alternatives to selling on ebay

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exploring alternatives to selling on ebay? You are not alone.

Here is our story and some links that might help you if you are concerned with the recent fee hikes and general atmosphere at ebay and wondering how you would branch out on your own if you could.

One seller's story, Chapter 1: in the beginning ebay sounded great

but we soon found out it wasn't easy...

Hello! This is our story: We had a dream once to quit our day job and sell things online for money. Sound familiar anyone???
What to sell? We decided to sell something we were passionate about: vintage clothes (ok, we realize it was not that original but why not give it a shot?)
Plus we had some inventory already and some good sources to get more.
Where to go to start selling: EBAY, of course!
At first, it was fun and easy!
We took some cute pictures, sold a few things and then sold a few more!
We even signed up for an Ebay store: 15.95 a month to list all our inventory at a few cents each. sounds great!!!
*******cut to a few months later*******
wow. HARD WORK for high fees and low profit. We loved working for ourselves but when we did the numbers we were paying so many fees to list items, fees when items sold and paypal fees that our profit was very small.

One Seller's Story, Chapter 2: determined to make it work on Ebay

researching and improving our business model

Even though we felt like we were losing more ground than we were gaining, we were determined to make it work!
We spent lots of time on the ebay community boards reading about what other sellers did that helped them become successful. We implemented those new ideas. We took better photos. We posted ads on outside sources including craigslist to try to drive more traffic to our store.
We even got the code for the store referral credit so when someone used an outside store to buy an item from our store, ebay would give us credit for it!
******Cut to: still not working....********
After all this work, we started to get depressed when we would put an item up for sale almost identical to one we saw go for $50 just last week and we could barely sell ours for .99 plus shipping.
GIVE UP??? NEVER!....

One Seller's Story, Chapter 3: Studying the Ebay competition

what do the most successful Ebay Powersellers have that we don't?

Having decided not to give up on our Ebay dream, we studied the competition to see what we could learn.
First of all, they were selling a GREAT PRODUCT. No question about that but what was helping them tremendously was the amount of TRAFFIC to their items. In some cases, a 7 day auction was bringing over 1,000 hits to their best items. We never came close to this, even on our best auctions.
Some of this is time. We realized if you offer a great product at a great price again and again, people will keep coming back and over TIME you will become more successful.
True in any business on the internet or off.
That's fine if the time isn't costing you lots of MONEY in FEES as it was in our case.
Each week we broke our backs taking great pictures and putting up cool items. Only to sell very few.
***********
Then one day we found a seller whose business model we loved. So we copied her model and guess what? It kinda worked! LOTS more people started visiting our auctions!
**********************
In the end, a few more items sold but still not enough to really make any money after we paid all our fees to ebay and paypal.
Plus remember all those store items that we thought would sell like hotcakes? Well, they did sell, when people saw them. But they got so little TRAFFIC that mostly they just sat there, costing us fees every month.

Check out this great book as a resource for Ebay alternatives!

Selling Beyond eBay: Foolproof Ways to Reach More Customers and Make Big Money on Rival Online Marketplaces

by: Greg Holden

Amazon Price: $17.05 (as of 11/30/2009)

