Fee-Based

Fee-Based Price Plans are the most widely used method for implementing fees. Under Fee-Based plans the seller pays individually for each listing they place on your site. In addition to the flat rate you can charge per listing, you can also allow them to pay for premium services like “featured status”, “listing bolding”, “better placement” and “attention getters”. Some site owners charge no flat fee at all, and instead only charge for the premium services. It’s entirely up to you.

Remember, although you can edit the various cost specifics for each Price Plan, you cannot change it from “Fee-Based” to “Subscription-Based” or the reverse.

You can edit the name and description that you originally entered when setting up the Price Plan. In the GeoClassAuctions software, there will also be a radio button for you select the "listing type" that the Price Plan applies to (Classifieds or Auctions).

You have the capability to set each Price Plan’s expiration in any one of several ways. You can set a Price Plan to expire:

If you choose to have a Price Plan expire, then you must choose the Price Plan that the expiring Price Plan will expire into. In other words, when the Price Plan expires a new Price Plan needs to take over in its place so that users will still be subject to listing fees. Available Price Plans will display in the dropdown box.

IMPORTANT: You must also remember that the Price Plan that it is being expired into must "exist" at the time that the “expiration” takes place and not have already expired itself. Otherwise, the current Price Plan will remain in effect for those users.

Set the specific date that you wish to expire the Price Plan in the date dropdowns provided and click the SAVE EXPIRATION CHOICE button at the bottom of the page. This setting allows users to take advantage of a specific Price Plan until a specified date that is fixed by the admin.

This setting allows users to take advantage of an “introductory” offer for a specified number of days from the date they register. Simply use the dropdown box to set the number of days that the Price Plan will remain in effect from each user’s registration date.

This setting will not affect users that have already registered into this Price Plan. A setting, once saved, will only affect users that register into the Price Plan “after” the save has been made. If existing users (at the time of a change to this value) had an expiration date coming, that expiration date will still be valid.

This setting fixes the Price Plan to never expire. The Price Plan will never change for a user or a group that is using this Price Plan unless you move the user individually or manually change the Price Plan associated with that group.

With Fee-Based Price Plans, you will charge fees on a “per listing” basis. In other words, there will be an optional initial fee for each listing, and then the ability for you to charge the seller for additional features over and above the initial fee.

Or, you can also be get creative in your marketing strategy and offer FREE listing placements by setting your base fee to $0, but then charge sellers for additional listing features, such as “featured” status, “bolding”, "attention getters", etc.

You will have the following three options when charging the initial listing placement fee:

This setting allows you to charge a fee for the listing placement. You can also set this to $0 so that there is no charge to place listings, but then charge the seller to enhance their listings with “featured” status, “bolding”, etc.

This setting allows you to charge a fee based on the value entered into the price field. You can create a bracketed price increment chart in which the fees will be assessed depending upon the seller's price field. This chart is also used to specify fees assessed when the seller renews their listing.

This setting allows you to charge a fee based on the listing duration chosen by the seller. You can create a bracketed price increment chart based upon the number of days that the listing will be active. If used, the entries in this chart will take precedence and be displayed instead of the normal site-wide listing durations specified in the following menu:

IMPORTANT: These three options are available for Classified listings only. You will only have the option to charge the 'same price for every listing' if your listing is an Auction. Remember, however, that these settings are for this Price Plan only. You can create additional Price Plans with different listing fees if you like.

This setting allows you to designate what you will charge the seller to renew each listing, unless using the "charge per listing based on price field of listing" setting above.

If you allow the seller to pay for listing placement by cash/check/money order, that same option will appear within the listing renewal process. Since cash/check/money order payments are not instant and waiting for a cash/check/money order payment may cause an interruption in the display of the listing you can opt to instantly approve cash/check/money order listing renewals. The “instant renewals” feature is a convenience for the seller. The cash/check/money order transaction will still appear in the “unapproved listings” section of the transactions page in the admin as awaiting payment. This is simply to remind you to expect payment from the seller, even though the listing will be instantly renewed.

If you check “no” to these three or check “no” individually, the listing renewals will not be automatically approved for that payment type. You will have to approve the transaction to make the renewal happen. The listing could expire if you do not approve the listing before the listing expires.

If you check “yes” the seller will be given a choice to use their available credits (free listings) when renewing their listing. The choice will appear next to the cost of the listing renewal in the listing renewal form. The choice will not appear if the seller does not have any credits to use. If the seller chooses to use a credit, their credits will be reduced by one and the renewal will be free.

This setting allows you to set the maximum number of listings each user attached to this Price Plan can have active at any one time. The number you set here will be the maximum number of live listings the user can have. If the seller reaches their maximum allowable listings, a message will be displayed when they try to place a listing and they have reached their limit.

This setting will restrict all users of this Price Plan to place listings with "buy now only" status. In other words, no bidding will take place on auctions placed by these users. Therefore, use this setting with caution.

NOTE: Enabling this option will DISABLE not only the Standard Auctions feature, but also the Dutch Auctions feature for users that fall within this Price Plan.

