Ebay Is Not My Happy Place

[gxjenkins]

In case you haven't heard ebay started a promotion today (2 weeks) for 100 Free Auction Style listings with any starting price.
That's not a bad deal. You only pay ebay if your item sells.

Gary

[skatersollie]

I just started my store and promotions do not apply to store owners...If i knew this was going to happen i would never have opened a store...I'm thinking it was a mistake to open a store since it is a new account and even with the store i'm only allow to list only 100 items..was an exceptionally bad idea to open an store at this time...wanted to open an amazon store instead, but it had too many restrictions....oh well..have to decide now whether i want to keep it or not.

[gxjenkins]

Hi skatersollie,
The promotion can still work for you. Just list as many items as you can using the promotion, but make the starting price the lowest you will accept for each auction. You don’t want to give away the store In each listing place a link to your store it should be great advertising for a new store. You could also use Activa (I think that’s the correct spelling) to add a scrolling bar to highlight your other items in each auction.

Personally I don’t think an ebay store is a good idea because you pay rent for it each and every month even if there are no sales.

I think sites like ioffer, and ebid are better alternatives. At ioffer I don’t think it cost anything to open a store, and ebid its a one time price.

My lifetime membership at ebid was something like $70 in 06 when I joined, but now there is a promotion you can get a lifetime membership for $49.

Hope this helps.

Gary

[skatersollie]

Originally Posted by gxjenkins

Hi skatersollie,
The promotion can still work for you. Just list as many items as you can using the promotion, but make the starting price the lowest you will accept for each auction. You don’t want to give away the store In each listing place a link to your store it should be great advertising for a new store. You could also use Activa (I think that’s the correct spelling) to add a scrolling bar to highlight your other items in each auction.

Personally I don’t think an ebay store is a good idea because you pay rent for it each and every month even if there are no sales.

I think sites like ioffer, and ebid are better alternatives. At ioffer I don’t think it cost anything to open a store, and ebid its a one time price.

My lifetime membership at ebid was something like $70 in 06 when I joined, but now there is a promotion you can get a lifetime membership for $49.

Hope this helps.

Gary

Well fine print promotions cannot be applied if you have ebay store..I tried listing items as an auctions..I have to pay the .20 fee..no freebies.. Anyways how is ebid and ioffer in terms of traffic? Well the only good thing about ebay store maybe the subscribers email option.. other than that i think it's pointless unless your one of the few who has had a lot sales already...and get get an established store...I guess the difficulty is getting free traffic unless you've been there from the start..

[gxjenkins]

Hi,
First of all NOBODY GETS TRAFFIC LIKE EBAY!

Just like ebay, when you list something on ebid it shows up in the Google listing usually just below ebay’s listings. I get a lot of traffic to my pages, but its no ebay.
My last two sales on ebid were from first time ebid buyers. Ebid hasn’t spent a ton of money on advertising, instead it has spent its money on expanding and improving their system. advertising is mostly done by the ebid sellers, most buyers are surprised when they find the site. BTW, there are alot of former ebay sellers there.

Ioffer on the other hand was the friendliest of all the sites I’ve used. I still have a store there but nothing is listed in it. As for sales it was second to ebay in my book. I think buyers here in the U.S. are more use to ioffer than with ebid which is relatively new to the U.S.

With both sites I’m sure you can list items without paying an insertion fee. You only pay if the item sells.
Give’em a try

Gary

[fudiloveties]

you may try to sell on bonanza.com

[gxjenkins]

How are the fee's at bonanza.com? What payment processors to they use?

Paypal and I are not on speaking terms again.

It seems that every couple of years or so Paypal forgets its a payment processor, and not my partner. I've told them on several occasions I pay them to process payments, not make business decisions for me, so I drop them until they wake up.

Fortunately, ebid offers lots of payment processor's not just Paypal.
And, now my store does too.

[pandacover]

I have a store on Ebay too. The main product is: many different kinds of covers.

I Keep advertising on Ebay. one kind of Ebay ads is very cheap. Most of my sales are all from ebay ads.

At present, Ebay offer some free ads, you can have a try. i remebered the detail time is yesterday. I can not sure it still exsit now. If not exsit, i am sorry.

[BoBo_184]

You can sell on amazon and ebay as a private seller without paying the monthly subscription.

On amazon, I think you can sell up to a certain amount without having to upgrade to a business account. On ebay I don't think there is any limit. This way you at least avoid the monthly subscription fee.

amazon is better in the sense that everything is fixed price so you know what you will get. you will not make any losses.

but amazon's fees is a lot higher than ebay's. Expect up to 20 - 25% for items less than $30.

ebay would've been ideal if it doesn't have the insertion fees because you can set your item to 'buy it now' and fixed price on ebay.

my last 20 purchases on ebay were all 'buy it now' at a fixed price specified by the seller

[chixfashionz]

As an online seller who has had an eBay store (chixfashionz) for a tad under 3 years, I can tell you that it has become more difficult to sell on eBay.

I had at one stage an Anchored Store - the top level subscription. Everything was going well, sales were increasing and so I continued to add listings.

Then, in all their collective wisdom, eBay management decided to go into China. They tried to compete with Taobao and got their backsides booted and quite severely. So they are now allowing Chinese sellers to list on eBay (in Australia, USA and UK) free of charge.

What you now see is eBay being swamped with Hong Kong listings and not only is it killing even big sellers, but it is turning many buyers off as well.

They are a mongrel company to deal with, with no empathy for the sellers who are paying their wages. Their little lapdog - PayPal, can be just as bad to deal with when they want to be.

I have tried to get involved with other up-and-coming selling sites like quicksales.com.au and bonanza.com

At some stage, we all need to take accountability for e B a y becoming the monster it has. WE SHOULD support some of the smaller guys trying to put up decent and viable alternatives.