iSale 4.0.2
equinux
Price: $39.95
Pros: Allows you to work off-line, replaces the eBay website for all phases of the selling process, professional templates, international support useful when stationed OCONUS.
Cons: No outgoing Mail integration, doesn't use the standard iLife media browser, long startup time.
by Gerrit Dalman, 1st Lt, USAF
Who hasn't discovered the guilty pleasure of shopping on eBay? Spending countless hours seeking autographed Star Trek memorabilia, hopelessly looking for a $1 PS3, or trying to figure out just how much you could get for your GI gear if it weren't for that whole fraud waste and abuse thing is a vice many of us share these days. Still, while thousands of users make purchases with relative ease every day, the average joe seems reluctant to sell online.
And for good reason! It's an intimidating process. You have to navigate through a long sequence of web pages to set up your auction and to make any changes you have to go back through the process again. Of course if you take to long, you have to start all over again.
Fortunately, prominent Mac software developer equinux, can help. Their product, iSale, provides an elegant front-end that lets you bypass eBay's interface, making the selling experience much more accessible to the average user.
iSale is for selling on eBay what iLife is for personal media. It takes a laborious task and turns it into an intuitive - and sometimes down right fun - experience. One good-looking window is your gateway to creating, posting, and tracking all of your sales without ever having to visit your web browser!
The process is quick and easy from start to finish. As you setup your auction it can save you a lot of research time by filling in product details based on Amazon searches, existing eBay auctions, or even your Delicious Library (this makes it exceedingly simple to sell media from your catalog). Though your results with this feature may vary, it is a powerful feature. You can save even more time by setting boilerplates - standard content that will be in all your auctions - for your payment instructions, return policy, and more.
When you're ready, posting an auction is as simple as clicking a button. iSale will check your listing for errors and then tell you how much your listing will cost so that you are never surprised by eBay's fees.
While the fairly straightforward GUI and the ability to work when you're not connected to the internet are iSale's biggest selling points, it does even more to help you become an effective seller.
iSale auctions will attract more attention and thus higher bids. It's wide (and growing) selection of templates are professional and, thanks to a keyword-based search, it's even a breeze to find one that complements your every product. You can also easily add pictures by drag-and-drop, with just two clicks using your iSight, or through a browser from your iPhoto library. Best of they are all uploaded in the background to your choice of eBay, .Mac, Flickr, or FTP accounts.
iSale also offers a lot of features to help you manage your auctions. You can organize them using custom groups and smart groups. For example, built-in groups let you view all auctions that are ready to ship or awaiting payment. iSale will even help you close the deal by adding your buyers to Address Book and printing shipping labels for you. It will even keep you aware of your auction status by syncing with iCal and summarizing your open auctions in a Dashboard widget if you like.
The GUI, off-line functionality, and attractive results are really enough to make this product an automatic buy for anyone who sells on eBay several times a year, but it packs so much more. With iSale, liquidating your old collection of antique bottle-caps or the over-stuffed hall closet full of used sports equipment is not only easy, it's fun.
If you would like to be a regular eBay seller or if you have a PCS coming up and would like to make some money instead of leaving all your unwanted things behind at a thrift store, you should buy this app. Further, if you've ever sold on eBay before, download iSale next time and try the three free auctions so you can see how much easier selling can be.
System Requirements:
* Mac OS X 10.4 or higher (v3.3 is still compatible with 10.3.9)
* 32MB video RAM or more
* Internet connection
* iPhoto 5 or higher (to use iPhoto integration)