posted on May 22, 2001 11:30:45 AM
I have been asked this several times so this is my answer!
(.1) I sell very well there. But latley sales have fall just like all auction sites this is the slow time of the year. Is sales up on any site at this time?
(.2) I buy their also. I have found alot of good deals and I like good deals.
(.3) The customer service is great I get replys from real people not a bot.
(.4) They are improving all the time.
(.5) I find it interesting that their listings have gone from 178,557 in Jan,31 2001 To about 609,000 a increase of 430,443 in only four months. I guess some people are selling and staying.
(.6) You have the freedom to talk on the chat boards the only thing you cant do is cuse.
(.7) The owners are very nice and have been in the online auction business for some time.
(.8) The Bidville community is very nice and helpful they do what they can for the new people.
(.9) The basic listings are free and no charge on imaging.
(.10) It is very easy to list and you have alot of options on the listings you can close them edit them auto relist them ect.
(.11) They have just given the members "a about me page." That is very helpful.
(.12) You can give feedback to good & bad buyers and blacklist the bad ones.
The bad points and ever site has them.
(.1) They need to advertise more. But the owners have said they have a advertiseing plan in the making.
(.2) Because you can freely talk they do get some bad eggs. But you find that everplace.
(.3) Need more buyers. But dont we all lol.
Bidville is a new site with what I believe to be a great future. The great BooHoo has fallen and the great Ebay is lossing ground. I think one of these new sites will step up and work for the sellers of online auctions and Bidville is the one I believe that will do it. Just my opinion. Have a nice buying/selling day.
"(.5) I find it interesting that their listings have gone from 178,557 in Jan,31 2001 To about 609,000 a increase of 430,443 in only four months. I guess some people are selling and staying."
It's really not that interesting
You keep confusing the fact that since BidVille has reached such a high number of listings in such a short time, they must be a success. I believe the success of any auction site would be better gauged by it's "actual" sell-through rate. This is something that Ed and Jenn will not, or can not tell us.
From where I sit, they have 609,000 items for sale that very few people are buying or even looking at.
Can you or anyone explain how a high inventory means a successful operation? In the real business world, having your shelves full of stock with very few buyers is a bad thing
Also, care to make a guess as to how fast this number would drop if BidVille implemented a listing fee?
posted on May 22, 2001 01:00:35 PM
RB, If Bidville started listing fees the listings would fall faster then if they were FVF how much I dont know? BooYoo thought theirs would not go below 500,000 but as we all have seen they went down as low as 125,000 that was a big drop from about 4 million to what they have today. What I am saying is buying must be going on for Bidville to be able to keep its sellers and even have there listings grow. People hate to hear it but my sales were as good on Bidville as they use to be BooHoo. But have realy slowed "like normal" in the last month or so. RB is sales up on any site even ebay? With all the free sites out there Bidville has been able to bring in sellers and keep them even you must say there must be a reason for that! Now like all the other sites Bidville and the sellers there need to bring in more buyers everything is in place for this site to take off and it will. It is the fast growing site on the net. Thanks for the reply.
I don't know if sales are up on eBay. All I know is that the categories I buy in (and sold in before the credit card rule came into effect) are very active on eBay and were on Yahoo (I don't go there anymore since they suspended me for ratting out one of their more profitable bootleggers!). There are hundreds of new items coming and going every day in these categories.
The same categories are totally stagnant on BidVille - same stuff listed over and over again with no looks and certainly no bids. Even the three items I did open up to look at (sci fi DVDs) are priced higher than retail at the B&M stores, and 2 of them aren't even DVDs
I hope you have better success with the stuff that interests you.
posted on May 23, 2001 07:42:12 AM
I have stoped listing in ebay for me the sales dryed up I relisted items that normal sell the first time around 3 times so I got tired of paying. Will wait till the winter and try again. I left BooHoo when they started chargeing to list FVF would have been OK but they choice not to go that way. I have found some very good buys at Bidville on Die-cast cars, toys, football cards starting lineups ect. And I must say am happy with the sales I have been getting. There is alot of relisting going on with ever site on the net some sites it cost to relist some sites it dont. Until Things pickup I would rather relist on Bidville where it is free. But that is just me. Hope you have a great day.
