Looking for an alternative to eBay

1. Reasonable Fees - you can start selling with zero listing fees, just pay commission on sales; or go for one of the reasonably priced upgrades to get reductions in transaction fees, whichever suits your selling style.
2. Human Support - no droids, no dreadful cut and paste, no circling for days waiting for a human to finally read your bug report. The support team is friendly, efficient, helpful... and human! (Personal view: this alone would make eBid a great eBay alternative!)
3. Owners on-site - eBid's owners Mark and Gazza still watch over the day-to-day running, and actually appear on the forums to solve problems and approve changes.
4. Listen to users - yes, they really do, hence the "approve changes" above. You can ask for changes to be made to the site, and the owners will listen; alterations based on customer feedback are frequent.
5. Secure trading - eBid takes security seriously. All sellers have to register a card, even for the free accounts, so that identity verification can be carried out. Users are only allowed one account unless they make a personal request and make a case, part of eBid's strict protection against scammers and shillers.
6. Attractive site - okay, beauty's in the eye of the beholder, so this one's a personal view; but it's one that's shared by many happy users!
7. Default listings - eBid's "my defaults" area lets sellers create multiple default listings to hold standard information and speed up the selling process.
8. Ninja Lister - for serious bulk listing their unique Ninja Lister makes copying and importing of listings, and bulk alternations, easy and quick.
9. Bulk edit - if you need to make alterations to live listings, many changes are possible at the click of a few buttons via their great Bulk Edit function.
10. Friendly forums - spats and shoot-outs are strictly forbidden, and rarely even start (when they do, they're removed pronto) making the eBid forums a uniquely friendly and informative place. Sellers really do help each other out!

Whenever you start selling on an alternative site there are differences to be learnt, eBay habits to check. Having been there a while now I can tell you what the most common mistakes are in this regard. So when you start using the site, and I hope you will, watch out for these.

What are the rules that trip up the most people?

In an ideal world when using a new selling site one should read all the rules, check all the small print, and familiarise oneself with all the dos and don'ts up-front. The reality is that most people rush in keen to play with their new toy, and only find out about the differences from the sites they're used to when things don't work, or they get their wrist slapped for breaking rules. Both in the selling side of the site, and in the forums, there are various things you're not allowed to do on eBid that might differ from places you've used before.

So what are the eBid rules that most people break, albeit accidentally in many cases?

Do not post duplicate items. If you have multiples of something to sell, you have to do that as a "dutch auction". Note, there's nothing Dutch about it and it doesn't have to be an auction! On eBid the term is used simply to describe any listing with more than one item.
Do not put your contact details on view. You may not put snail mail or email address information in your listings, about me page, or in the forum. Your details will be sent to your buyers when they purchase and you are not permitted to make them visible within eBid before that.
Do not list banned items. These included knives and ebooks - the most common pair listed by mistake. The list of banned items is available in the help pages, but also includes a "catch all" of anything eBid deem unsuitable.
Do not put items with lewd or revealing pictures, or of an adult nature, outside the adult section. Even if your item is fairly tame underwear, for example, if the picture with which it is illustrated is considered OTT it will need to go in the adult section.
Do not pimp your stuff in the forums outside the plug forum, or more than the one-per-day quota allowed.
Do not put on messages warning viewers that items are offered elsewhere and might not be available when bought. If you offer it on eBid you're supposed to be able to deliver.
Do not post on the forum about items for sale elsewhere, or provide any links to other selling sites. No commercial links are allowed, even if the items in question are not currently available on eBid.
Do not post just to be offensive about eBid or other sellers. Rudeness, personal attacks, swearing and other playground behaviour is not tolerated and such posts (and often the entire thread) will be removed.
Do not "name and shame" when you've had a bad a experience - you can ask for help or advice about a situation, but "XYZ has scammed me, what a thief" will rarely see out the day.
Do not refuse to sell if the price reached is insufficient. That's what the start price and reserve price are for. Do not set an item to sell at a price you're not going to be happy with. If it sells, it sells, you can't say "I expected more bids".

That handful of rules probably account for the majority of the complaints about mysterious disappearances of either listings or forum posts. Follow the rules and I'm sure you'll find selling on eBid a pleasant and productive occupation.

This advice, and more like it, is available from my eBid Widgets Blog.