This setting allows you to charge an additional fee (final fee) based upon the final selling (listing) price of the item. Click the “edit” button to set up your increments table. The table allows you to establish certain increments (brackets) of prices so that when the final selling price of the listing falls in one of your increments, you can charge the percentage and/or flat fee that you indicate.

It is entirely up to you as the admin whether or not to use this feature. If you decide to use this pricing option, select “yes” and this same pricing table will be displayed during the “Listing” process for all users that fall under this Price Plan.

NOTE: Since the actual assessed fee will not be known until after the listing has ended, this fee will have to be charged separately from the Initial Listing Placement fee. There are two ways to capture payment for this fee. These options are discussed in the next setting.

As this option suggests, you can click “yes” and opt to collect the Final Fee for an listing at the next time the seller goes to list items. This means that the site will accrue that user’s final fees for however many listings the seller owes to you as “final fees”, and then charge the seller when he places his next listing. So, when the seller enters his next listing he will see his charges for that listing, as well as, the “final fee” charges that are being assessed for previous listings he had.

If choosing this method, you are not required to use Authorize.net’s AIM method. You could instead use Authorize.net’s SIM method, or any other merchant gateway that this Software is set up to communicate with.

If you want to use Authorize.net’s AIM method and collect the Final Fee when the listing ends, click “no”.

Yes - roll final fee charges into future listing placement is your second option for capturing a “Final Fee” from a seller. This option is discussed in the setting below.

No - capture final fee at the end of the auction - To capture final fees when the listing ends you must have a particular merchant account set up that specifically provides you with this privilege. Most merchants do not allow you to automatically collect a payment from the seller in their absence. This is known as “absentee billing”. In other words, you are billing the seller a fee without their presence involved in the transaction at that time. Of course, the seller does already know that you will be charging this final fee at the end of their listing. The only merchant that currently allows you to do this, and that our software is configured with is Authorize.net’s AIM method. Please review their website for details concerning how to set up a merchant account with the AIM method.

When using the AIM method, sellers will pay for their Initial Fee at listing placement and type in their credit card information directly into the “transaction details” form of your Listings site. This means that you should have an SSL certificate set up so that you can process their credit card information in a secure web environment (https://). The Initial Fee will then be processed and their credit card information will be stored in your database. After the listing has ended, and has achieved a successful “selling” bid, that listing will appear on the Final Fee Transaction page in the admin: TRANSACTIONS > FINAL FEE TRANSACTIONS. On this page you will be able to view the details of each listing’s transaction, and at that time run those transactions to capture the Final Fees for each through Authorize.net. If there is more than one transaction to capture for a user, you can group that user’s transactions and capture them all at once, by selecting the “group transactions by user” check box.

This is the fee per picture that you will charge the seller after they have used up their “free” pictures as allowed in the setting below. You can also set the maximum number of pictures allowed to appear in each listing on the LISTING SETUP > PHOTO UPLOAD SETTINGS page of the admin.

The number you select here is the number of pictures a seller can post for free before they get charged for each additional picture at the price indicated in the previous setting. If set to “0”, they will be charged for every picture at the price in the previous setting.

Listing Extras allow you to charge the seller over and above the normal cost of the listing placement in order to receive higher exposure for their listing.

Featured Listings are listings that the seller pays a premium for in order to have more exposure for their listing. This Software allows you to designate several levels of Featured Listings and charge accordingly for each, typically based upon the amount of exposure for that particular location on your site. Level 1 Featured Listings will normally display on your Main (Front) page and all subcategory browsing pages because they are attached to the usage of the (!MAINBODY!) tag. However, this functionality can be turned off and you may use the various Feature Listing Level Modules located in the PAGE MODULES section of the admin. The implementation of these specific modules will be discussed later in this User Manual under “Page Modules”.

NOTE: If using the Featured Listing Levels, you must select “yes” for each level on this page: LISTING SETUP > LISTING EXTRAS in the admin.

The seller can elect to have their listing text "bolded" in the site's browsing tables. This helps their listing to stand out. You can also change the background color for that row in the browsing tables, to help it stand out even more. You must also choose to use the bolding option within your site LISTING SETUP > LISTING EXTRAS form in the admin.

Use this setting to set the price you will charge sellers for using the “better placement” option. The “better placement” feature allows the seller to “pay for display preference” while browsing. What this means is that whenever the listing is displayed within a “browsing” results table (newest listings, featured listings, browsing categories) that listing will have precedence (appear at top of results) over all of the other listings in that same table. When there is more than one listing in the same results table that has been upgraded to “better placement” status, the listing that was placed later will take precedence over other “better placed” listings.

If allowing sellers to use this option, you must select the better placement option under the LISTING SETUP > LISTING EXTRAS page in the admin.

NOTE: Search results tables are “true” searches in that “better placed” listings will not be filtered to the top of the search results.

You can also charge the seller for placing an “attention getter” next to their listing title in the site browsing tables. The software comes preconfigured with a variety of attention getters. However, you can also load your own attention getters here: LISTING SETUP > ATTENTION GETTERS. You must also choose to use the attention getter option within your site LISTING SETUP > LISTING EXTRAS form in the admin.

The ability to edit fees (cost specifics) on a category by category basis is only available with Fee-Based Price Plans. This is discussed in more detail in the next section of this User Manual.