eBay Integration

My company is currently evaluating if there is interest in having HikaShop and eBay integration. We have a native Joomla eBay listing component called JoomLister that is currently compatible with VirtueMart and redSHOP, and HikaShop will be our next choice. That is, if there is enough interest.

Anyone interested in having their HikaShop be the system of record, and having products list automatically on eBay based on your updates, additions, inventory adjustments, etc?

We had several users already requesting such feature.
We even had one asking for that today and I redirected him to you already

Hey, that's really exciting to hear! Thank you.

Hi PolishedGeek,

While I TOTALLY understand you wanting to get your company business, I was wondering if any/all of the Hikashop specific plugins/modules etc that you are going to develop [i.e. paid for by one of us consultants/one of our clients] would then be released these back into the Hikashop or Joomla community ?

preferably as open source or as a reasonably priced commercial plugin.

After all, what's the point of making something if it only serves/helps 1 client if the application can be widespread...

Not to speak on Nicolas behalf, but I'm (pretty) sure, he would accommodate a place in the forums or somewhere for plugins released by other vendors - it can only help grow both parties...

[ Always eagerly looking at new things that Hikashop can do for my clients... ]
Thanks,

Emmanuel.

Hi, Emmanuel -

Thanks for your reply and questions. Polished Geek is primarily a web development and Joomla extension company. We do only a limited number of full website projects from beginning to end, so we don't make the bulk of our income off of standard web design projects. Our business model is built around custom development of web applications, Joomla extensions and technical consulting/troubleshooting. The majority of our clients are actually other web design and development companies who hire us to handle unusual or highly complex technical challenges within their client projects. We're often the secret solution behind the scenes that the end-clients never even know about.

The short answer to your questions is yes, we are certainly intending that if it makes sense financially, we will release our work as a commercial extension. We believe in open source GPL, and never encode our work. Over the last three years we've distributed both free community extensions and commercial extensions. Hopefully there will be enough interest for HikaShop extension development for us to add several to our lineup.

So that's the short answer. Now if you're interested, here's the long one....

Many times innovative solutions have the potential to become a commercial extension, and we certainly look for those opportunities. As much as possible we try to solve our clients problems with something that is built in a way that can be applicable for additional clients. Then, IF there is enough of a potential market to justify "productizing" the code by investing in product marketing, writing full admin documentation, performing QA testing on multiple Joomla and ecommerce versions, and training our staff to support it, etc., then yes, we will release it to the market, usually as a commercial extension. All of our commercial extensions are released under the GPL license, fully open source, with all the freedom that GPL includes to use the code unlimited times for multiple clients if you wish.

Sometimes we'll hear comments from those who make a living from website design, rather than extensions, that go something like this: "You already built it, you have the code done, so why are you charging $XX for it? That's just extra money now. You should either give it away free or charge a really low price." I know it can seem that way to non-extension vendors, but the math isn't quite that simple. There are significant operating and support costs associated with distributing an extension. Even a free one isn't free to support - time is money, and time staff spends supporting a free or low cost extension is time they can't work on another paid project. So what can appear to be a simple plugin can still have significant ongoing costs for testing and support, not to mention the need to develop, test and document upgrades as Joomla and the ecommerce software update over time. This is even more so the case if an extension has frontend functionality rather than just admin configuration. Frontend extensions can involve all kinds of potential testing and support issues for template compatibility, JavaScript or AJAX conflicts, conflicts with other 3rd party extensions on the same webpage(s), cross-browser compatibility, the list goes on and on. This is always a lot more work than what's involved to get a single client's solution tested and deployed on their site.

Of course, there aren't just more costs. On the plus side, releasing extensions helps bring in future clients. We get requests daily from prospective clients who say "I see you built X, so I bet you can build Y for me!" And 99% of the time, why yes we can. Extensions do drive additional custom work and website traffic. They help get your brand out there and your name known. There is a positive effect on business beyond the additional income derived from the extension sales price. This all gets taken into account too, when we consider whether to release an extension.

