I fully agree with you Markus. After the initial shock I now realise that FOR MY PURPOSE this is still really good value for money.
However, I would favour lifting the limit from 50 to something a bit larger for the casual users. Why lose those clients who have supported you for many years and would still continue to subscribe but under a different model.
It has been quite difficult at times over the last X months whilst testing 8 Beta but the improvements in speed have been massive.
David
So, I’m late to the party here. I’m a very small business & being a Mac user have used GS for many years, I regularly have an average of 250/270 listings in total & all individual items, no bulk quantities. What is the cost to me annually for GS8 or, can I just stick with GS7 ? other than listing new items I don’t use the vast majority of tools it provides currently so other than hitting me hard in the pocket loads of pro tools will not benefit me at all.
I think you can stay on GS7 as long as you want - and as long as ebay does not change things that are not available in GS7.
so long as GS7 works it’s more than enough for me, have no need at all for tools etc. I create a basic template & drag over images, whilst I’d happily pay double what I paid for GS7 & I appreciate all the hard work that goes into keeping GS going I’m simply not getting enough out of it to justify paying $15 a month as mentioned, guessing many would but for me it’s a basic tool to get my listings from a Mac to eBay
Ok it is fair 
Hello @fedege96
I need to sell @ eBay, I need to pay my bills, that is why I bought a GS 8 upgrade license, the problem is I am starting to sell again, my last sale was a long time ago…
I usually sell vintage toys, but I am very worried about professional sellers have gone away. Where I can learn more about the reason these seller are not selling anymore @ eBay? maybe a group @ eBay?
Thank in advance for any help you can provide me
I probably will not upgrade to GS8 as I am winding down my eBay sales moving to other markets that GS does not work on. I mostly sell collectibles, glass, pottery, porcelain, antiques, art and unique previously owned items. GTC has killed my sales. Not even half of what I had one year ago.
GTC is great for sellers with multiples of an item. The more they sell and the cheaper the price, the more views they will get as Cassini will determine that it is a successful item that buyers want to see.
However, with one off used item sales, if the item does not sell right away, Cassini will still treat it like the multiple quantity items decide that it is a stale item that buyers should not see at the top of lists and will drop it down to the bottom of the search results. Or even hide it. You all have seen where a search where it tells you that it found say 120, but only shows you say 67. The unseen ones may be your stale listing. With fixed time listings, you get a better chance to be seen as they gets better placement with “New Listing” and “Ending Soon” and they do not wind up in the Cassini black hole of stale listings. GTC gets a “New Listing” the first time it lists, but not when it relists. And it does not get an “Ending Soon” to create some urgency in the buyer.
So, while GTC is great for sellers of 100 same widgets, it is terrible for sellers of unique items that may take a few months to find a buyer for that special item. The longer it sits unsold, the more likely, it will not show in search results. I have switched about 100 GTC to 7 day auctions to see if I have any better luck. However, I am looking at other sites and have been having more luck elsewhere.
Hello @jedikeeper ,
eBay situation is no longer the one of years ago, and this is especially tangible in many categories for many different reasons: better competitors sites, expensive eBay fees compared to restricted turnover, terrible indexing, which is now far worse thanks to GTC policy (@CAL explained everything), and so on… If you give a look to any ebay community forum, you will find tons of similar complaints. What’s worse for us, is that eBay does not yet understand there is a huge gap between industrial and multiple quantity goods and one-of-a-kind collectibles. If you sell toys or antiques as @CAL, you really should start giving an eye to other sites.
I found myself in your situation during 2018. I had to stop listing in eBay at the end of 2017 and restarted only at beginning of 2019. When I restarted, I felt a huge gap between the past. During 2018 I followed active listings (about 5000 at that time), but didn’t list anything new and this is never a good choice because it’s hard to obtain again the previous visibility since Cassini hide your single-item-listings if they do not sell. In 2018 years I went with other marketplaces (e.g. Catawiki) and fairs, and the gap was enormous compared to eBay. If you have time and well worth goods, don’t leave ebay but start trying somewhere else. If you have hundred thousands goods of little worth (postcard, photos, paper ephemera), eBay is unfortunately still the only leading solution, but due to new policies, as explained above, the only way to survive is listing new items from morning to evening and/or investing huge % of your income in promoted listings, but it might be not enough…
This is just a little fast explanation, tell me if you need any other suggestion from my side.