My own experience at [the unmentionable auction site], Bidville and ePier is simply item relisted.
eBay is another story. For the month of May (to date) I've listed nine items. First item with an opening bid of $9.95, sold on four bids at $15.50; second item sold on opening bid of $8.00; third item sold on opening bid of $4.00.
Ending this evening a fourth item has an opening bid of $4.00. The fifth item ends tonight; eighth and ninth items end next week.
The bottomline. eBay provides the traffic while the others have not. It would be great if one of these emerged to provide some stiff competition but it just doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime soon.
posted on May 23, 2001 08:24:47 AM
I have sold over 35 items on BidVille, so I am pleased with that. It isn't what I was doing at Yahoo, but you can't compare the two, because Yahoo is several years old and it was dead slow in the beginning too.
I also think BidVille has great potential! Honestly, the owners seem smarter to me than to initiate listing fees.
Dimview,
I also listed a few items on Ebay a couple of weeks ago. 2/3 got one bid, 1/3 no bids and none with multiple bids. Whooppee! If I am selling an item on Ebay and only get $5.00, I do not consider that very good. Afterall, I have my cost of the item, the time involved in listing (I do nice ads with pictures), follow-up with bidders who do not answer my first email, etc.... or who do not send money after 2 weeks, packing up the item, the cost of the packing materials, going to the post office (Gas and time) and then did I forget to mention the fees that I will have to pay on Ebay for this $5.00 item! This really does not impress me that much!
I have an HTML-template that the descriptions are simply typed into and scan the items that are also included. And, yes, it takes alot of time for what is a trickle of income.
Full time would be a colossal failure, but tolerable part time.
So its gotta be eBay. There doesn't seem much else that can be done.
The alternative, for me at least, is ZERO income ... heck, ZERO cash flow ... from all of these alternative auction sites.
posted on May 23, 2001 09:43:38 AM
Dimview, I have also made money on Bidville feb, mar, and part of apr was very good this month things have slowed put I still made some sales. I have shopped bidville and see some sellers doing alot better then me some as good and some worse. So some people are making money there. I would not try to make a living on any site at this time of year but Bidville dont cost me nothing so my prices are lower then at sites that charge fees to list, fees to relist, fees for images, and FVF and then try and controll what takes place between the buyer and seller I dont think so. I wish you luck and hope you make alot of money but dont feel you should run down sites that other people are doing Ok on. But That is just my opinion.
posted on May 23, 2001 11:39:17 AM
What the Ebay Cheerleaders (no disrespect - just did not have a better word), fail to admit, is that it is very, very slow on Ebay now, too! All one has to do is go read the ebay forum and you will see. This is not the time of the year for online auctions, I have been doing this for several years and see this coming, every spring. It pretty much dies after Christmas and picks back up again in the fall and that is on all auction sites!
posted on May 23, 2001 10:33:05 PM
I've sold about 100 auctions since January on Bidville. I like Bidville. It's real easy to use and it has some nice features for sellers.
I also like buying stuff on Bidville. I only buy basketball cards, and unforn. most sellers will place thier "top-notch" stuff on eBay. However, every so often I find a great deal on Bidville: Cards that would cost me 50%-100% more on eBay. It was like that on Yahoo! several years ago when they started out.
The only thing Bidville needs to do is add traffic. I'm sure it gets 1% of the traffic eBay gets. Most people just don't know Bidville exists even though it has to be top 5 in number of auctions.
posted on May 24, 2001 07:14:42 AM
Explain this to me, please.
How can Bidville attract sellers such that they gain 600,000 auctions in a short period of time, while at the same time attracting so few buyers.
