posted on April 10, 2005 10:32:39 AM new
Hi Guys, I don't think that I have ever listed an auction without a gallery picture. I have just been into my ebay site to see why my sold items have really slowed down to a crawl. I see that out of 19 items currently still open 15 of them are not showing gallery pictures. I don't know if this really affects sales or not, but I am wondering why the gallery images are not there. I always click on attach gallery image right after attaching my first image. It shows up as being attached but yet as I said above 15 are missing. I could understand missing one or two but not 15. Please check this out and see what went wrong. Thanks, Steve
posted on April 10, 2005 10:53:09 AM new
Hello Steve,
We can really only see what you see for this one, that you did select a valid gallery image and submit it to eBay when you launched - and that most of these items are not showing the gallery image at this time.
Is eBay charging you for the gallery option on these items or emailing you saying that they couldnt add your item to the gallery for whatever reason? Every so often they do seem to run into trouble being able to accept gallery images, but this is nearly a complete outage for that system it would seem.
posted on April 10, 2005 11:32:39 AM new
Hi Christopher, I have no idea whether they are charging me for gallery images or not. I rarely check my monthly ebay invoices. I guess I should start doing so. I have just signed up for the Vendio $2.95 per month plan for the scrolling of all my other items on auction and to play safe I used the first image showing rather than the gallery image as they are always one and the same anyway. I found this out when checking some of my old closed auctions today. I went into one and saw 4 additional auctions at the bottom without images. So, I then checked "see sellers other auctions" and that is how I realized that 15 did not show gallery pics. By the way I just realized that that particular auction showed the 4 additional auctions at the bottom of the text but none of my other auctions do. At least none of the other ones I checked on. Something weird is going on. Please take a look and see if you can find something wrong. At least you verified that I did put the gallery images in. I thought for a bit that I was going completely senile or something. Thanks for the quick response, Steve
posted on April 10, 2005 11:48:30 AM new
Hi Christopher, I jsut emailed the following post to ebay. Wanna bet they figure out a way to blame this problem on Vendio. Steve
Ask about selling or billing (for sellers only) > Photo issues > Your Gallery photo isn't appearing
Item number(s):
6167599024
7312612904
Message: Hi, I just noticed that out of 19 items I currently have listed that 15 are missing the gallery image. I list through Vendio and they just verified that I did indeed put the gallery images into these auctions. Also if there was a problem I'm sure you would have notified me when the item listed that there was a gallery image problem. Are you charging me for these images? If so, please issue a refund. That would be for 15 gallery images x $.35 =$5.25. I have no idea how long this has been going on. Perhaps it has been months. I very rarely check to see if all my gallery images have in fact shown up. I will check in the future. I do know that my sales have slowed down considerably and I wonder if this is one of the reasons. Please advise as to what the problem might be and correct it if possible on these existing auctions although most are ending in the next day or so. But I want to make sure that this doesn't happen on future auctions. Thank you, Steve Lifton ---voila!
66
posted on April 10, 2005 11:58:52 AM new
Christopher, just did a bit more research and finding this to be getting even weirder. On "MY EBAY" page there are 4 closed auctions and 19 active auctions. The 4 closed auctions all have 4 boxes at the bottom that say "See more great items from this seller" with the descriptions but no images. The 19 active auctions have nothing at the bottom. So obviously something happened within the last day or so to change everything. HELP!!!! Thanks, Steve
The closed listings will show that promo at the very top of the page showing other active listings you have for sale, this is normal.
