posted on June 25, 2001 06:37:20 PM new
Us small users made ebay a success. It was a good deal when it started. Now ebays getting greedy making it hard for us small guys to make money or promote our little businesses, Raising fees - People are already leaving in droves or /at least actively looking for a site thats as good as ebay when it first started.
posted on June 26, 2001 03:16:10 AM new
So I won't sound promotional, anybody wanting to know about a new guy on the horizon please email me at [email protected] Of course, it remains to be seen if this turns out to be the answer to our prayers. Especially like to hear from you Dottie.
posted on June 26, 2001 05:32:40 AM new
Dottie's pushing SYI so hard is not entirely altruistic, she's in it for the money:
From SYI: "Any new member signing up at SellYourItem.com using a currently registered member's ID as a referral will receive a $10.00 credit to their seller account. The referring member will receive a $5.00 credit to their seller account as well."
Edited to add: *smile*
[ edited by capotasto on Jun 26, 2001 05:35 AM ]
posted on June 26, 2001 07:40:31 AM new
Thanks for the info Dottie. Checked it out this morning and signed up. It's a nice site--very much like e-bay's in use, so I don't have to learn a whole new routine. However, since AW began charging so much to host my pictures, I keep mine at another site now. How is this going to work when listing on sellyouritem? My other site will automatically send things to e-bay, but sellyouritem isn't listed.
posted on June 26, 2001 07:55:38 AM new
Question for frodoXII --- Were you able at all to question "John" about all those links the mega-sellers still have?
Perhaps John was unaware of this link situation, and should have been using his time more wisely by calling IBM or SUN?
Another question I have is why is ebay so afraid of ePier anyway? Those jerks at [email protected] ended one of my auctions (a rare auction at that --- it had a bid!) because I accidently left in my description the sentence "Please check out my other interesting collectibles on ePier"
This mention of epier in my ebay auction was simply a cut and paste error, I would have gladly fixed had it been brought to my attention. Yet ebay considered just the word "ePier" to be a "Link to another auction style online site."
So if its MY auction, just a single "word" constituts a "link" but on other auctions REAL LINKS are somehow not links.....
posted on June 26, 2001 08:36:55 AM new
I've been phoned as well for selling Nazi insgnia WW2 material because I was turned in by a fellow ebayer. What pissed me off is that there were 8 identical objects like mine up on ebay at the same time that were not ended. Letting users turn in each other is really creepy, and lazy of ebay. Either a policy is a policy and they police it, especially when the new policy is brought in, or they don't. I never considered myself the sort to turn in fellow ebayers, but I can understand why someone might. After all, there are a lot of pissed off ex-ebayers out there, and if they did nothing but turn in fellow ebayers for violations of selling contraband items or URL links etc. They might be thinking they will get enough of an audience to say screw you ebay and move to another site...
posted on June 26, 2001 09:11:19 AM newdottie "Actually including EXISTING Accounts that have an eMail address or website url as their User I.D. in the (possibly upcoming policy on User I.D.s?) - which would FORCE Users with ESTABLISHED BUSINESSES using their eMail address or website URL as their eBay User I.D., to take on "NICKNAME" User I.D.s if they wish to continue trading on eBay.."
Then ebay should clear out "dead user names" to free up it's capabilities of finding new nicknames. Ebay sits on dead weight for a good reason. It makes them look good in the "how many users we have" department...
Good post folks..
[ edited by Empires on Jun 26, 2001 09:12 AM ]
posted on June 26, 2001 09:26:52 AM new
did some research....
Out of the first 500 listings ending within the next 4 hours, 7 items had one bidder each. Out of "a sellers" 65 listings, some ending today, some in 4 days, 0 bids. I think I will stay with Ebay for now, but may post non sellers over there, just to have somewhere to "park" them. I will check back though.....
posted on June 26, 2001 10:23:11 AM new
capotasto: I understand your concern for why I might be "pushing" SYI... but truthfully, the referral credits are worthless, if the site doesn't continue to grow - which means more sellers offering quality items at reasonable prices and BIDDERS to browse and BUY!
I'd gladly give up my accumilated referral credits (and even asked about that on their Support Q&A Board a couple weeks ago) as an incentive for more folks to REGISTER and USE THE SITE.
Unfortunately, the referral credits are NOT transferrable... so I was not able to donate any portion of them toward an incentive listing or buying "contest".
