0ctavias0fferings is pleased to participate.

To check out all my other lenses click here and visit a lens which I've set up to make life easier.

I love Squidoo lenses. I think they're a great way not only to advertise your wares but also to give readers a deeper insight into what goes into creating everything I do.

Go on, you know you want to.

'Shake-up' for internet proposed

Pretty soon you might be able to have a domain based on your business name. The article highlights some interesting possibilities.

When I first started on eBid I had some sales but a bunch of us had gone over from eBay at the same time and my sales and purchases were mainly, but not exclusively, with these recent ex-ebayers. Again, it wasn't all plain sailing but glad I stayed with it in light of the improvements since made to the site :-)

It was soon clear, however, that if I wanted to sell online through an auction style outlet, I was going to need to search around for what works where. I soon discovered that there are hundreds of auction style sites out there of varying quality.

The second site I decided to list on was Tazbar. I found the ethos and friendliness of the site under Lee Markham's guidance, added to the ease of use and navigation was really refreshing and it's certainly a site worth trying but I no longer sell there. In fact I closed my account out there just very recently because of a number of changes (IMO not for the better) in the management style, look and functionality of the site and, most importantly, in the ethos. This is my choice and my opinion. Sales on there were not great for me, far from it, and it seems that the meteoric rise of Tazbar after its initial launch has now levelled at a relatively (compared to eBid) low point.

I think Tazbar was in some senses very lucky that the launch of the site in August 2007 coincided with a very large fee hike from eBay and a number of disgruntled sellers migrated to Tazbar because of that. There was also a huge marketing campaign on UK TV stations which did bring people to the site and they signed up as buyers and sellers ... when they could.

The responses to the advertising campaign were seemingly underestimated and frequently the site was freezing under the pressure of visitor numbers each time an advert was aired. This shows one of the greatest dangers in marketing, can you be sure your bandwidth will cope? Servers were upgraded but the site struggled to cope with rushes of visitors.

Now, I don't know about other people but if I visit a site and it doesn't load fairly quickly, I ditch the page and move on. The beauty and the curse of the web is that there is always another site out there to explore and I, for one, get impatient to move on to the next.

There is considerable discussion of Tazbar on the Pheebay forums (it has a dedicated forum as do a number of other sites) which you may wish to read if you are considering Tazbar as an outlet. It has certainly proved fruitful for some individuals.

There have been some changes at Tazbar and some improvements to site load time etc but I no longer sell there so I would recommend that anyone interested in listing there should check out the site for themselves and take a look at the forums to get a feel for how Tazbar operates these days.

I next tried listing on two small auction sites, Dealgates and Bidz.org.

Dealgates is run by entrepreneur Luc Michalski and is based in France. His press release in January stated "DealGates.com is a new generation marketplace offering to buyers the opportunity to find the best deal by comparing auctions, instant deals, classifieds ads published by individuals, and catalogs of most famous E-Merchants from USA." More information here

There were a number of glitches encountered when listing first at Dealgates but, to be fair, Luc was very good at helping to iron these out and for some glitches there were workarounds anyway.

I like the look and feel of this site but didn't put my full inventory there so can't really say what performance is like. I appreciate the idea behind it, bringing into one place many sites and parking smaller independent traders alongside.

Luc has made further improvements to the site. I like the ideas and the direction.

Bidz.org - not to be confused with other bidz sites - is also one I initially liked and I was impressed with the representative who came to the Pheebay forums regularly to keep us updated. Something changed and we haven't seen him for a long time. I tried contacting the rep and got a reply from someone else. The site itself seems to run reasonably well though it did suffer some unexplained downtime and it looks like whoever is in charge now doesn't have time to communicate with users.

Again, I didn't have my full inventory on the site so can't really judge how it performs but page views have been disappointing at both of these sites so far.

16th September 2007

Unfortunately, Bidz.org has been offline for some time. It is now back up and running but, as I like my sites to be reliable, I will not be relisting there for the forseeable future.

24th April - An Update on Bidz.org

In the last few months, Bidz.org first became the European arm Of Plunderhere and subsequently the news was out that the owner(s) of Bidz.org had purchased Plunderhere.

Plunderhere is not a site with which I am familiar.

This site runs smoothly and listing, for me, has been easy, fast and totally painless for listing etc.

I'm liking what I see in terms of the changes which have been made since the change of ownership. The site has a fresh new look which I find very attractive and is easily navigated.

I have my fingers firmly crossed for this site as the new management have really taken the overall performance of the site up a gear.

Keep watching YHB :-)

Everything you could possible need is there and the fees are very reasonable. Everything works well and efficiently. You can include up to 4 photographs in your listings, choose whether you want the item to appear in store, auction or both, gallery pics are included, html is a dawdle to add / alter and I can't really fault the site in any way.

Communication with the management is fast and easy and items can be listed for up to 3 months with options to relist automatically up to 6 times, giving you the option of up to 18 months for your items to remain on the site.

