posted on March 3, 2009 09:26:31 PM new
Vendio Launches Free Stores, Support for eBay, Amazon
By Ina Steiner
A new Vendio Platform is launching in beta on March 4, 2009, offering free Stores for sellers. The Store offers robust features, and will charge fees only for those sellers wishing to sell on eBay and Amazon.com. Vendio also has plans to add support for other marketplaces.
The Vendio Platform allows sellers to manage all their selling activities on one online interface. Senior Vice President of Marketing and Business Development Michael Levit said the new offering represents two years of work, with a focus on stability, a scalable user interface, and an API interface for partners and developers.
Levit said Wednesday's launch is a public beta for new customers, to be followed by a larger public launch in a few weeks. Right now, Vendio wants to take it slow with regard to moving existing customers to the new platform.
The Vendio Platform is integrated with Google Checkout, Authorize.net and PayPal's Payflow Pro for accepting credit cards, and sellers may also offer checks and money orders for purchases made on their own stores. Buyers may combine items, with the exclusion of Amazon purchases. Features include coupon functions and Google Analytics.
Stores hosted on Vendio Platform will remain free, and merchants who wish to list items on eBay and Amazon pay a $10 monthly subscription fee plus commission fees based on volume ranging from 1.95% for sales up to $1,000 to 1% for sales greater than $25,000. Sellers will pay no Vendio commissions on Amazon transactions through the end of the year. Pricing for other Vendio products such as Research remain unchanged.
____________________________________________
When will I a loyal Vendio customer be able to use this platform.
posted on March 4, 2009 03:48:55 PM new
Nice try VENDIO...but what you really need to do is get rid of the $$$$$ live chat or phone and get sellers rolling into AMAZON. I have about 7,000 items on Amazon and would love to add 1,000s more...but not until some decent support is there to answer and help with problems.
posted on March 4, 2009 04:15:22 PM new
Hello rhpepsi1,
Our apologies for the frustration. The link to the support email system is currently broken on the new Beta platform your setup to use unfortunately. We should have this corrected shortly.
For now you can use the following URL to get email support: http://apps.vendio.com/contactus/email.html
Feel free to check back also when we are out of the Beta stage, as we should have these little issues worked out at that time. (although a simple broken link as above we should have corrected shortly.)
Regards,
Chris
[ edited by ChristopherCS on Mar 4, 2009 04:16 PM ]
posted on March 4, 2009 05:00:39 PM new
CHRIS....after about two hours..here is the solution for your AMAZON-VENDIO setup;
AMAZON has what is called a MARKETPLACE -- this is what I currently sell on. I sell ALL types...media & NON media. Your program as it stands right now, ONLY targets AMAZON SERVICES SELLER CENTRAL accounts.
Amazon SERVICES SELLER CENTRAL accounts are for NON MEDIA only and MOST sellers have probably been signed up for the same account I have (marketplace).
So, in order for me to use your NEW & IMPROVED listing tool, I would have to pay Amazon ANOTHER $40/mnth to create an account under SELLER CENTRAL.
Sorry.....will continue listing and selling using my current MARKETPLACE...
It's certainly true that if you were a pro-merchant and didn't make any sales within a one month period that you would be paying Amazon an additional $40 a month compared to now, but for every sale you did that number would obviously be much better looking on paper.
If you get just 40 or more orders in a month, it already pays for itself since you would no longer be paying the 99 cent closing fee.
You can also create your own product page, your listings don't expire every 60 days requiring you to manually relist them within 2 weeks or recreate them from scratch after that timeframe. Im sure there are other pluses, those are just some of the ones ive seen at a quick glance.
[ edited by ChristopherCS on Mar 4, 2009 05:29 PM ]
posted on March 4, 2009 09:09:31 PM new
CHRIS.....
MY marketplace account DOES NOT or IS NOT compatible with your new weblaunch. You need a AMAZON SELLER CENTRAL account.
Which would cost me $40.00/mnth...for the SMALL amount that you are giving "FREE". Isn't it ONLY 50 listings a month(Sales Manager Trial Bonus: $0.00/month, 50 included listings).....I can list 100 a DAY.
Yes, I know how the $40 and 99¢ system works with Amazon. Bottom line I would still be spending $80, because the 7,000 items I have listed CAN NOT be transferred to this SELLER CENTRAL portion of AMAZON.