However, I also admit that SOME of those credits have come in handy for paying my FINAL VALUE FEES on iems that ended successfully with WINNING BIDDERS! AND... I have used some for purchasing a front page ad to run for 30 days for the cost of $20.00 (what a deal - but something I could easily afford even without the credits).
Thanks for the reminder... I need to go UPDATE (RENEW) my front page ad on SYI because I think it expired a day or two ago.
posted on June 26, 2001 10:50:05 AM new
Rustybore:
No, I didn't ask John about the mega-sellers. But after I hung up the phone I went straight to eBay to check it out. That's when I saw all the Big Boys' auctions, with violations up the kazoo. At that point I got really angry and decided to write eBay off. It's clear they no longer want us small sellers, even though when eBay needed us (in the beginning) we were there.
As for why they are so afraid of other sites like Epier: eBay, the online auction Goliath, is trying to establish a monopoly by driving out the newcomers and smaller auctions sites. Just like Microsoft and it's battle with Netscape, eBay is not going to get away with it.
posted on June 26, 2001 04:28:20 PM new
Hi Dottie, thanks for the info.
If your last post states your motives correctly, pehaps you and others who feel the same could donate their accruing commissions to an advertising fund for the site.
Even though they stated that such incentive payments are not transferrable, perhaps they might be inclined to hear about such an idea if were suggested.
posted on June 26, 2001 06:42:57 PM new
long_gone: *smile* Well, my referral credits wouldn't amount to even a drop in the advertising/marketing dollars bucket... (relatively speaking, of course) so if they don't have a better plan than THAT.... I'm afraid my SYI credits wouldn't be of much use to ANY of us.
But hey... they'd be welcome to 'em...
In the meantime, all we can do is diversify by trying other venues... each of us should do what we're comfortable with, and that can vary depending on the individual.
posted on June 26, 2001 07:49:04 PM new
Dottie, I suppose you're right. But perhaps they (or one of these new sites) might take the hint that if the\y're going to succeed, they NEED to advertise, somewhere, somehow and that even the sellers, thousands of them who are desparately hoping for another site to emerge and compete, even in any small way with ebay, know that they will have to reserve some capitol for advertising. For the life of me, I can't understand the mentality of all these hopeful sites that seem to think that they can do it the way ebay did it by slowly growing from word of mouth until they snowball into a monster site. Everything was just right at the time for ebay to do it that way, but its's soooo unlikely for it to happen again. Its just not the same climate for it. Things have changed drastically.
It's like seeing your neighbor win the lottery, and then going out and taking every dime you have and every dime you talk people into investing in you and buying lottery tickets convinced you can do the same thing your lucky neighbor did.
Anyway, I've taken to selling at the flea markets again, selling good to fine quality merchandise, with an eye for the artistic, unique and unusual. I've been doing quite well. I reseach most of my items and check any price trends on ebay first of course, and decide where it would sell best. If I think I can come within 20% of what I should be able to get for it on ebay, It goes to the market. INFINATELY less touble to sell it there than on ebay. NO DEADBEATS and no shipping hassles. And it has been ebay and their antagonistic, anti seller policies that has driven me to re-discover the markets. There is also the added dynamic of being able to buy as well and take advantage of having a close pulse on what is happening at these places and obseving the buying tastes of different regions in my state. There are some huge differences.
I will also be opening a web site next month. Another move thankfully forced on me by ebay. I have been hoarding a certain theme of merchandise for several years. My plan was to sell it on ebay and make it my main genre of material. Then ebay started to fall apart with site instability, fee's for reserves, closed their live help boards, coddled big buisness with double standards in their policies and, well... you know the rest of the downhill ride they gave us small sellers. So I decided that I'd open a web store and promote it in my ads with the similar types items I would offer on ebay. Now they're closing the door on that.
I'm considering using another auction site just to promote my website in the ads, so viewer traffic is just as important to me as actual buyers. To which I say once again, Thanks for the tip.
Fondo, sorry for the (long) off topic speech. I have to say though, that directing viewers to another, competing auction site has ALWAYS been, an understandably so, against the rules at ebay (and the other few auction sites that I have read the terms of). That it was a cut and paste error is really no excuse as you shouldn't have composed that sentence to cut and paste for an ebay or any other site's ad in the first place. It boils down to you getting caught and having some auction weenie turning you in! Not sitting in judgement mind you, just an observation. I'll probably use links myself in my ads when I get my website finished, until I get caught too.
Good luck.
[ edited by long_gone on Jun 26, 2001 07:52 PM ]