Federico
What other markets would that be?
Thank you @CAL and @fedege96, Of course I have tons of question but first I will try to list some items in eBay to see with my own eyes, If I am selling or not
If I have a further question or If I need a suggestion I will post it for sure
Once again Thank you very much
Hi everybody,
I followed this discussion for quite a while now and it appears that there are basically two kinds of sellers using GarageSale: volume sellers, for which the subscription model and price increase doesn’t seem a major problem and those selling unique items, like collectibles or spare parts, for which the price increase is more problematic, because they have many (> 50) unique (quantity = 1) items.
I belong to the second category.
Like Neal, and others, I am “old-school buy-it-own-it for software” and basically more a Windows guy than a Mac one. So, I had bought a second hand MacBook especially for using GarageSale, because after the end of TurboLister it was the only standalone that I could find as a user without an eBay monthly subscription plan (at the exception of another one that I knew: etope lister).
Recently, I carried out a study comparing eBay and Amazon margins.
I was wrong, because I missed that eBay also takes its 10% margin on shipping costs.
Example: for an item at 5$ with 15$ shipping cost, Ebay’s 10% margin is calculated on a 20$ value.
Given that PayPal takes 4.4% on cross-border sales (vs 2.9% on domestic sales), and assuming that the fixed fee of PayPal is 0.30$ (assumed same as for a domestic sale because not mentioned), Ebay+PayPal margins would be 70.6% for the cross-border sale of a 5$ item with 15$ shipping costs.
Marketplaces-and-payment-processor-fees-for-American-individual-seller_v3.zip (10.5 KB)
Paypal margins are even much higher in my country than for an American user.
I did’t count the additional exchange rate margin that the buyer supports.
I don’t know if Amazon also has similar practice of charging on shipping costs.
So, trying to answer Ilja’s question:
Knowing this, you should ask yourself if the value/time saved that GarageSale provides to you really isn’t worth those $15/month we are asking for.
… let’s make a little math.
Assume the seller has 100 unique items listed (spare parts or collectibles), with a mean value of 50$ per item. Shipping costs: 15$/item.
Total value (including shipping): 65$ per item (for the computation of fees)
Margins of Ebay+PayPal for a cross-border sale (as reffered to the 50$ item value) : 20% (see attached Excel spreadsheet.)
Assume that this user sells 10% of his inventory every year.
So, 10 items sold per year, for a turnover of 500$ (without shipping costs).
Price of GarageSale Pro subscription : 15$/month, so 180$/year.
180$ / 500$ = 36% of the sale volume (10 items sold at 50$ each)
So, the total cost of GarageSale subscription + Ebay (without subscription) + PayPal (cross-border) in this situation would be 56% (36%+20%). Leaving 44% of the sales price for the seller …
I think iwascoding’s team is missing a very important element : eBay’s strength (as compared to Amazon) is still for “garage sales”, i.e. for collectibles and spare parts.
Keep in mind, that GarageSale is a niche application, with only a few hundred active users (some of which a very demanding). That means the cost of maintaining GarageSale has to be split among only these few users. Naturally, you might need to pay a little more compared to non-niche mainstream applications
GarageSale addresses a specific need, but there is no reason for it being a niche application.
It should be a mass market application. (Or killer app if you prefer !)
It is difficult to find stats about the number of sellers on eBay.
Let’s assume it is 50 millions (https://www.quora.com/How-many-sellers-are-on-eBay)
If 10% use a Mac, it is still 5 millions.
If half of them speak either English, German, French or any language in which GarageSale is available, it is still 2.5 millions.
So, there is still potential for a huge growth of the consumer base.
Even without subscription, you could segment the market.
With an entry-price limited software (e.g. 19$) and more expensive software variants (with more modules or allowing more items). Let’s say 70$, 150$, 250$ or some prices like that.
Don’t forget that in countries with lower income than Germany, even a 40$ expense for a software can be important.
Growing the user base massively, you could then possibly rewrite the interface with Qt and reach even more millions of Windows users.
