For most eBay sellers, posting auctions has become a second nature process. Yet, filling out three or four pages of information can be time consuming and slow. For dial up users, the wait is even more painful and frustrating waiting for each page of the four-step listing process to load. Fortunately, eBay has an active developer's program that enables programming geniuses to help ease some of those frustrations.

On the Mac OS X platform, one of those tools is Iwas EDV GarageSale. A shareware program that costs only $24.95, GarageSale offers users an intuitive user interface familiar to Mac users to post auctions much quicker than doing it online.

We reviewed the latest version of GarageSale, version 1.6.1. The trial version allows you to post three auctions for no charge. After that, you must pay the $24.99 fee.

Installation and Startup
Installing GarageSale is simple. If you've installed any other program in OS X, this follows the same procedures.

The user interface for GarageSale is what it claims: intuitive. Filling out the description, price, payment options, etc., is straightforward and very similar to posting an item through eBay interface, yet it has the classic OS X look and feel.

One of the things I noticed right away was that selecting an item category for which to list my items in GarageSale flows much quicker than doing it through eBay own interface, which requires its own page.

Another nice feature of GarageSale is that you can set your preferences to highlight any option that will increase the price of your auction listing. That includes bold titles, including your item in a gallery or including a "Buy It Now" option.

GarageSale also takes advantage of WYSIWYG features to customize the text in your auction listing. If you aren't HTML-literate, you can still change the size, color and font included in your listing just as easily if you were using Microsoft Word.

GarageSale category selection process is noticeably quicker than eBay interface.

An "attributes" editor is included and designed to make sure you list all the details necessary in creating a successful listing. For example, if you happen to be selling your 1989 Ford Mustang, you can use the attributes editor to lay out the original registration date, mileage, engine size, etc. These may be no-brainer items, but people do forget to include such valuable information.

For fans of Apple's popular iPhoto image editing and library application, GarageSale makes it easy to import photos directly from your iPhoto library into your listing by simply double clicking on an image within the import tool. You can also import photos directly from your digital camera.

As you craft your auction listing, a preview button located at the top of the application window allows you to instantaneously see how your auction will look on eBay. In terms of speed and time, this allows you to make edits on the fly rather than having to jump from screen to screen on eBay to make sure everything looks the way you want or post an auction only to find out you made a mistake.

Since GarageSale is a certified eBay API client, the application stores your user login ID and password in order to list your items quickly. Other information you're required to include is the email address associated with PayPal should you choose to accept PayPal payments for your auction. Here, GarageSale becomes somewhat confusing in that you aren't instructed how and where to include your email payment address until you attempt to post your listing. Digging into the preference file will do the trick, but it would be easier if the developer included tips on where/how to change certain settings in the error dialog boxes.

Without bothering to read any instructions whatsoever, I had my first auction posted within ten minutes. The second one took even less because I managed to avoid the mistakes I made the first time around. It really is that easy.

One problem I ran across was when I went to post my first auction, the application didn't even blink. After I quit the application and restarted it, the auction posted without a hitch. However, I coudln duplicate the error.

Once you're done posting your auction, GarageSale doesn't just forget what you did. You can save each auction as its own template to use over and over. You can also monitor your auction and keep track of what the item sold for, who bought it and when you sent it. It's similar to keeping track of your items in My eBay, but this interface is more straightforward.

Depending on your experience posting multiple items on eBay, GarageSale can be a very useful solution. You can create as many listings as you want and upload them all at once. The interface is basic, intuitive and fast. If you happen to be one of the remaining dial-up users, you can do all of the dirty work while you're offline, connect and upload your auctions together and much quicker than you would normally be able to.

Information and download: http://www.iwascoding.com/GarageSale/

Devin Comiskey is the Managing Editor for ECommerce-Guide and a self-proclaimed Mac expert.