When you get a chance, also check the email address that you have stored with eBay as the default currently and see if you can track down any messages they may have been sending regarding a problem with the gallery images.
posted on April 10, 2005 02:32:22 PM new
Hi, no messages from ebay and they do have my correct address as I have received other messages from them not related to this. Also just checked on the new promo that I selected earlier which is supposed to show a scroll of all my auctions that are active. Only two auctions are showing this. Auction numbers #7312612904 and 7312612831. But the scrolling list does not showing all of my other items. It only shows those two plus a couple of other auctions that list some Academy Awards sweatshirts and hats. The select category list doesn't show any sconces which I have more of on than any other item. I do have a separate sconce category in my images list under collectibles, but it doesn't show up in the select category box. Is this something that will correct itself as this is fairly new or is there an error somewhere? If this option is not going to show ALL of my auctions scrolling across then it is useless to me. Also, I would prefer that the auctions just showed up automatically by themselves rather than the buyer having to click on different categories, or is this not an available option? Please advise - thanks, Steve
posted on April 10, 2005 02:34:26 PM new
Christopher, in rereading your last post the 4 boxes on the closed auctions showed up at the bottom of the auction-not at the top as you said. Steve
posted on April 10, 2005 07:49:03 PM new
Hi, Christopher. New question here. (I thought this thread was going to be about the Vendio Gallery.)
I have the Silver Plan for Vendio Gallery. My auctions launched around 7 p.m. or a little later tonight. No gallery is showing up. Is there some problem or is it just a normal delay before they kick in?
posted on April 11, 2005 03:42:08 AM new
Hello Christopher and Sonya, as I mentioned in an earlier post because ebay has become very weak in sales lately (for me anyway) I was wondering if you have any feedback or info on whether the gallery pictures really help sales. I'm trying to cut costs and have gone from 10 day to 7 day auctions. That saves $.45 per auction. If I cut gallery images as well that can save another $.35. But I don't want to do that if it will hurt sales. So, do you have any thoughts about this. Thanks, Steve
posted on April 11, 2005 10:23:02 AM new
Hi there,
Unfortunately, we don't have any stats on whether the eBay Gallery image affects sales. You might want to post your question in the eBay Outlook forum where other eBay sellers might be able to provide some feedback for you.
I don't see any Gallery images on your current listings, but at times eBay does have trouble "finding" the Gallery image even though the URL is correct. If this happens there will be a generic "click here to view image" placeholder where the Gallery image would appear. In this case, you might have to resubmit the URL to them to activate the Gallery image. If the problem is that the Gallery image is not being activated at all, please provide some example items where you did select the Gallery as an option but the image was not activated and we'll take a look.
Thanks,
Diana
P.S. roadsmith - have your Vendio Galleries appeared in your listings? It does take an hour or two for the Gallery to populate.
posted on April 11, 2005 10:58:14 AM new
Hi Diana, I have too many items too list for your request. if you would be so kind to look at all of my items that ended last night (Sunday the 10th) I think you will see that most of them didn't have gallery images in them even though I did everything right when I listed the auctions (see Christophers reply above). I have been doing this for a few years now and hopefully I know what I'm doing. I'm going to add a post from ebay that I just received. They say that they are not getting the images. If I'm putting them in and ebay is not getting them than the fault lies somewhere between Vendio and ebay. I would like to get it corrected please. Thank you, Steve
posted on April 11, 2005 11:00:28 AM new
Hi all, Received the following email from ebay today
Hello Steve,
Thank you for writing to eBay's Customer Support. My name is Michael.
I have taken a look at your current and recent listings, and the Gallery
upgrade has not been selected for several of them. According to your
account status page, you have not been billed for these items either. If
you are using Picture Services as your photo hosting preference and you
would like your item to be included in the Gallery, click the checkbox
for the gallery option.
If you are using a third party image host, you must supply a JPG image
when listing your item for sale, and click the checkbox indicating you
want to be included in the Gallery. You can supply your JPG image in the
Picture address field in the Sell Your Item page, or you can supply a
different image in the Gallery address field (also in the Sell Your Item
page).
TIP: If you supply a different image in the Gallery address field than
you supply in the Picture address field, you have more picture file
formats available to you -- you can enter a TIF, BMP, PNG, GIF or JPG
file.
