eBay is working with a third-party software provider to offer sellers an alternative to Turbo Lister, which eBay will stop supporting in July.
SixBit Software founder John Slocum confirmed that he has been working with eBay to provide a preferred solution for Turbo Lister, which is a desktop tool that allows sellers to manage their listings offline at no extra cost.
“eBay wants to make sure the Turbo Lister users have a smooth transition, and we have been working with them for some time to get a process in place,” he said.
It’s the latest twist in an unusual history Slocum has with eBay. The entrepreneur created eBay listing software Blackthorne in 1998, and he then sold the tool to eBay and became an employee.
After eBay laid him off 10 years later, he developed SixBit, extending the tool to help sellers list not only on eBay, but on rival marketplaces as well.
With eBay ending support for Turbo Lister, Slocum’s company created a special version of SixBit Software for TurboLister users with a lower price and with a “very gracious trial period.”
The “Turbo Lister Version of SixBit” contains all of the functionality of Turbo Lister, along with some familiar icons,” Slocum said. “In the future, if their businesses grow, they can easily upgrade to more functionality.”
“eBay felt it was very important to provide a low cost solution, so we agreed to reduced pricing on the Turbo Lister Edition. It will be $14.99/mon. which is less than our previously lowest cost option, the Home and Hobby Edition at $19.99/mon.”
Slocum said eBay also wanted to make sure that users had plenty of time to migrate and try the new solution before having to make any financial commitment, so TurboLister users will have a special offer of 6 months free.
“The plan is to introduce sellers to SixBit in groups to ensure all new users have access to speedy support from both SixBit and eBay support personnel through the migration process,” he said. “The trial period for each user will not start until they download and start using SixBit.”
Slocum said that although sellers will now have to pay a fee, “Turbo Lister users can build on a solution that will be around for a long time without the worry of it going away, plus they have the option to upgrade to higher levels of functionality to help their businesses grow in the future.”
He also said sellers may also be surprised to find a lot of useful features they didn’t know they needed.
Oh my, no Mac version??
No ding on SixBit here, but this seems like a broken promise on eBay’s behalf.
No one is going to put up $15/month to use something that was free, and never worked right anyway. More genius.
Software rentals are possibly the worst thing to happen to the industry.
Years back, when eBay delivered sales, I wrote a rough templating engine on top of my accounting program. It basically filled in the description field of the listings, though everything else was manual. If eBay sales hadn’t collapsed, I might’ve looked into getting an API key to automate the rest.
DeathFromAbove, WHAT didn’t work right? Turbolister ? or 6Bit? (I happen to love TL, didn’t subscribe to 6Bit because what they offered at the time was too expensive when I had TL but now? it’s sounding tempting.
I have been using “DRAFTS” on ebay directly and believe me, THAT is not the answer.
Too many smaller users of Turbo Lister are just not going to pay for this and hope it works any better.
Another ebay promise broken after being misled for years that a free replacement would be available. Guess it is time to learn how ebay’s File Exchange works, or are they going to take that away too?
I stopped using TurboLister in 2004 after it mysteriously deleted some listings without permission. I met John Slocum at eBay Live in New Orleans in 2004 and switched to Selling Manager Pro and never looked back. In addition to efficiently creating listings, SixBit captures sales information and processes orders for fulfillment. It is possible to query orders and sales history from the last fifteen years for analysis. I also added custom software to import new listings from Excel into the SixBit database and import item specifics from a catalog. None of this would have been possible with TurboLister.
The cost of SixBIt is low when taking into account the value added of maintaining a repository of listings, sales and orders in a secure relational database or the time saved creating listings, modifying listings or processing orders.
I’m sure fleecebay is getting a healthy cut of the $14.99
and the Nickel and Diming continues…eBay just excels at “Majoring in the minors.”..