The first thing you need to know about selling on eBid is, of course, "what's it going to cost me?" The answer is... less than you expect! eBid offers a range of account types, with subscriptions running for a variety of periods, from weekly to lifetime. To avoid any danger of this going out-of-date, or of me transcribing fees incorrectly, I'll link you to the appropriate pages on their help section. When you're first signing up there's a couple of things that are worth emphasising, as they do occasionally get missed. 1. Subscriptions are recurring payments, and they keep running until you holler stop! That's easy to do via your "my eBid" section, but don't forget to stop it if you do decide it's not for you. 2. Basic listing is free for seller plus, but that doesn't include the extras - these are listed with costs every time you put something up for sale, but still people miss it, so watch those extras.

So, the registration FAQ gives you all the details about different account subscriptions, starting and stopping etc and can be found here.

The table of charges for listing, extras etc, explains all the fees (and they appear again when you go through the listing process) and it can be found here.

One of the nice features of eBid is it's partnership with Google Shopping. All qualifying listings are automatically uploaded to Google Shopping, you don't have to do a thing.

What listings qualify?
Qualification is generally given as "has a Buy Now price, has at least a day left to run"... but you do need to be aware that Google rules make it a little more fussy than that. Google only has a Shopping base for the US, UK and Germany and more recently France. So only those eBid items are uploaded. If you're in Canada or Australia, for example, eBid cannot upload your items to Google. Google won't take them. If your items are of an adult nature they won't be uploaded either. And Google also appears to have a selection of trigger words that cause them to refuse items, for example anything smoking-related. So if you sell collectible cigarette packs, don't expect them to show on Google Shopping.

How many characters is 250?
What does that look like? eBid's instructions for getting Google visibility is to avoid putting anything in the first two-hundred and fifty characters that does not relate directly to your item. That's exactly this much.

Note that references to Google Shopping, Google Products and Google Base are all talking about the same thing - the name changes from time to time, and depending on whether your looking at it as a seller or a buyer. They like to keep us confused!

Why not try it now? It's free, and easy to join
.

The following tips might assume you have a seller+ account - after all, it's great value for lifetime members so why wouldn't you? :o)

In no particular order:

1. Include a BuyNow price so that your item is uploaded to Google Shopping.

2. Include as many relevant keywords as possible in your title to help shoppers find your item.

3. Put some introductory text on your All About Me page to reassure your potential customers who may not be familiar with the site.

4. List as many and as varied a stock as possible - the more visible you are, the better your chances.

5. Always include a gallery/thumbnail picture; many browsers will not bother to open a listing if there is no thumbnail.

6. Offer discounts for shipping multiple items where possible.

7. Provide clear terms and conditions, particularly your returns policy.

8. Ship internationally and display all costs up-front.

9. Avoid all negativity, including bitter references to other sites.

10. Use reasonable durations on auctions (nobody wants to wait 30 days after bidding) with automatic reposts to reduce the admin burden.

11. Make good use of the five free pictures.

12. Choose the selling category carefully - misplaced items may be removed.

13. Keep your customers informed about where you're selling (but no spam!)

14. Use fliers, sticky labels, business cards in all packages you send out when selling from other, more expensive, sites.

15. If you can reasonably do so, adjust your prices a little to reflect eBid's cheaper fees so both you and your customer win.

16. Make good use of your five free eBid stores with categories and sub-categories to make browsing your items as easy as possible.

17. Use your Seller Notices to inform browsers of special offers.

18. Join in the forum discussions; be friendly, use a signature to promote your stuff (& the plug forum daily if you wish).

19. Review and refresh your listings regularly - if something's not working, change it.

20. Buy something: it will kick-start your feedback and show you how the purchase process works; invaluable when selling if your customers need help.

There are a variety of sites around the web that can help you use the eBid site, or sell online generally, as well as the help sections within eBid itself. If you look at the help section you'll find there's an FAQ featuring both text descriptions and "how-to videos" (HTVs). I hope you find the HTVs helpful, I made most of them myself! There's also my free help site featuring my unofficial FAQ and store directory. If you still need extra help after that, you are welcome to get in touch via my commercial tech site, where I offer help at very reasonable rates.

As I said, for me eBid has proved to be the best alternative to eBay, and by a pretty big margin, but not every site suits every seller. So where else can you list your items for sale? Here are a few ideas (in alphabetical order):

amazon
bonanzle
craig's list
ecrater
etsy
greenmetropolis
ioffer
play
zazzle

This lens was last checked / updated by Kim Andrews 13 April 2011