We actually have an Excel spreadsheet that we use internally at Polished Geek to estimate all of these factors, to see what the viability of an extension is, at different prices and sales levels. It's not perfect at predicting the future profitability of an extension, but doing that analysis at least helps us work through considering all the relevant factors before setting a price and releasing an extension to the public. Otherwise you can find yourself selling an extension for $95, bringing in a lot of cash flow at first, and still actually be losing money when compared to the other project work that could be done with that time instead.

All of these things go into deciding whether to sell code as an extension, and how much to charge for it. The price has to be attractive to buyers AND allow the sale of that extension to generate as much profit, or more, than the other profitable work a business could be doing instead. Otherwise it just doesn't make good business sense to do it.

If you've read this far, I hope my ramblings have been an interesting peek into the world of an extension vendor. Our community is made up of a huge variety of freelancers, boutique firms and web design companies, all with different expertise and business models, all trying to make a living. When we all succeed and can put food on the table doing what we love, the open source community gets stronger. When it becomes too hard to eek out a living for a certain type of business, eventually those businesses turn elsewhere or go under, and the open source community as a whole suffers. We're all interdependent on one another. I think it's important that we do whatever we can to support each others success.

If this was reasonably priced component I would be definitely interested.

I'm interested!

Chris

Curious... it looks like almost 300 people have viewed this thread, but less than five have responded that they would be interested in eBay integration.

Is there really not much interest among HikaShop store owners and web developers for this type of extension?

Hi there,

Maybe if you announced / listed a range for what the component would go for that might assure users that the pricing would be in line with what they could afford.

Even better if the component is brought back into the fold/community as mentioned by Emmanuel above...
[I saw your reply ]

Cheers,

A.

Hello -

The pricing for HikaShop will be the same as we currently charge today for VirtueMart or redSHOP compatible JoomLister. The extension is GPL and we support one licensed domain per subscription, but you can use it on unlimited domains if desired. The extension is commercial. You can review our pricing plans here: polishedgeek.com/paid-extensions/joomlister/pricing-plans.html

Thanks!

Hi there Deb,

I can only speak for myself but while I TOTALLY understand that you are in business to make money. When I think about your pricing, it seems a bit pricey - Hikashop at most costs a bit more than your Basic version and can go down to being Free if you can live with the lack of features [I work at converting my customers to the paid version of Hikashop with 85%+ of them going to the Business Edition] but would find it difficult to get them to go directly [meaning without a free version to start] to a minimum of $125 on up for what seems/feels like a plugin...

Just sayin',

Cheers,

A.

Thanks for your comments. We realize that some may find our solution out of their price range. We do feel that the value of what JoomLister delivers is well worth the price (in fact several clients have referred to it as a bargain for the time and effort it saves them). During development, there was well over $25,000 invested in creating this product, and there is significant ongoing R&D investment each month to keep pace with eBay as it changes store categories, listing policies, storefront functionality and features over time. Product catalog integration and dual listing features between an ecommerce store and eBay is commonly found in higher end SAAS offerings that cost $150 - $200 per month. JoomLister is an eBay Certified Compatible Application that provides far more complex functionality than a plugin.

We certainly encourage folks to do their own cost-benefit analysis and then decide if JoomLister is right for them. Our clients use this extension to centrally manage products for both eBay and Joomla ecommerce stores like HikaShop in one location, while synchronizing hundreds or even thousands of items on eBay automatically. Clients who use JL to showcase their products on two platforms benefit from revenue from an additional sales channel, increased visibility for their business and brand, plus save hours of tedious, time-consuming administration every week. It just depends on what your client feels their time is worth and how many additional sales they might receive. If selling on eBay in addition to HikaShop leads to hundreds of dollars of additional revenue each month (or week!), it's not a problem convincing them of the value of an automated solution like JoomLister (or conversely, convincing them to open a HikaShop website if they have only sold on eBay so far).

Now if the client owns a much smaller store, with a very small catalog and low sales volume, then no, it probably doesn't make sense to spend the money on an automated extension like ours. A free or inexpensive manual export/import tool might do the job quite nicely in that case.