The "link exchange" clearly isn't working. I've seen nothing to indicate that folks seeing the Bidville banner at other webpages are clicking it to visit. Is the Bidville banner even showing up on other webpages?
If the sell-through rate is around 0.15%, as it seems to be, then all but 900 of the current auctions were merely re-listed from last week, and the week before, and the week before that.
I am NOT saying these items are "junk", there's alot of good stuff with few buyers clicking around.
An example:
I saw one guy part with a record album for $1; that same album sold at eBay for $20 the same week.
posted on May 24, 2001 08:53:29 AM
I looked at a piece of electronics on BidVille. The seller has a 200 feedback so figured it would be a safe bet. I checked his FB just in case though. Turns out ALL 200 of his positives are all from the SAME buyer and are ALL for 2 cent sports cards.
Needless to say, I didn't bid!
Take a look of the regulars who post on their forums - it'll give you a good idea of the average mentality of most BidvIlle users
posted on May 24, 2001 01:42:36 PM
I'm a BidVille user and I like to think that my intelligence is more than slightly above average. I also don't think you can get the 'average mentality' of an auction site's users by reading the message boards, LOL. It's been my observations from a long time that many, many people go about their business of buying or selling and never post to any boards at all.
Anyway, before I get 'off topic' completely here I was looking at a few seller's auctions today and I was really surprised to see just how many bids some of them had. One seller in particular had some very nice stuff, bids on at least 33% of the auctions, and about half of those had multiple bids.
Basically the problem with any of the small sites picking up bidders is that so many people consider eBay the only game in town and refuse to list anywhere else. If the merchandise should suddenly dry up on eBay the bidders would have to go look for it elsewhere.
Unfortunatley, I don't think most people realize this and eBay's in a great position for handing out abuse. And they'll keep dishing it out and most people will just 'take it' because they see it as their only alternative.
I didn't move my listings from eBay because of the fees involved. I've never minded paying fees for using a service and felt theirs were reasonable. Granted, the extra 10 cents for 10-day auctions peeved me more than just a bit since 10-dayers are my favorites. What has irritated me enough to move my listings is all the new policies they keep cramming down everyone's throats, and the fact that people protest these changes and eBay just continues to push more. Instead of addressing important issues like non-paying bidders and sellers who're ripping people off, eBay puts in more bells and whistles. Bells and whistles are nice, but without stability to back them up they get downright aggravating.
Oh, granted, eBay does help when it comes to 'investigations'. They run sting operations on a regular basis. And if an unsuspecting person should happen to bid on one of those auctions during the sting operation and win and not get their merchandise, the bidder is SOL.
Oh well, I never should've started on this subject. I have laundry to do, and then get back to my doing something about what I see wrong instead of just moaning and groaning about it.
posted on May 24, 2001 03:00:21 PM
RB,
Take a look of the regulars who post on their forums - it'll give you a good idea of the average mentality of most BidvIlle users
*******, I think that was uncalled for! If you do not like it then why are you one of the regulars who posts there?
[ edited by deichen on May 25, 2001 06:47 AM ]
posted on May 25, 2001 09:32:53 AMwallypog wrote; Basically the problem with any of the small sites picking up bidders is that so many people consider eBay the only game in town and refuse to list anywhere else. If the merchandise should suddenly dry up on eBay the bidders would have to go look for it elsewhere.
I agree with the rest of your post except this part. I think what would happen if ebay's supply dried up is that bid prices would go up again. What bidville needs to do is some serious advertising. TV, radio and print. No one knows they exist, everyone in the world knows about ebay, Amahoo and Yahzon.
posted on May 25, 2001 04:20:40 PM
To a point you've very correct--prices on some items would go up. People are definately willing to pay more when there are only one or two of an item than where there's 20--the old supply and demand issue.
However, what I'm talking about is seriously drying up. I realize these smaller sites need to be promoting themselves and for whatever reason (it's completely beyond me) I don't see much promotion happening other than by the sellers doing what they can to get the word out.
