With more and more people becoming regular eBayers, there is a big demand for functional software that makes peoples life simpler. After all, keeping up to date with all the tedious administration and ensuring that your listings look their best is impossible, or at the very least extremely time consuming without the help of some very useful third party programs.

To help you on your quest to eBay riches, take a look at our top five most essential eBay applications below.

1. eBay Seller Tools

eBay has actually created a wealth of tools available to try and help everything from casual sellers to power sellers and businesses with the addition of these programs.

These programs provide an all-in-one solution for managing your eBay business, and they really do make your life a great deal simpler. The products available are Turbolister, Selling Manager and Blackthorne.

Turbolister is a free program however the other applications do require a monthly subscription ranging from $5.99 a month to $24.99 a month. eBay has worked hard to ensure that its seller tools are second to none, and you can’t go wrong if you buy eBay.

2. Terapeak

Terapeak is not your typical sales management application. In fact it’s not a sales management application at all, it’s a marketing one. Subscribing to Terapeak gives you access to all sorts of analytical information based on eBay sales. This is the ultimate marketing tool, and it can save you a lot of money by simply letting you know the best times to sell an item.

3. AppEagle

AppEagle is a great inventory management solution and it does a great job in ensuring your listings are up-to-date and accurate. With AppEagle, it’s simply a case of telling it what you have in stock and it will automatically update your auctions, ending, listing, and re-listing until your stock is depleted.

4. Outright

With an eBay business it can be hard to track the profits and before you know it, you have hit a downward curve. Take affirmative action now, thanks to outright which is a completely free bookkeeping solution designed for anyone, so you don’t need to be an accountant to start managing your business successfully. It’s a priceless tool for any small business.

5. AfterBuy Message Manager

AfterBuy message manager does exactly what you’d think. It makes your life easier when it comes to managing those time consuming end of sale messages, and generally streamlines customer communication by providing templates, automatic responses and numerous other time saving innovations.

Out of all the products in our list, three out of five are actually cross-platform web based solutions. eBay products are dedicated windows applications, but in general, the way development is going, it will only be a matter of time before the majority of internet aware applications all become entirely web based.

You have probably bid on many auctions only to find that someone bid at the last second and won the auction, and you probably thought at the time they cheated. The reality is that they didn’t break any rules, but instead took advantage of a special program or website which let them place their bid at the very latest opportunity.

They used an Auction Sniper.

Firstly, an auction sniper doesn’t involve guns. It’s simply the name of the first ever application that was sold to bid at the last minute. It was akin to a one shot kill, thus the name ‘Auction Sniper’ was given.

Today there are loads of last-minute bidding applications out there. Some are free and you have to download them, whereas others are web based and track your auctions server-side meaning you don’t even need to keep your computer on to win bids.

Web based applications are great to use because they are hosted on a third-party computer, which often has an extremely fast connection which will never fail. This gives you almost unlimited sniping potential when compared to traditional software solutions.

The way an auction sniper works is quite simple. You tell it the auction number, the time you would like to bid, and your maximum bid. It will then do its magic and you can sit back and watch whilst it bids on your behalf and virtually guarantees you win the auction.

Why use an auction sniper?

One of the reasons they were invented was to try and reduce the close price of many auctions. The problem faced is that when people place ordinary bids, they often get tied up in a bidding war. An auction sniper puts your bid in at the last minute, meaning no-one can compete with your bid,

It sounds like cheating, but eBay hasn’t done nothing to prevent it. These days many competitors have a 5 minute rule meaning that every time someone bids, the auction length is extended by five extra minutes. It’s the only way to prevent and limit auction snipers.

Here’s what you need to know:

If you’re keen to start sniping auctions, then there are a few key rules.

First, be careful when entering your maximum bid, because the sniper is ruthless and it will continue bidding until it’s reached.

Second, if you’re running a sniper program on your computer, then remember to stay connected to the Internet and obviously don’t switch off the application.

Third, don’t bid too late. Placing your bid when there are less than five seconds remaining is great, but if your computer slows down for even a moment, it may miss the opportunity and you will lose the auction.

And finally, if you get out-sniped by a sniper, don’t take it personally. Sniping is great fun, incredibly exciting and just a little bit devious.

If you want to try for yourself, take a look at Gixen which is a free web based sniping tool.

Here is a list of the best mac software for eBay:

When it comes to software for eBay, windows applications are a dime a dozen. With the auction giant producing a number of applications to help sellers and buyers, Windows users have limitless choice. But what about those of us who aspire to greater things, such as using a Mac?

If you look hard enough, there are a number of high quality and professional applications that aim to give Mac users just as much freedom and flexibility as they want. As a result, we’ve came up with a list of some of the best Mac ready eBay tools to help you get more out of eBay, thanks to your Mac.

GarageSale – This is undoubtedly the single most popular eBay application for the Mac. Fully Mac OSX compatible, it works well and it really does blow away the competition. With many features such as free image hosting, a scheduler and over 100 unique templates for your listings, it’s a great way to post incredibly attractive auctions and also watch them with the dashboard widget that comes along with the software. Sadly GarageSale is not free, but at $34.99 it’s a veritable bargain. You can even buy it on eBay! Just click here.

iPhoto – If you’re new to eBay then if you want a successful auction, then high quality photographs are a must. iPhoto is a tool developed by Apple which makes editing your photos an absolute breeze. Whilst many will recommend Photoshop, iPhoto does the job just as well, but without the steep learning curve. Best of all, if you have Mac OSX then it’s just $79 from the apple store.

GarageBuy – Not everyone is an eBay powerseller and as a result, GarageBuy, is the ultimate Mac application designed to help you browse auctions. Completely free and available from the same manufacturers as GarageSale, GarageBuy features an easy to use interface which is just as high quality as its sales-orientated big brother. If you’re looking for a tool to help speed up searches and make browsing easier, then you’ve found it with GarageBuy.

eBay Watcher – If you’re an eBay addict, then you really do need eBay Watcher. This is a widget that runs on both your Mac and iPhone and it keeps track of all the auctions you are interested in. It sits in the background monitoring up to four auctions and with full Growl support, it will tell you when an auction price changes or there are 2 minutes left to bid. At $10 for two licenses, it’s a bargain.

Auctiva – Last but not least we take a quick look at Auctiva which is a platform independent complete auction management system which is designed to make the entire selling process easier from start to finish. Auctiva is a monthly subscription product which provides templates, listing tools as well as the unique Auctiva gallery, but the best thing about Auctiva is the sales management, reporting and inventory control systems that really do help you get more organized with eBay.

As computing moves closer towards the Internet, there are more and more platform independent, web based solutions appearing. Auctiva is just one example of platform neutrality. If only everything else was that way?!