MarketWorks, I had to know which categories included Pre-Fill options and which one’s didn’t
- InkFrog allows me to select shipping information specific to each item right on the listing page - a huge time saver
- InkFrog allows me to include more pictures in each listing than MarketWorks does
- InkFrog has a built-in spell checker which MarketWorks doesn’t
- InkFrog includes a feature that will check a completed listing for any errors that may cause the auction not to launch which MarketWorks doesn’t have
- Overall, once I had the hang of how InkFrog works, it was faster and easier from start to finish to put together an entire auction listing
- InkFrog charges a flat monthly fee of $9.95. With MarketWorks I am paying a minimum of $44.95 and most months it’s considerably higher
Cons:
- With MarketWorks I was able to insert an individual inventory item for each listing that showed up on my after-auction recap screen. InkFrog doesn’t offer this feature (it might if I used their on-site inventory system, but I want my inventory on my own computer and not on the Net)
Unless some major hiccups appear in after-auction management this evening, I’ll definitely be changing everything over to InkFrog during the next few weeks.
Affordable Auction Management Solutions @ inkFrog
Photo by http://www.flickr.com/people/92424899@N00/
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October 29th, 2007 at 10:00 am
Gary,
As you know I switched from Vendio.com to SpareDollar.com, which shortly there after was purchased by inkFrog.com sometime ago, and dollar for dollar there service is OUTSTANDING!!
Their “Up-Time” without problems is gotta be close to 100% (in my opinion, from experience)
The two features I really enjoy most,
#1 - The ability to have an UNLIMITED number of pre-composed templates which is a great time savings!!
I sell alot of book, catalogs, and paper stuff, in most cases I can open my BOOKS > Nonfiction > Genealogy listing template and within 2-3 min. I’v created a new listing!
#2- The ability to schedule an UNLIMETED number of listings to launch, 1 day, 3 weeks or even 6 months in advance of when they’re created at NO COST!! eBay charges $0.10 cents to schedule a listing on their server, hell this Free Listing Scheduler feature alone can save the user enough to pay inkFrog’s $9.95 monthly fee!!
It’s really a no brainer and anyone looking to have a low cost, easy to use auction management system that REALLY offers the total package should really take a look at inkFrog
Gary, I’m sure you’re gonna be surprised by the level of quality for the low cost…I know I was!!
Good Luck!!
October 29th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Hey Gary,
I’m with Inkfrog right now too. I had used Auctionworks/Marketworks for a couple of years and stopped around 2 or so years ago when the back-end became more confusing than advanced for me. After Marketworks I used eBay’s own TurboLister for at least a year, maybe two, and I actually thought it was the best service I had used–that, combined with the price (free), made it a winner for me.
But earlier this year when they phased out TurboLister 1 for TurboLister 2 I had to upgrade my computer in order to continue using the service–the problem is, once I did I found out TL2 was not yet Vista compatible. That’s when I came across Inkfrog (I think I had spotted it in another seller’s listings).
The price is right and I like being able to schedule my listings a few minutes apart instead of having them all launch at once (and buyers like this too!). I actually host all of my images on my own site through GoDaddy for just $3.95/month and there has to be 8,000-10,000 images there, so I don’t use Inkfrog’s photo hosting. Well, wait, actually I did a couple of month’s ago when eBay ran the free Gallery promo–photos had to launch with auctions, so to take advantage I had to use Inkfrog for Gallery. That was okay, but I prefer my other routine so I went back to GoDaddy for that.
I like Inkfrog a lot, though there were 3 or 4 nights in the past 8 months when my auctions didn’t launch on time or at all and I was left kind of out in the cold–that was, to be honest, very irritating. But then again I did have the same thing happen on rare occasion with both Marketworks and TurboLister.
But in the end I agree 100% with Stephen A. regarding his conclusion in point #2 — the scheduling feature basically allows the service to pay for itself, and that, in the end is what will keep me with Inkfrog for the foreseeable future.
October 29th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
Stephen,
I’m becoming a fan pretty quickly. The first batch of auctions listed with InkFrog ended last night and everything went smoothly.
The after-auction part actually went faster than it does with MarketWorks and I’m still kind of ‘hunting and pecking’ my way around.
Cliff,
Are you happy with GoDaddy for image hosting?
I used MarketWorks’ hosting which means I’m now going to have to move all my store images before I can close my account which is going to be time consuming.
I’ve pretty much decided I’ll be looking for an independent hosting sight so if I should ever change again I won’t have to mess with moving images another time.
Gary H.
October 30th, 2007 at 12:06 am
Gary,
I learned that lesson the same exact way — I cut & paste every image I had from Marketworks over to the GoDaddy site …and I was on the $80 MW plan at the time (another reason I got out of there). Hopefully there’s an easier way for you, perhaps downloading a feed of some sort?
In short, yes, very happy with GoDaddy on that count. I can only recall one instance that that site was down and it wasn’t for very long at all. GoDaddy is great for the basics like that.
I really use Inkfrog for the bare minimum, basically the ability to list and space the listings. I don’t use their templates. I insert the images into the body of my listings via html and then (and this is the only real time cramp), I edit the listings on eBay manually to include the images where they call for them. I only list 10-20 new items per night on average though, so this usually only takes me about 15 minutes and then I get to have my listings appear exactly as I want them too.
Finally, to return to the original point of the work of transferring everything over, if I ever become disenchanted with Inkfrog and want to leave for another service I won’t have to scramble to update image URL’s for 1,000 or so auction and store listings all at once.
November 13th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
I’d love to hear more about inkfrog. BTW for those who may be interested, I’ve been with Godaddy for about a year after trying 6 or 7 hosts, they are incredible, the uptime has been 100% for me, the service is top notch.
If I have one critique it’s that their wysiswyg templates are clumsy and slow.
I use the old version of netscape communicator to build my pages.