GarageSale is a Mac program designed to make your eBay selling experience easy. Since I am not an experienced eBay user, I asked a friend who is to give it a test drive and share her experience with me.

It was obviously a positive one because she is now bidding on an iBook to replace her ancient and monstrously heavy Compaq laptop. If both the Mac and GarageSale experiences were that positive I have to give it a thumbs up. When I asked to sum up her experience in on sentence she said, “Wow, this is so easy.” Can’t argue with that.

She also said:
“I love that iPhoto thingy.”
“It’s so cool that it does all my pictures for me.”
“The (included) designs look really professional.”
“I gotta have that Widget.”

My friend does point out that she will miss some features that are available on her Windows eBay client: You cannot leave feedback through the program automatically. The program will not save an auction that ebay has canceled. The program does not generate reports of average sales. However it does export sales in CSV format so it is easy to use any spreadsheet for tracking and reports.

Since GarageSale import photos directly from a camera or capture a shot from an iSight as well as use an iPhoto import palette, I can’t think of an easier photo integration. And with Tiger it will use Core Image to provide the same image enhancement tools as iPhoto. It really does have the bases covered. GarageSale will also resize photos on export to either .Mac or an ftp account. GarageSale also creates a neat little thumbnail to larger image rollover that you can add to your auction listing.

To speed up a listing, GarageSale allows you to complete all the eBay steps including listing Attributes, locally and will create a complete listing on connecting to eBay. It allows multiple accounts and will pre-fill common account information for you. If you have an eBay store, GarageSale will upload items with a couple of clicks.

Want to track you auctions without having to connect to eBay? No problem. GarageSale takes care of you.

You can use any of 50 pre-designed templates for your auctions. I don’t find them particularly exciting but they are mostly much better than average do-it-yourself listings I’ve seen (as a designer, I sometimes cringe when I see eBay auctions). GarageSale allows you to do Rich Text editing and converts the results to HTML for you. Easy, easy, easy.

Even with the few missing features, she says that the speed and ease with which she can create listings is “way, way faster,” than what she is using now.

There is even an active GarageSale Yahoo Group where people seem happy to share experiences and offer help.

You do need an internet connection and an eBay account to use this program.

Publisher iwascoding.com
Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later

Features: 4
Ease of Use: 5
Documentation: 3
Value: 5
Macness: 5

Highly Recommended.

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