Page Mage, an eBay Compatible Application, which launched in beta last August (see Page Mage Lets Sellers Get Creative with eBay Listings), has recently upgraded its service to include social networking features for eBay sellers, along with a new pricing structure.
Using Page Mage, you can improve your eBay selling page by listing items in a more interactive and engaging way. For example, you can embed video, show eBay image galleries, or add scrolling text to any eBay auction or fixed-price item listing when you use the Page Mage service.
Chris Taylor, vice president of marketing, said that the newly added social features are designed to help sellers reach out to friends and their network of friends on some of the more popular social media sites.
“Access to social commerce is something that sellers want,” said Taylor. “Through social media sites any eBay seller can reach out people who will have more trust in them, since they are a friend—or friend of a friend.”
Publish eBay Listings on Facebook and other Social Sites
Page Mage has made it easy for sellers to push their interactive eBay listings across multiple social media platforms. It takes only a single click to publish your Page Mage eBay listings to your online social networking accounts.
The actual process of listing on eBay using Page Mage has not changed. You still connect an eBay account in Page Mage and then design your graphical ad template for your eBay listing. Page Mage has plenty of options for adding eBay image galleries, video, and scrolling text to make the ad more engaging and interactive for buyers.
With the new features, once you have submitted your listing and it is live on eBay, you will see an option to "share" the listing. When you click the share link you will see a new screen that lets you choose which social networking sites you want to publish the listing to.
Page Mage currently supports posting to a number of social networking sites and blogs, including Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, Live Spaces, Voz, iGoogle and several others.
The first time you publish on a social site, you will need to provide your login and password for that site, however, once connected through Page Mage you don’t need to provide that information again. This makes it faster to share subsequent listings.
 On Facebook your ad will appear in your Wall so that your friends can add comments or share your listing with their friends.
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Before you publish eBay listings to a social profile, Page Mage gives you an option to select the size of the thumbnail that will be displayed. For example on Facebook or MySpace you can use a bit larger graphic than you would for posting to your blog.
Lastly, you will add a description or message that will be shown with the graphic that appears on your profile status (or wall in the case of Facebook), so people in your social network can comment on or share your new listing with their friends.
One of the unique features of Page Mage’s new social publishing tool is that when someone in your network clicks the post, the image expands to show the full listing, including any eBay image galleries, video or scrolling text you used when you designed the eBay listing. When people click the full ad they are directed to the actual listing on eBay to bid or buy.
New Pricing for the Social Interactive eBay Listings
In addition to launching the new social features to its service, Page Mage has also rolled out new pricing for its interactive eBay listing service. According to Taylor, Page Mage has a core group of customers who provide feedback— as a result of that feedback, the company now offers a number of plans based on the number of ads you create — not the number of features you use in each ad.
The pay-as-you-go option lets you pay fifty cents per listing and this includes all the service’s features. People who sell more frequently on eBay can choose from one of three monthly subscription plans to reduce the cost per listing. The plans include subscriptions at $9.95 per month for 40 listings, $19.95 per month for 200 listings and $34.95 per month for 1,000 listings.
Page Mage also offers new customers a 60-day free trial account.
Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.
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