At night and during weekends with been working on GarageSale: continuously integrating eBay’s and Apple’s changes, handling user support, fixing bugs, etc…
(…)
PS. It’s 10.30 PM now. Arrived at the office at 9 AM this morning.
For sure you have been working hard on the software but I believe you should focus on the core (integrating eBay’s and Apple changes) and outsource some tasks like :
translations - : I know a developper that for instance offers a free license in exchange of a free translation. This is a win-win deal for growing your user base for a almost null translation cost.
community support - Not closing the topics after 10 days would avoid new threads being constantly opened for matters that were already treated. Amongst your multi-years users, some could possibly provide help for newcomers, so that you have more time for coding.
templates : Since I’m familiar with (X)HTML markup, new templates are totally useless for me.
A few templates as examples are always useful, but building templates is not essential and can be left to users / partners.
special features : features like “Send with Endicia” are totally useless to me. Maybe could they commercialized as optional modules and provide you additional source or revenue. This would also help you to see which modules your consumers are ready to pay for (and worth maintaining) and which are not.
You could possibly also give up some “gadget” changes like:
- adds support for ‘Dark Mode’ appearance on macOS 10.14 Mojave.
One more thing:
… betting the company on our ability to ship a major upgrade in time before the money from the last upgrade runs out
Major upgrades are sometimes necessary, but reading you it seems you’re facing a working capital issue. Aircraft manufacturers know very well this situation, because developing a new (serie of) aircraft(s) can last 15 years before the first plane is ready for sale. If they minimize their need for working capital or something goes wrong and is delayed, they can very easily go bankrupt.
But with software you could commercialize minor upgrades to your existing user base.
For instance “upgrade from GarageSale 8.1 to 8.2 for the amount of …”.
The users who upgrade would benefit from new features before those awaiting the next major release.
When I see how many new features you coded, this is awesome. You may have commercialized less ambitious versions meanwhile.
As you understood, altough I understand your need to massively increase your turnover, I mostly agree with Freedolin and others that there might be better options than your new subscription model.
Don’t take it bad.
I didn´t read your complete post (have no time at the moment) and you may be basically kind of right, but: In your example, if someone onlysells about 10 items per year with 100 items listed: Why would he need a tool like Garagesale to set those 100 items up? You may then also simply start them within ebay and don´t need an additional tool. That should not be so hard to do I think.
It is easy to make examples where the subscription model and the 50 items limitation would seem bad. But: What do we all have as a benefit if iwascoding rethinks their subscription model and they have to stop working on GS because they can´t get enough money from GS to live from? I think they have calculated and thought about how to work on, and the may have been calculating that some users don´t use GS anymore then. But for those who will use GS in the future, it will be good if GS still exists in 2 years.
This is where some of us here disagree with Ilja/iwascoding: right now, there is only one solution, that doesn’t fit everyone. Some will just accept it and pay the fee, some will drop out (and will be lost customers).
If iwascoding decided to offer something for those that are either unwilling to pay the monthly subscription or where that model just doesn’t fit, they would probably lose some of the customers that would otherwise have paid the monthly subscription to this lower priced single payment offer, so a little less income here, but they could keep those who would otherwise look for alternatives (or, like me, just stick to GS7 as long as possible, so are potentially ‘demanding’ customers without paying anything to iwascoding), make them pay a single fee for an upgrade and have in summary more income by targeting more customers, existing ones and potentially new ones.
To me, that still sounds like benefit for both sides.
In your example, if someone onlysells about 10 items per year with 100 items listed: Why would he need a tool like Garagesale to set those 100 items up? You may then also simply start them within ebay and don´t need an additional tool. That should not be so hard to do I think.
You can have hundred of unique items with very specific description that you sell on your own shop, but only 100 listed on eBay for several reasons:
creating listings for unique items takes time, even with GarageSale, which unfortunately doesn’t use a relational database. If GarageSale was relational and published its database structure (tables, name and type of fields) and was able to natively hook an external MySQL/MariaDB database, if would change life for those like me, because SQL requests could be performed in tools like phpMyAdmin. For me, using GarageSale is still very labour intensive, unless I do large batch imports.
If you don’t want to pay a monthly eBay subscription, the fee for publishing a new item (beyond the free ones) is around 0.30 to 0.40$ / depending on the country. So, you might limit the number of items published on eBay to benefit from monthly free listings.
