posted on October 24, 2000 09:27:29 PM
I have considered selling at other sites, in addition to eBay. But whenever I check them out they have no bids in my catagory or my wife's. I would love to try others but I dont see the volume eBay gets, and I think if you have a regular base of sellers they will bid.I hate the outages, like everyone else, I hate the slow gallery listings, and eBay is not the only way i promote my business. But this is what i do for a living, and have for the last 18 yrs. Ebay has just allowed me to sell more of what i already do, and will continue to do. i look at it as cheap advertising. i had 2 storefronts and they caused way more aggravation than eBay does, and cost alot more. But the big plus is. I can work in my boxers at 1 in the morning with a beer watching a bad tv rerun and still see my kids sleep! I will continue to hang on for those reasons alone!
posted on October 24, 2000 10:30:45 PM
I've found that yahoo works well as a place to park items that didn't sell on ebay. you list them there at a price you would be happy getting, and relist them when their time is up. if they sell, it's gravy. if it's not, you're not out anything. structure your listings so you can move them to yahoo with little effort. it's better than not listing them at all.
posted on October 25, 2000 08:09:26 AM
I do think that to be successful, you have to use other sites as well as ebay. A Merchant subscription on Amazon runs $40 a month for virtually an unlimited amount of auctions. Yahoo of course is currently free for at least 1000 auctions a month. You get exposure to a different audience at each site. I do quite a bit of international business with Amazon. Just started listing on Yahoo again due to the Ebay problems and will continue increasing my auctions until I hit the monthly maximum. I put links to my website in my ads or about me pages in accordance with the auction sites regulations, so I look at these other sites as a great advertising medium. All it takes is a bit of time, but is well worth it in my opinion.
posted on October 25, 2000 10:29:37 AM
Until now, I've been a good loyal dog for eBay but am considering in the back of my mind other sites as well as a backup...if there were a site that had eBay's traffic I'd be there in a heartbeat.
I've heard that yahoo has more deadbeats... anyone know different?
posted on October 25, 2000 11:27:39 AM
I know different.
Yahoo deadbeat problem was never as bad as has been reported and now that they have started cc verification for bidders, there are virtually none at all.
Thing is, even when I did have a deadbeat, it was no big deal. No fees lost and no NPB hoops to jump, so what was there to stress about in the scheme of things?
Most items sold on Yahoo is done using the bidprice feature. So dont be fooled by the lack of bids, because they are there, but they wont show up on general search. Its nice having a first bidder wins program.
posted on October 25, 2000 01:35:06 PM
If sellers posted to the other sites and let their bidders know they were listing elsewhere in addition to ebay (by placing links to all the sites they do business on in their emails,) all the other sites would have just as much traffic.
Even if it is just placing a minimal amount of items, maybe even a duplicate of an ebay listing elsewhere, it would help the other sites grow.
It is not smart to rely on ebaY for your income.
Make a presence for yourself elsewhere. Don't be afraid, you may be pleasantly surprised by the results
posted on October 25, 2000 01:52:24 PM
Love your idea of posting a link to other auctions but I am ashamed to say I do not know how to do that. Any advice. I list on Yahoo and edeal at present. If someone whould be kind enough to send me an email on this I would appreciate it, but I realize that is an imposition. [email protected]
posted on October 25, 2000 02:32:58 PM
grumteach - what I do is mention yahoo in my emails to my ebay winners. those emails are generated from saved boilerplate anyway, so it's no work on my part. example
etc, etc. I put it in my invoice and my shipping email. sometimes I write it on the bottom of the note that goes out with an item. I'm working on a pre-printed version that I'll include in every item going out.
The reason is that my yahoo sales, what ones I do make, are all profit, not just some profit. I would like to see more of them.
posted on October 25, 2000 05:15:40 PM
Hate to say this but to all who are looking for other sites to sell on outside of ebay but when you look at them you see no bids there is one sure garenteed way to see bids on one or more and that is to go there register and start bidding there. isnt this really how many of us started on ebay or yahoo we were buyers, started buying getting feed back seen how much it was costing us then though hmmm maybe I should sell look at the extra $$$ I could be makeing.
want to get another good site started decide which one and get a pack of people and just bid auctions there and list few items weekly till the bids and sales are going on auto pilot I know this sound over simple but honestly ebay only started with one interested seller who sold a few Items and the word spread fast.
on ebays frist day on line it was a site with a few item listed and no biding no different then any other newer auction site out there.
if you want something you must do something to get it the one thing any auction site needs is buyers so go take a bunch of friends and become buyer on one of these sites the more you buy the more who will list before you know it you have another good auction site but you must be a willing buyer to create a sucessfull place to sell your goods.
posted on October 25, 2000 05:24:55 PM
Yahoo and Amazon both offer "Take it prices" as on option. So many items wont have bids. They just get sold when the first person bids.
posted on October 25, 2000 06:11:59 PM
Gold's has also introduced a "Buy It" feature in the past few weeks as well.
I'm not familiar with the way Yahoo and Amazon's work, but the way Gold's works is interesting.
You set up your auction. If you decide you would like to use the "Buy Now" feature you name your price. If the bidding begins and comes within 25% of your "Buy Now" price, the "Buy Now" price is then bumped up so it will never be the same as the "current high bid". They only way to stop the "Buy Now" price from going up, is to use the feature.
It will be 25% higher than the current bid price.
posted on October 25, 2000 06:17:19 PM
Grumteach~~
Don't know how this got left out of my other post!
There are 2 ways to do a link to other auction sites. You could either do a link to the site itself, or you could do a seller search on yourself and copy and paste the URL into your email at the bottom as a signature line.
The more you promote where you are listing, the more traffic you will see from regular customers.
