Authored by 6 community members

Virtually every aspect of eBay—for both buyers and sellers—has found its way into the wireless realm. This article attempts to string together the various elements of eBay’s wireless ecosystem, and how it can be leveraged for sellers (and buyers). For now, this will be a topical guide, and hopefully  new uses and ideas will be regularly added.
 

First, an introduction and brief explanation of the various tools and services included in this wiki guide:

eBay Mobile  eBay’s official foray into mobile shopping. With two levels of service, eBay wireless allows users to view a streamlined WAP (or mobile phone version) of the eBay webpage. This means you can search for items, bid and buy and also tap into My eBay to peek-in on your auctions, or auctions you’re watching. They will also send you SMS (text messages) to your phone to alert you at key points of an auction.

Pricing: Basic $.25 per item on watch list or $3.99/month for the premium service.

ah! TXT eBay Seller's tool for real-time event notification via SMS mobile text messages.  As events take place, such as sales (auction, fixed price, or store), questions from buyers, best offers, feedback, or disputes, Sellers are automatically sent a wireless text message directly to their cell phone.  ahTXT features include:

• Simple Registration: It takes about 2 minutes to register.  After eBay account verification, all existing and future listings are automatically monitored by ahTXT.
  
  
• Secure: ahTXT is a Certified eBay Compatible Application
  
  
• Configurable: All aspects of ahTXT are configurable, from the types of events to monitor, to the times that ahTXT can send messages.  Optional detail (granular) settings are also available, such as setting a minimum sale price threshold for a notification.
  
  
• Free: ahTXT is free.  If you get charged fees for receiving text messages from your wireless provider, those rates still apply, but you will not be charged anything by ahTXT.
  
  
• Increase Sales, Save Time: ahTXT sellers be more responsive to customer inquiries.  Know immediately when a prospective customer asks a question, rather than hours later.  You also save time by not having to check e-mail for questions, offers, or sales events because they'll be sent to your cell phone as they happen.
  
  

Unwired Buyer A service that calls eBay buyers during the last 3 minutes of their auctions to give them their auction status details and let them bid on the phone call using their phone's keypad. The service is compatible with all phones and all wireless carriers. All 75 million eBay users in the U.S. can use the service today. UnWired Buyer is:

* Simple: Once you register, the service automatically synchronizes with your eBay account and monitors items you bid on and items in your Watch List and calls you on each of these auctions in time for you to bid and win.

* Secure: UnWired Buyer is a Certified eBay Compatible Application. The service is integrated into eBay's infrastructure to ensure data and personal information is protected.

* Fun: The service brings your auction to life, giving you real-time interaction in the critical final moments of bidding.

* Free: UnWired Buyer is FREE to eBay buyers. The service was designed with eBay's affiliate program in mind. eBay compensates Unwired Buyer for each winning bid placed through UnWired Buyer.

“New Feature”  Web-based Bidding – buyers that also choose to bid from their PC using Unwired Buyer and experience the same real time updates on price and bid status and count down timers that mobile bidders hear. Since the status information is automatically updated, users never have to hit refresh to know the status of their bid.

Pricing: Free for mobile- and web-base bidding

 
Sell it Mobile  Full-cycle selling tool for mobile phones. This application allows users to list items to eBay from their mobile using the phone’s camera and a speech-to-text feature for entering item titles and descriptions. Sellers can then track their live auctions with real time info and receive SMS text messages with reminders and status updates. Sold items can also be managed, with payment, shipping and feedback able to be handled from the phone.

Pricing: Free trial, $8.99/month

Midprofile   A full-featured listing tool for mobile phones and PDAs. This Solution lets you create and submit live listings in all selling formats directly from your mobile phone or PDA. Snap or import up to six photos for each listing. Midprofile for eBay slots them into the new listing automatically with no need for photo upload. Search for suggested item categories and enter all the dynamic transaction details and description. In a single data transmission, the new listing appears on eBay in seconds. All the essential details, photos, presentation and promotional features are seamlessly integrated. The new listing looks exactly the way it would if you created it on a PC. Midprofile for eBay has another great advantage. Just save your work on your mobile device and send it when you're ready. The list similar timesaver makes repetitive tasks a snap. You can track all your Midprofile for eBay submissions to get up-to-the-minute bidding status directly from your mobile device. Your eBay password is never required when you use Midprofile for eBay and your transactions are entirely secure. 

Pricing: Free trial, free photo hosting and free subscription unless high-volume user

PayPal Mobile Make and receive payment via text messages. Once your mobile number is tied to your PayPal account (and you’ve gone through the rigorous security procedure) you can text PayPal with the amount and recipient’s account details with the SMS text message triggering the payment/transfer. PayPal will call you back to confirm your order. 

Pricing: Standard PayPal fees (no extra charge for using mobile service)

Buying and Selling

In essence, the tools and methods for buying and selling via a wireless device:

Buying:
eBay wireless and unwired buyer (add others here…) let buyers seek, find, bid and snipe their desired items. It appears these services are integrating and will likely be rolled into one over the next few months.