Here are some things to keep in mind when adding your picture:
1. Be sure that your Gallery picture appears when you review your item
listing on page 5 of the Sell Your Item form. If you do not see your
Gallery picture, go back to the "Picture URL" field, or the Gallery URL
field if you entered a different image, on the page where you entered
your item information and make sure you typed the Internet address for
your Gallery picture correctly.
2. Be sure you've selected the option to be part of the Gallery.
3. Our site is working hard to process the pictures you supply. Once you
see your item appear in the item listing pages, you might have to be
patient while the Gallery creates the thumbnail for your image. As long
as you've followed steps 1, 2, and 3 above, your picture should appear
in the Gallery automatically.
We urge you to visit the following locations for more important
information:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/gallery.html
http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fix_gallery.html
To view your account activity, please follow the steps below:
1. Click on the "site map" link at the top of any eBay page.
2. Click on "Check my seller account status" in the middle column, in
the "Services" section under "Seller Accounts." You will be asked to
provide your sign in information a second time.
3. From this page, you will have the option of looking at your Account
Status or your Invoices. Your Account Status will display your recent
account activity, including a detailed breakdown of all fees, payments,
credits and debits on your sellers account, up to four months ago. All
activity prior to that is contained in your invoices.
To view activity since your last invoice:
1. Make sure the top button under "View Your Account Status" is
selected.
2. Then click the "View Account Status" button.
To see Account Status for any time during the last four months:
1. Fill in the date range for the period of activity you want to see.
2. Click the "View Account Status" button.
To view activity prior to four months ago, please view your monthly
invoices. You can view your invoices online for up to 18 months by
following the steps below:
1. Under the "View your previous invoices" section, please select the
month and year for the invoice you want to see from the drop-down menu.
2. Click the "View Selected Invoice" button.
For more information on your account status, please visit the link
below:
posted on April 11, 2005 02:41:08 PM new
I launch my auctions to ebay on Tuesdays and lateley without fail, I receive several emails stating - thank you for wanting to use gallery but your image file is corrupt so please replace it......I use the first photo as my gallery photo and have no problem with any of the photos showing up in my listings, just the gallery ones......and not on every auction...just several every week....and yes, I am being charged for them so I have to check all my auctions every week to see if they have a photo or a little blue box...
The URL we're sending to eBay is not corrupt, but I believe their system does have trouble recognizing images sometimes. If you receive an email stating the image is corrupt but you can see the image in the listing, please bring this to the attention of eBay.
posted on April 12, 2005 06:23:38 PM new
Not sure if this was already covered (I scanned this thread pretty quickly), but if you need to add images to active listings (so that you'll have gallery images while you're trying to resolve this bug), you can use this link: http://cgi5.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?DisplayGalleryImagePageV3
In answer to an earlier question, yes, gallery images have a large impact on sell-through. I've read many eBay books that have done tests on this, and can't remember the exact percentages of improved sales, but they were high...So, gallery images WILL and DO have huge effects on your sales.
posted on April 13, 2005 06:21:16 AM new
Hi again mandaray, just received an email from ebay. I had asked them also about percentages for gallery images. They say the sales improve by 12% when gallery images are used. To me that is not a very large percentage. Guess I will have to make a decision on whether to use them or not. Maybe I'll try my next bunch without and and see if it hurts my sales. Although I don't think they can get much worse. Anyone out there having poor sales on ebay? To be fair we need to compare apples to apples. Most of my auctions run in the $200.00 to $300.00 reserve range. So, if you are in that area I would appreciate hearing from you re sales for the last few months. Now I know someone out there is going to say that if I'm in that price range why am I worried about $.35. Well I sell from Europe and 90% of my sales are to the USA. By the time I lose 60% in the euro exchange (that is 30% in buying and 30% in selling) and then factor in ebays-paypals-vendios charges you will see why I'm concerned. I pay out about $30 to $40.00 on every auction in fees not including the loss of income on the exchange rate. Feedback anyone please?