I see you KILLED the other thread in AMAZON MARKETPLACE. Before you kill this one also, somewhere in your fine print is the $12.95 credit card verification charge that you will refund in a few days. Just so new sellers know about the FREE FREE FREE deal when they sign up.
Posting the exact same message to another forum doesn't typically do any good, but if you feel your missing an answer you were to gain by posting a duplicate thread please let us know and we'll address any concerns you expressed there that wasn't covered here.
Were sorry to hear over your great frustration that the Amazon system we will be supporting isn't the one your using now and wouldn't be as seemless for you as it would for others.
The free comment is misguiding, as your referring only to the free trial of the Vendio Platform service itself. Once your outside of the trial on the new Vendio Platform there are still no Vendio listing fees to submit your items to Amazon for the rest of the year.
As for the $12.95, most users never see this appear on their statement as it's a standard credit card authorization practice and never clears. This is the same authorization we do for any service we offer that requires a credit card to be placed on file and standard business practice for verifying credit cards upon entry.
If you would like to discuss this in person, email me the contact information and id be happy to get into the details further - so we can get a better idea of how to transition users over into this service as it develops out of it's Beta status and becomes a fully functional platform for existing users to migrate into.
posted on March 6, 2009 04:03:33 AM new
Chris,
Is the Amazon support beta up and ready to go? We're looking at pulling our eBay store and transitioning to Amazon instead, but want to make sure we will be able to use the Vendio platform to manage it.
I'm assuming to get started, we just need to go ahead and open an account with Amazon?
posted on March 6, 2009 05:34:35 PM new
Hello Tway,
The new platform is ready for listing to Amazon. However, at this point there is not yet a process in place to migrate your data from your existing account to the new platform. Unless you are willing to start completely over from scratch, I would recommend that you wait until the tools are in place to help you move the data.
If you do open an account with Amazon, it will need to be an Amazon Pro Merchant account (if you are using Vendio to list to Amazon).
posted on March 6, 2009 05:49:32 PM new
Nathan...please make it clear that it has to be an AMAZON SERVICE SELLER CENTRAL account that sells ONLY NON-MEDIA or ONLY MEDIA (not both)...NOT simply a AMAZON PRO-MERCHANT account through Amazon that enables you to sell BOTH MEDIA & NON-MEDIA
posted on March 10, 2009 07:50:50 AM new
I have a question regarding the Free Stores.....I had one here a long time ago (when it was auctionwatch..lol) anyway, even now if you do a google search looking for a product you get a bunch for ebay, ebay stores and amazon - but none for a vendio store - will this change - will vendio use search engines? I really would like to open a store but Ebay is to expensive to just let things hang there until sold, and Auctiva just came out with one too, but again it will be $14.99 a month as of 4/1. Thank you and I look forward to hearing back from you!
rhpepsi - correct. As shown on the page where you setup your Amazon ID is noted the following:
"An Amazon Pro Merchant account is required to enable Vendio integration. Books, Music, Video and DVD sales are not supported."
lucybell60 - we promote the stores automatically on the Google shopping search view, but not the Google homepage. The items that come up in a Google homepage search (vs looking specifically for products where the stores are already promoted) would require the use of Google's Ad-Words campaign.
posted on March 11, 2009 06:40:22 AM new
Hello Chris and thank you for responding. Here is another question then, how do we advertise our store to get more traffic other then Ebay? Not everyone shops on Ebay or uses Google Shopping - I don't use Google Shopping - I just use the Home Page to search for products. Do you have any #'s for people who use Google Shopping? I'm just curious......Thanks! I understand you will be offering the stores for free, but if I decide to use it again I want to sell stuff - not like last time (several years ago) - I was charged and didnt make a dime because no one saw the store other then Ebayers......
posted on March 17, 2009 01:36:47 PM new
I currently sell on Amazon and am interested in using Vendio for a store and Amazon platform. In looking through the interface I don't see nearly the fields needed to launch to Seller Central. There isn't even a field for what category to launch to, no keyword fields, no bulletpoint fields, almost nothing that is needed. Please advise how one is to launch to Amazon without these fields.
posted on March 17, 2009 03:10:22 PM new
Hello Pam,
You won't see the Amazon fields until you setup your account to list to Amazon first.
Go to the Preferences menu, then the 'Channels' menu for Preferences.
Check the box labeled 'Enable my Amazon Account' to get started.
