Hello,

Not sure if you saw this part of the announcement, but if you didn't, I think that it will answer most of your questions:

Picture Manager, eBay's paid subscription picture hosting service, will be retired after August 2009, with new subscriptions disabled starting later this month. This will allow us to focus resources on improving our mainstream per-listing picture-hosting services. If you use Picture Manager now, you'll need to migrate to another hosting service--either eBay per-listing picture hosting or a third party self-hosting solution--before the end of August:

• All Picture Manager uploaded pictures will be retained and used in current listings for a minimum of 100 days after you unsubscribe. As you continue to use those pictures in listings, they will be managed automatically just like pictures originally uploaded via the per-listing picture hosting service. Any applicable per-listing picture fees will apply when pictures are re-used.


• Current Picture Manager subscribers can download copies of their Picture Manager-hosted pictures as zip files before unsubscribing.


• For Store subscribers, pictures in your custom Store pages and Store logo will be automatically migrated to standard eBay picture hosting and will remain free.

catherbrownbooks

Picture Manager will be retired after Aug 31 and your account will be closed. All of your photos will remain hosted for at least 100 days after your Picture Manager account is closed, regardless of whether you close it today or whether you wait for eBay to shut it down after Aug 31.

I looked at your store, and the only photo I saw that would be considered part of the free store hosting is your store logo. eBay will continue to host that as a free service and they will move the photo for you. If you are using that store banner in any other locations, like in forums posts or emails, you will need to look for the new URL when it converts. Simply right-click your store banner and read the properties.

I also saw a photo on your "About the Seller" page, and if that page was created in the normal manner, then that photo is unrelated to Picture Manager and will continue to be hosted as one of the two free "About Me" page photos.

All of the photos that are in the description area of your listings will need to be moved to a new host. They will last for 100 days after your account is closed, so be sure to get them replaced before the holiday selling season.

Any photos that are uploaded in the normal eBay locations/slots will convert to EPS (eBay Picture Services) photos the next time you relist after closing your account, and you will be charged accordingly. Good-til-canceled items auto-renew every 30 days, so I think those will convert to EPS on the first 30-day schedule after you close your account, and you will be charged accordingly.

Rehosting

While your Picture Manager account is still active, you will be able to download a zip file of all of your photos, so be sure to do that well in advance of the Aug 31 deadline. Any images that were used inside the description area will need to be rehosted elsewhere, or you can upload them to standard EPS slots when you relist the affected items.

You should also be able to use the brand new "Copy Web files" option on eBay's Picture uploader to transfer eBay Picture Manager photos embedded within your page to standard EPS photos that appear above or below your description. That way, you wouldn't need to locate the specific picture on your computer. When relisting, copy the URLs that are embedded in your description and paste them into the "Copy Web files" uploader; then remove the images from inside the description.

And yes, you will need to edit all of the listings with embedded photos to either delete the photos or change the image addresses to point to a new host. It appears the many of your 700 items have only one photo in the EPS position, so those should be easy, but I do sympathize with you on the remaining items with embedded photos that will need personal attention. I don't see a simple solution to those and can only recommend that you move the images to EPS or set up a hosting account now so that you can move the items in reasonably manageable chunks over the next few months.

> Any photos that are uploaded in the normal eBay locations/slots will convert to EPS (eBay Picture Services) photos the next time you relist after closing your account, and you will be charged accordingly. Good-til-canceled items auto-renew every 30 days, so I think those will convert to EPS on the first 30-day schedule after you close your account, and you will be charged accordingly.
>

Thanks for all the useful info. I do understand the initial charge on EBAY PICTURE SERVICES but is it a one time listing charge or does the charge recur every 30 days for pictures used in conjunction with "good 'til cancelled" store listings? In other words, when ebay - if a $15.00 store item doesn't sell within its first 30 day period - charges me 3 cents to renew the store listing, are they going to charge me another ten cents for each extra photo used with the listing? (Although I do understand from ebay's current promotionals that extra photos in antiques, art and collectibles are totally free - at least for the time being)? It would be a big help to me in making my decision about photo hosting if I knew for sure how ebay was going to charge me on photos in monthly renewals of unsold store items. Thanks!
PC

I feel the same way. I have 10,000 auctions, am I going to have to relist all auctions again with photos? Or wil my auctions prior to August 09 carry over with the existing photos? If I transfer my auctions to Auctiva will they store my pics without having to relist? It seems the answers I'm given from Ebay are so technical nobody can tell me straight if the current store photos will carry over.

It would be helpful to get suggestions on where to find good, reliable, image hosting.

It doesn't do any good to complain, but this whole thing stinks. We had to spend precious time hand editing hundreds of templates to comply with the payment policy, now we have to redo all those templates.

catherbrownbooks, to answer your question about charges, yes when your photos convert to EPS hosting, the EPS fee will recur every 30 days.

Hi shrine213, All of your Picture Manager photos will automatically convert to EPS photos. Any that were used in the one free picture slot will continue to appear in your auctions at the EPS rate. Any that were embedded in the description using HTML codes will disappear after the 100-day window, so those are the ones that need to be rehosted.

eBay will have a zip download feature available in the near future, and in another thread, RobsHelp is working on an alternate download scheme.

Moving the image files to another host won't be that much of a problem - the effort will be in the revision/editing process. Because you are using Selling Manager Pro, I suspect you have some better editing tools than normal listers have. We can probably figure out some scheme that will improve the editing process based on what we find out about SMP.

Going1ncellc is our resident SMP guru, so when she stops by, perhaps she can make some find/replace or bulk edit recommendations.