posted on August 13, 2000 07:38:13 AM new
As I recently became aware, the only way to post in zShops now is to sign up for the $40 a month program Amazon has. This gives you the storefront and possibly some other perks like featured seller exposure.
Comparing this to ebay, if I list 20 items a week in zShops, which comes out to about 80 per month, I would be spending the same amount if I listed on eBay using the gallery option (and assuming a $1 start price and .50 listing fee).
Though this is not comparing apples to apples and it does not take into the consideration the rebate received for bidding on features. Also, I do not know if they waive the FVF if you use one click as in the auctions. One of the questions I have is, are the sales there (in zShops) ? In any catagory ? Is there a way to tell ?
I put up a few items with reserves in the auctions, chose the 14 day period, and did no featured placement - almost no bids, a few, but lethargic. After a week, I bid on featured placement on each one-not to the top, but enough to keep it in the top 50 which is what the default number of items displayed per page is in any given catagory. Quite a bit more action -bids and a couple of the items are already at the reserve price, with a few more days to go.
Again, not exactly apples to apples, but telling non the less.
I'm going to try this again this week and see what the results are, I may, depending on the results, give the zShops a months trial.
I'd be delighted to hear other folks experiences in both the auctions and zShops.
posted on August 14, 2000 11:56:10 AM new
About a year ago I was having great success on Amazon. But it slowly declined. Eventually I was getting very few bids and a lot of those were deadbeats. Amazon is pretty good at refunding.
posted on August 14, 2000 12:22:39 PM new
I have a class of item which are geographically specific, and which take quite some time to sell. zshops wasn't cutting it for me, even at $10 a month. at $40 I canceled and have moved elsewhere.
However, I did what I'll advise you to do. Give it a full chance over a period of months -- consider the money you spend to be an investment in market / channel research. It'll be money well spent no matter what the outcome.
posted on August 23, 2000 12:21:19 PM new
What's really hurting Amazon are the attitudes of people like edfan. I've tried eBay, and Yahoo and other similar operations.
Amazon is still the best. Our sales are a bit down now because of the season, but they're increasing every day. I think the improvements they've made in recent months are great . . . and I support them.
posted on August 25, 2000 11:25:16 AM new
You are not thinking about using the best way of using Zshops. Instead of 20 items a week for 4 weeks, the best way is to put your entire inventory on Zshops (though with only one entry to represent multiple duplicates--there is a rule against duplicates). So for you selling one out of your 80 total listings on Zshops in a month would not be profitable. But for me selling one out of every 80 of my 2400 used books (in other words 30 books) is profitable. In fact I sold slightly more than 30 books last month on that site.