Selling:

The only full-cycle solution on the market (cycle = list, track, manage, feedback) is Sell it Mobile. The biggest advantage of this solution might be that it ties in directly to your account, making monitoring ongoing auctions easier than eBay’s browsing option. Moreover, provided you have what they call an ‘optimized’ phone, the built-in high-res camera and use of regular listing templates ensures that your listings look as good as if you were lugging around your digi-cam and notebook. It also does shipping automation and feedback.

Midprofile for eBay is a full-featured listing solution that lets sellers list any time and any place. It puts the selling experience at your fingertips and supports  Auction-style, Fixed Price, Store Inventory and Classified Ad listings. Midprofile for eBay is fully functional even out of cell range. As a routine convenience you can save work in progress and pick up where you left off. After you finish a listing it's saved on your mobile phone or PDA for transmission to eBay at any time. If you lose cell reception nothing is lost, even during live transmission. Just wait and send the listing as soon as cell reception is restored.

Midprofile for eBay is completely compatible with the eBay Listing Designer and works with your own HTML templates and HTML tags. Quick Text keys let you add custom inserts for hyperlinks, image tags for logos, or any boilerplate information you choose. If your mobile phone or PDA is equipped  with a camera, you can capture or import up to six photos for each listing. The software also works in no-camera mode so you're in luck if you don't have a mobile camera or want to use other options like video or scanned images.

Sourcing:

Researching new products on-the-spot: 

For most sellers not using a drop-shipper as their primary source for product, it’s the good ol’ fashioned way of building inventory (estate auctions, liquidation sales, garage sales, markets and antique/collectibles shops.) While a seller’s knowledge, intuition and experience is usually enough to determine the value of new items, the ability to do eBay market research on the spot would be welcomed by most.

eBay wireless’ search features will quickly return a list of items currently listed on eBay, allowing you to quickly establish the popularity, going rate and number of similar items for sale. While more like remote comparison shopping, it is the kind of insight that will ultimately help sellers make better sourcing decisions.

One-off listings of new items, large items, on-site listings:

In the case of many estate auctions and liquidation sales buyers of items have typically between 3-7 days to claim and collect purchased items from the estate or auction house. This usually entails either delivery or cartage of the item(s) from the warehouse to the buyer’s home/storage facility and a second shipping expense once an item is resold.

Using Sell it Mobile sellers are able to list items immediately (from the estate sale or auction) in the hopes of having the item sold within the allotted time thus cutting back on at least 1 delivery/carting expense.

The same is true for sellers sourcing new or large/difficult to move items. In order to receive immediate feedback about the saleability of and item before purchasing a large lot, sellers can again turn to Sell it Mobile for on the spot listings and the ability to track ongoing auctions remotely.  In addition, large (pick-up only) items are rarely in a location where it’s easy to list, and using one’s mobile to complete a listing without the need for extra equipment has its appeal.

Midprofile for eBay fits into any selling style. Everything you need to create an eBay listing is packed into your mobile phone or PDA.  List on the fly and get a jumpstart on time-sensitive sales. Get away from deskwork. List while you’re out on the road, away on holiday, in a warehouse, storage area, or stockroom, at a tradeshow or outdoor market, even inside your garage. All shipping options are supported so you're able to specify pick-up only or "ask seller" in addition to free shipping, and flat and calculated pricing.

Tracking Live auctions:

Buyers

For buyers tracking items they wish to buy, the combination of eBay wireless and Unwired Buyer provides a complete solution. The combination of SMS and voice reminders will keep buyers in the loop at key intervals (e.g. 20 mins before close, 5 mins etc.) and both solutions allow buyers to bid using a combination of commands.
 

Sellers
Sellers wishing to keep tabs on their auctions while using a mobile device have several options:

Sellers can access My eBay for a list of ongoing auctions, while the SMS feature normally used by buyers to track items for purchase can be used to send reminder SMS message about auction closing (although this will become a bit pricy with the $.25 per item cost).

ahTXT is a Seller's tool for connecting events directly to the Seller's cell phone.  As events take place, such as sales, best offers, questions, or even feedback, Sellers are notified in real-time via SMS text message.  It's a simple and elegant solution to staying connected to eBay seller activity.  Because ahTXT is integrated into eBay's infrastructure, no matter how you list items, they are all automatically monitored by ahTXT.

Sell it Mobile ties into a seller’s account and displays both an overview of live auctions and allows users to ‘drill-down’ into a particular auction for more details. This service also offers SMS alerts for new high-bidder, items ending, and notification when the seller has questions in her inbox.

Midprofile for eBay lets you track all your listing submissions to get up-to-the-minute bidding status directly from your mobile phone or PDA. You can see a full screen display on your mobile device window showing comprehensive status details. The compact user interface is streamlined for the limited screen sizes of mobile handsets and requires no mini-browser. 

Payment

Buyers

PayPal mobile is almost self-explanatory. If you’re too busy to get to a connected computer to bid, the same is likely true for making payment. With PayPal’s text payment you can send payment to a seller’s account remotely and quickly.

While there are numerous other wireless payment options (MobileLime, Textpayment etc.) PayPal holds the upper-hand as it processes payments through your (and sellers’) existing accounts.
 

Sellers

Again either Sell it Mobile or eBay wireless will allow you to monitor the payment status of your auction, with the advantage here going to Sell it Mobile for its notification of PayPal payments and easy payment processing.