Also available is an option to auto-relist if the item sells. This is very useful for me with my cards and I wish it were all as easy as this at other sites.

I really recommend that you pop over there and take a look. Copy the following url and paste it in your browser address bar to see my own YHB store ...
http://www.yourhighbid.com/shop.php?user_id=90

During the week (9th to 16th September) my YHB store was one of two featured stores of the week, all publicity helps.

Unfortunately, nice though the site is, it has not performed for me in terms of sales and therefore on December 5th all my listings will be ending and will not be renewed.

I wish the site every success and if the traffic picks up I may well relist my items.

WantOneGotOne.com is a new auction site, officially launching on September 1st 2008.

I have reviewed this site while it is still in beta test mode, it will be interesting to watch developments.

You can find my review here WantOneGotOne.com review.

If anyone wants to add their 2c you can leave comments via the box on the WantOneGotOne lenspage. It would be especially useful to other sellers looking for a new online home to have a variety of opinions available.

An update from WantOneGotOne.com
WOGO featured listings are now enhanced (using Firefox only).

The WOGO toolbar is now available, and the classifieds are also now fully operational.

Competitions to win WOGO goodies will start on 1st sept and we featured on Heart FM radio in the UK last sunday on a piece about eBay alternatives.

Additional confirmed advertising -

Brighton Pier (banner)
Aberystwyth Promenade (banner)
Birmingham half marathon (October - banner)
Coventry donkey derby (banner)
August bank holiday Family&Food show at NAC (banner)
Chessington World of Adventures (car park banner)
Christmas World at NEC and Manchester adverts on 3 sponsored rides

In progress ...

Affiliate system
Arcade and shoutbox for forums
Fix RSS feed issues.

Since ceasing to trade on eBay Inc months ago, I've looked at a number of 'other' auction sites, most are free to list on, most have very low final value fees, most even seem to be based on the same software but none stands out as a potential rival to eBay Inc.

Even the most successful of the alternatives pales into insignificance beside the giant.. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Do we really want another eBay? Most wannabes turn into scam ridden sites full of fake designer goods where you still run a risk of being hijacked and cyber-mugged if you try to buy anything of high value.

On the other hand, find yourself a specialist site, where collectors trade, and you've found yourself a community, all interested in their subject and usually far more knowledgeable and helpful than you would find on a general auction site. Small is beautiful, because the users are a community, interested in protecting their community, you will rarely find a scam on a specialist site.

In the real world, if you want to buy certain items you visit specific stores, the internet should allow you to place all those stores in your personal virtual High Street instead of them being scattered all over town, yet that facility isn't readily available.

Why not? Oh, sure, you can add various sites to your favourites list but first you have to find them and it isn't always easy. Some site owners know nothing about search engine optimisation and think all they need do is publish their site and people will come, it isn't quite so simple and many good sites out there in the wilds of the web are completely overlooked.

What can be done to remedy this? Well, a good place to start is by taking a look at the mechanics of the Summer Solstice Blue Moon promotional event being co-ordinated by Pheebay.com. The plan is to link many of the smaller auction sites and sellers together in one virtual 'place' and use the combined energy of the many to generate the publicity to grab the attention of the buying public. It's a good place to start but why stop there? Why not make these links more tangible, more permanent and not only continue the joint marketing but also the single page portal to a range of sites and sellers?

It makes so much sense.

... continued below ...
Visit the Pheebay.com forums

Make links between sites more tangible, make them permanent, continue the joint marketing and the single page portal to a range of sites and sellers and you have the basis for what I would like to see.

Why not go a little further and group them into areas of interest, the soft furnishings and home décor 'district' perhaps, the cards and gifts 'mall' and all the better if there are specialist auction sites within the various 'precincts'. Then enable the buyer to select from each area the stores in which they are most interested and let them personalise their High Street or Mall with only the stores/sites they want to see.

It isn't a huge leap of technology to implement this and enable it to display in a comfortable visual form, the technology already exists, so what has prevented this from happening?

Although many ex-eBayers, myself included, openly admit that had it not been for eBay they would probably not have started selling on the internet, it was through eBay they discovered the ease and the pleasure with which it can be done, but what many don't even realise is that the prevailing attitude on eBay of sellers towards other sellers is adversarial and highly competitive. Whilst many find freedom from selling on eBay, they carry that attitude with them, seeing only rivals and competitors where there are, in fact, allies. EBay has introduced many individuals to business but not necessarily to the best business practices.

By forming co-operatives with similar or complementary sites so much more can be achieved in terms of web-presence, by combining such co-operatives under a single banner, the individual's web-profile becomes so much greater than if they were alone.

Why shouldn't it be possible for the many to set aside their minor differences and come together in their combined interests to promote the variety of shopping experiences available across the world wide web?

Think of a thousand sites linked together, small sellers and large, full sites, simple landing pages, general auction sites and specialist auctions, all linked, all found under one banner.

Many markets with one voice, how strong would that be.

Visit the Pheebay.com forums

If you don't know the basics of SEO then take a look at this and see if it helps :-)