But: What do we all have as a benefit if iwascoding rethinks their subscription model and they have to stop working on GS because they can´t get enough money from GS to live from?
I agree the GS team must find a model that brings enough money.
I’m just telling that there might be other ways to do money than a monthly subscription plan.
I think they have calculated and thought about how to work on, and the may have been calculating that some users don´t use GS anymore then.
Probably. But probing existing customers before applying such major change would have been wise.
But for those who will use GS in the future, it will be good if GS still exists in 2 years.
Of course.
Well, obviously, I’m not Cal, but here are the ones I’ve used:
For starters, there’s Tradesy.com, Amazon, Mercari.com, Wanelo.com, decluttr.com, Bonanza.com, Etsy.com, eBay, Pamono.com, and Chairish.com (good for furniture and decorative items). And there is kijiji.com which is good for Canadian sellers.
And if you want an auctioneer to sell it, you have invaluable.com, liveauctioneers.com, or auctionzip.com.
Hi @Michelle , as far as I know, in invaluable.com and liveauctioneers.com you can’t create your own store as it is with eBay. These are auction houses sites. I would suggest Catawiki, which is closer to eBay; you can add your product when and how you want. There is also Delcampe for paper collectibles which is almost the same of eBay and as far as I know, there are no tools to manage listing over this site. That would be useful…
No, I just saw some of the discussion, not a precise announcement of the different pricing plans, so I would appreciate a link. I take it there will be an upgrade price of (?) xx€ and, of listing more than 50 per month, the need for a subscription at $149 a year. I would chime in that 50 per month leaves little room before the need to leap to $$ subscription, which is aimed at professional users. I always upgraded because it’s great software, but barely use many of the features now, so I’m the perfect example of the user who is being, I won’t say “abandoned” but just squeezed into a 50 listing limit (90% of mine are repeat listings) while still still paying for an upgrade. So I guess it will depend on the cost- I’m lucky to make $50 a month off my usual 150 or so listings… thanks for listening and also for (1) link to last best GS 7 and (2) link to pricing announcement details.
Cheers!
I know about invaluable.com and livecauctioners.com, and (auctionzip.com). That’s what I meant when I said, “…if you want an auctioneer to sell it…” I’ve sold several very high-end items those, and like them, though they have to be high-end in order for me to make a profit.
I forgot about Catawiki; you mentioned it to me a year or so ago when I first started looking for something that wasn’t as controlling as eBay. Does it have enough traffic to make it work?
Will check out Delcampe. I sell a lot of stamps, old notes, and covers.
Thanks.
Here is a link with the original pricing announcement:
Hi Michelle,
you are true, I didn’t pay enough attention to it. That’s just such a different selling solution I cannot imagine for my stock, I didn’t took it in consideration for alternatives to eBay, two separate worlds… I also use national auctions for top quality goods, eBay is suitable for little-worths and common ones. Catawiki is a sort of middle solution between auctions and ebay and it has been good for me selling middle-high valuable goods (antiques), much better and faster than eBay where this goods are sold after much time (sometimes years…) and after receiving so many ridiculous offers…
Anyway, I can’t speak about clothes and fashions categories on Catawiki, I never used them and can’t be precise. About antiques it used to work good, better before they increased numbers and had to take non-expert as auctioneers. Sometimes they are quite ridiculous when they choose and give reserve prices suggestions on goods they don’t know at all neither touched before… I would anyway suggest you to try, it worths at least a chance. In my opinion, you should use Catawiki as an auction house under your hands selling well-worth goods, never used for “massive listing” and cannot talk about this… I only absolutely suggest to avoid this platform for little-worth items (less than 50-80€ as reserve) because you cannot set any reserve and risk to sell for very few euros… much better eBay for little items at fixed price…
Concerning Delcampe, that’s undoubtedly a good solution for postcards, stamps (top for low-middle quality stamps!) and paper money. Cannot speak about US market because I don’t follow it, sorry. I don’t work in this platform only because GS does not support it and there are no other working solution for synching active listings with eBay (they had it the past a solution, but it had been a pain and left after a little bit…).
Hope this will be somehow useful.
Federico
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