One sellers story, Chapter 4: Exploring alternatives to Ebay

where we are now: investigating the alternatives

So after having put all that effort in, we were a little sad at the numbers not paying off but we also knew that we had made a few mistakes along the way.
Mistake number 1: trying to sell a product that already has too much competition on ebay (more on that later). The most successful ebay sellers are selling items that are not only hard to find elsewhere but the very best are selling items that are hard to find even on ebay!
We needed hits and we weren't getting them.
*****cut to: a few months later**********
Then one day in Feb. 2008 Ebay made an announcement about FEE reductions and at first we thought YAY! Finally we can list our items and learn about selling without having it cost us so much. GREAT!
UMMMMMMMMM....then we read the FINE PRINT.
The part about the INCREASE in final value fees...especially for cheaper items in our store. The part about FREEZING Paypal fees in the event of an item dispute.
The part about no longer being able to leave negative feedback for deadbeat bidders.
Then we started to get nervous! :(
****cut to: a major setback occurs*****
One week after Ebay announced the changes, we wake up to notice that ebay had taken down 14 of our store inventory listings (you know the ones that barely get any hits anyway?) at once for various violations. Only ONE of which had a legitimate violation, that we could tell. In fact, we did a search immediately after the blitz and discovered 68 listings by other sellers with the SAME WORD we used that were still up, with lots of bids and hits.
*******RECAP*********
We've spent hours, days and weeks building up our tiny ebay store, faithfully posting away on all kinds of websites and blogs (including myspace, facebook, digg, squidoo, the list goes on and on) just to drive traffic to our site, only to have ebay cancel 14 of our listings at will as well as raise fees and change policies yet again.
*******STUCK********
Where to go now? Back to our day jobs?
The answer is still a resounding NO!!!
So we started researching other alternatives. Maybe some of those ebay competitors might be a better option for us.
Check out the ebay alternatives below and vote for your favorite! What do you think?

Links to other articles and threads about ebay alternatives

more info about what other sellers are doing

CNN Money article: Bidville and beyond: great article about alternatives to Ebay. Read the follow-up blog as well. So many great comments from ebay users exploring alternatives:
http://fsbfeatures.blogs.fsb.cnn.com/2008/02/06/ebay-rivals-circle-vulnerable-auctions-kingpin/
wonderful thread related to CNN article: great reaction thread to the CNN Money article
Digg.com replies to the Griff rebuttal about ebay feedback changes: great to read all the users replies to Griff's rebuttal about the new Ebay policy changes
Powersellers Unite: alternatives to ebay how are they doing?: Cool section of the powersellersunite website where you can see how the Ebay rival auction sites are doing in terms of their numbers!
Pheebay.com: AWESOME discussion website for ebay and alternatives to ebay! still exploring this one
Us News and World report article on alternatives to ebay: short and simple article on 3 alternatives to ebay
ezine article about alternatives to ebay: good ezine article about alternatives to ebay
mac forum thread about ebay alternatives: short but good thread on alternatives to ebay
blogging stocks: read about the upcoming proposed ebay strike
*****Feb. 18 to 25, 2008*****
from some members and a great discussion thread follows
cool calculator to determine if the fee changes will cost or save you money: good website for researching auction sites
WOW-WATCH THIS!!!!: great youtube video about why buyers AND sellers should consider leaving Ebay for good!
And more info about the strike:
Feb 18 to 25.
Australian blog site with some strong anti-Ebay opinions: Funny Australian blogger with some strong anti-ebay opionions! Great list of alternative auction sites too.
Funny but use of the F*** word so don't visit if you are easily offended.

Alternative auction site list

here is our ongoing list of alternative auction sites to ebay. still in the process of researching more...

ecrater: 100 percent FREE online store site that caters to sellers. Simple format but still in it's infancy. Has potential. My current favorite because it's free and the most simple to use.
onlineauction.com: another alternative to ebay
wagglepop: cute alternative to ebay. still very small in terms of numbers. The best and most supportive community...lots of ex-ebayers here!
Plus I love the format...very ebay-like but better! Low start-up cost 9.95/month.
But what is with that name? They should buy a better domain name and point it to wagglepop.
ioffer: interesting site where you can upload your feedback and listings on ebay so you don't lose them.
bidville: another alternative to ebay
ebid: another alternative to ebay
bidtopia: an auction alternative to ebay. Nice .99 cents auctions! Founded by Bargainland Liquidation, a company that was the largest eBay seller in 2007.
blujay: another alternative. Don't know much about this one yet.
tazbar: another ebay alternative with promise.

One sellers story, Chapter 5: Total ecommerce independence - the next frontier!

the only question was how?