So regardless of what we invested (and continue to invest) to develop JoomLister, the ONLY thing that matters in the end is whether it will save YOU, and/or your client, time and money. Period. And if when you do the math, you and/or your client come out ahead with our extension by saving time and money, plus gain increased sales volume, then it's a no-brainer to buy JoomLister. And if it doesn't, then it's not right for your situation and hey, that's ok. JL was written to meet certain business and technical needs, and we know not everyone has those needs.

Thanks again for the feedback!

P.S. - I gained extensive experience in financial Cost Benefit Analysis & Business Case development during my many years in corporate America. I am happy to assist web developers/designers with doing the number crunching to help a client determine if multi-channel product management with JoomLister would be profitable for them. We can work with just raw numbers and general information, no need to reveal your prospective client's name. Contact me if you'd like to chat about it sometime: deb [at] polishedgeek.com

I would be down for that, if it was moderately priced...
How long would you guys think, it would take you to program? -And, moreover: How much is a reasonable price?

Well, I just found out about the SAAS feature and I ...well... disliked it. I'd rather buy software that is proprietery or have it developed myself instead. If it has the features I want, I am even willing to pay a bit more for that - and buy the upgrade when neccessary. I think that the price range should be between 40,- and 80 Euro at max.

I'm sorry, I think I must have created a misunderstanding by using the SAAS analogy. Our extension is NOT SAAS. I was comparing its features and functionality to what you find in many SAAS offerings. There really isn't anything else with similar features unless you go to the SAAS world.

The extension is GPL, fully unencoded open source software. You can modify it as you see fit, and if you don't need access to the upgrades after your subscription expires, you can continue to use it forever. Our lowest priced plan is $125 USD, or about 100 euros.

We've built JoomLister from the ground up to be "cart-agnostic", so we can update it to support new carts with a minimal amount of development effort. The QA testing, documentation and training our staff to support multiple carts however is an investment that can be substantial. Frankly we'll be hesitant to add HikaShop if there isn't enough interest (at a price that is profitable to pursue).

The solution architect who designed JoomLister, Donald Champion, will actually be speaking on Cart-Agnostic Design Principles at the Joomla World Conference Friday, November 16th. If you'll be at the Joomla World Conference ( conference.joomla.org/ ) please do join us!

I'll be there and I hope that I'll be able to speak with him

That will be great! We're looking forward to meeting you too.

Hi,

I'd be interested in this a bit further down my site's development (once enough products are moving).
I had a quick look on your website at the features - it sounds good.

My real question is how well it will integrate with Hikashop - I'm assuming that when you create a new product in Hikashop - the tool will have added an additional checkbox saying "List this on Ebay?" with some additional options.
I'd like to have the ability to choose what is unique on my site - as well as what has listings on both my e-commerce store and Ebay.

Are you able to add existing items on your site to Ebay with this tool? Are there any methods for "bulk" item exports to Ebay?

Hello fellow geek

Because we don't want to hack any shopping cart extensions, all of the JoomLister set up is done inside the JoomLister component, regardless of the shopping cart you use.

You can choose to list entire categories of products, or only selected products. You can either set up large bulk listings or control it down to the individual item, that's up to you. It's very automated, but you are in control of what the default behavior is.

For example, let's say you sell children's toys. You have JoomLister configured to always list ALL of your toys that are in the HikaShop category "Toy Trucks & Cars" as items in the eBay Category "Toys > Diecast & Toy Vehicles". If you add a brand new HikaShop product and add it to the "Toy Trucks & Cars" category, that new product will automatically be picked up and listed for you on eBay with no additional work on your part at all. So yes, bulk listing capability is supported.

To continue the example a little further, let's say perhaps for the "Trains" HikaShop category you choose to only list a few specific collector items on eBay and the rest of the category items are only sold on your website. In that case, you would configure JoomLister with instructions to only list the specific products you want, instead of configuring it by category. Therefore new items added to "Trains" would NOT be automatically listed on eBay. So yes, you have the ability to pick and choose what items are listed on eBay, and what's strictly for sale on your website.

So in summary, you can set JoomLister up in whatever way makes the most sense for your product catalog, and saves you the most administrative time.

Let me know what other questions you have - thank you!

What came of this? Any Updates?