Although we are still in the process of exploring alternatives to ebay (see link list), so far we have found the competition lacking in terms of numbers. Although this may change, we find ourselves looking more and more towards
*******TOTAL ECOMMERCE INDEPENDENCE*******
Doing it ourselves and keeping 100 percent of the profits! Minus web hosting fees, of course.
As we see it, there are 2 major obstacles in our path:
1. Driving Traffic to our site. If we don't get enough traffic to our website, we will still be in the same boat as we were with our ebay store: NO hits means NO sales.
Although even if we don't sell things right away, we can still list hundreds of items for sale for just the cost of maintaining our website (practically free these days).
2. Managing the organization of it all. There are so many people doing this already that you can see tons of examples of people doing it well and people doing it poorly.
Here is a good one we like:
http://www.vintagevixen.com/
simple design, lots of great product and prices seem reasonable too.
she has done a good job with her meta tags and keywords so that when people google "vintage clothing" she is the 2nd listing! awesome!
Back to our point: how to design a website to sell something in a simple and effective way?
WHEW that's a big one that might require a completely new dedicated LENS! ;)

In the meantime, check out these great links for more info on this same topic: looking beyond ebay.
Thanks for reading our story!
Good luck to you in whatever you decide to do!

More resources: great books about selling online beyond ebay!

because exploring the alternatives is fun

Selling Beyond eBay: Foolproof Ways to Reach More Customers and Make Big Money on Rival Online Marketplaces

by: Greg Holden

Amazon Price: $17.05 (as of 11/30/2009)

osCommerce Webmaster's Guide to Selling Online: Increase your sales and profits with expert tips on SEO, Marketing, Design, Selling Strategies, etc.

by: Vadym Gurevych

Amazon Price: $39.20 (as of 11/30/2009)

Selling Online: How to Become a Successful E-Commerce Merchant

by: Jim Carroll, Rick Broadhead

Amazon Price: (as of 11/30/2009)

How to Make Money Online with eBay, Yahoo!, and Google

by: Peter Kent, Jill Finlayson

Amazon Price: $25.60 (as of 11/30/2009)

How to Make Real Money in Second Life: Boost Your Business, Market Your Services, and Sell Your Products in the World's Hottest Virtual Community (How to Make . . .)

by: Robert Freedman

Amazon Price: $16.46 (as of 11/30/2009)

alternatives to selling on ebay

exploring alternatives to selling on ebay? You are not alone.

One seller's story, Chapter 1: in the beginning ebay sounded great

but we soon found out it wasn't easy...

One Seller's Story, Chapter 2: determined to make it work on Ebay

researching and improving our business model

One Seller's Story, Chapter 3: Studying the Ebay competition

what do the most successful Ebay Powersellers have that we don't?

Check out this great book as a resource for Ebay alternatives!

One sellers story, Chapter 4: Exploring alternatives to Ebay

where we are now: investigating the alternatives

Links to other articles and threads about ebay alternatives

more info about what other sellers are doing

Alternative auction site list

One sellers story, Chapter 5: Total ecommerce independence - the next frontier!

the only question was how?

More resources: great books about selling online beyond ebay!

because exploring the alternatives is fun

What is your favorite alternative auction site to ebay?

vote for your favorite or suggest a new one!

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More great resources about selling online with or without ebay

because everybody needs a little instruction!

What do you think? To Ebay or NOT to Ebay?

Stick with ebay or leave?

Yes, I'm sticking with Ebay!

No, I'm going solo!

Upset says:

Gravel says:

LDBidz says:

Renagade says:

tjs says:

Have you decided to try selling on your own: complete ecommerce independence?!

If so, check out these sources if you want more info about website design!

Some great resources if you've decided to stick it out at Ebay

Even more resources for building your own website if you've decided to try branching out on your own!

Chapter 6: GOODBYE EBAY!!!!!!!!!!

Closed our ebay store today and went fully independent! Add your own links!

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