posted on June 6, 2000 07:17:29 PM new
I've been doing all of listings on eBay, and I can't complain.
However, recently, there's seems to be a sort of disconnect between sellers and eBay. Maybe it's just me or I'm grumpy.
but, on the eBay chat lines, now I'm beginning to see comments from buyers complaining about lack of customer service.
Now, I'm beginning to get worried. I loaded one up today in Yahoo...to try it out...
appreciate any comments...thanks blu
posted on June 6, 2000 08:44:11 PM new
I've done pretty well with Yahoo, and am happy with the free listings and the multi list feature so I can run an auction until sold. I wish yahoo had a better auction search engine as it brings up too many unrelated items. My hot sellers do just as well on Yahoo as Ebay. My poor sellers are a waste of money to list on ebay. So Yahoo definitely is a top contender, and I hope to do a permanate crossover soon.
posted on June 6, 2000 10:41:34 PM new
Well, I can't answer that question so far...
but all I can say is that I'm taking the plunge to Yahoo, so I'm about to find out!
I really have nothing specific to complain about with Ebay, and I have built up a great
reputation there, so it's hard to start all over again at a new site with no FB. On the
other hand, I don't like having "all my eggs in one basket" as the old cliche goes. Also, there are some weeks when my Ebay auctions that close with no bids eat up all the profits from my auctions that do. At the moment I'm a relative "newbie" at this auction game, & am still in the process of trying to figure out what sells vs. what's "junk". Considering I sold an old magazine on Ebay for $33.00- with TEN bids, no less- (I almost threw it away- glad I didn't!) but can't sell my truly stunning, new-with-tags $69.00 Liz Claiborne sweater for the opening bid of $29.99, I'm truly confused. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'd rather get paid a few dollars less per item on the things that I can sell, but just not lose money on the things that I can't sell. With that in mind, I'm giving Yahoo a try. We'll see!
posted on June 6, 2000 11:55:28 PM new
I think you'll find that Yahoo has a lot less people "looking" than ebay, and it can take quite a while before you sell something, but since you're not paying listing fees over and over and over til it sells (and no commission when it does), it's a definite plus for selling the less-rare and sought-after things.
You also have less seller COMPETITION on Yahoo--you're less likely to have six other people listing the same item you are (and at 99 cents opening bids!).
Since there's less bidding, sellers either put a reserve on the item to protect themselves or put what they want for it as the opening bid (the latter I find to be much more successful). Very few count on bidding to get the price up to full value from a low opening bid. That's why opening bids on Yahoo often seem so high (but ebay's getting that way since they started charging for listing with reserves).
If you don't have a reserve, be sure to put NR in your headline, since a lot of people won't even LOOK at reserve auctions these days.
The Yahoo search engine does have problems, and the categories in which to list are totally inadequate and often very strange (but that's a whole different topic), which combined may be part of the reason the bidding isn't better--bidders probably have difficulty FINDING some listings.
posted on June 7, 2000 12:08:21 AM new
I'm really in the opposite position, I sold a long time on Yahoo before trying eBay. As a newbie I didn't want to spend any money in case I had no sales. I did well on Yahoo for a long time then hits & bids dried up in March for my entire categories. I tried to see why all the bidders left & discovered a bunch of new sellers had taken over my main categories & had VERY high openings. I looked at it like a bidder, if I paged through hundreds of ending today ads & saw above retail pricing on most I'd think "forget this site, no deals here" and go elsewhere too. That's just my theory on what happened.
I decided since I'd done pretty well I could afford to pay eBay so I did. I'm only selling about 50% but for 5x higher bids than I ever got at Yahoo so it was worth it for me to make the change. I wish you guys luck though, I really do encourage people to try Yahoo (and bring your bidders with you, we need them!). For my further advice see the thread titled "how to attract bids".
posted on June 7, 2000 09:06:19 PM new
Listed my first Yahoo auctions today, and made my first sale before I even shut down the computer! This is REALLY encouraging! My auctions at Ebay are not doing so hot this week...well, except for one REALLY hot item...but I have some other "hot" items that don't even have bids yet, which is disappointing...so I'm keeping my fingers crossed over this whole Yahoo thing! I was browsing other sellers' Yahoo auctions looking for things to bid on (I wanna boost that 0 FB rating a bit so people aren't afraid to buy from me!) but was having a heck of a time finding anything I REALLY wanted. It does seem like you have to wade through an awful lot of junk, good stuff that is overpriced, and junk that is overpriced on Yahoo...I guess that's the price you pay for using a free site- there's nothing stopping people from listing junk or overpricing.
posted on June 8, 2000 05:01:40 PM new
Stuff on yahoo isnt really over priced I been listing there nearly a year now and like me you to will learn you have to start your bidding higher as inless your running reserve auctions you only get one bid on most of your items.
its hard to justify low starting bids of $1 or $2 on your items true enough it gets bid on but in my near year I have only had 1 Item ever get more then one bid after my frist list of losses I start my bids at what I need top make to break even at least.
on yahoo people look at reserve auction no problem they will even get many bids but most rarely meet the reserve price
what sells your item best on yahoo is there buy price many are willing to pay a bit more to end the auction now and not have to wait.
use yahoo like a store front its slower then ebay for some items but your listing free .
posted on June 8, 2000 10:15:21 PM new
Hi,
I've been selling and bidding on both Ebay and Yahoo for about seven months now. In regard to sales, I have only been successful on Ebay. I make sculptures and the opening bids cover only my materials - I leave it up to the bidder to price the rest - so the opening bids are generally low and I never go reserve. (I hate reserves as a buyer, so I don't do them as a seller.)
Yet, I have never made a sell on Yahoo but some of my sculptures went through the roof on Ebay. It makes me wonder about Yahoo's search engine and the traffic. The auction titles that get serious hits on Ebay, seem to get ignored on Yahoo. (200 hits on Ebay vs. 3 on Yahoo.) Are we playing by different sets of rules?
If something doesn't sell on Ebay, I will normally try twice - most of the time, it does sell. If it doesn't I will list it on Yahoo, simply because, as stated before, relisting on Ebay eats up profits. But, again, I have never sold on Yahoo. Yet, after listing an item twice on Ebay, then four times on Yahoo, I knuckled under and went back to Ebay. The item sold for a very good profit, (thank goodness!) much more than I ever expected. Go figure.
So if someone has any more hints on selling on Yahoo, I really appreciate it.
Cheers,
Celticlady2
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons...
For you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
posted on June 9, 2000 02:20:30 AM new
I would recommend using a "Buy Price - First Bid Takes It" on Yahoo. This is one feature eBay doesn't provide and attracts buyers who are tired of the bidding routine and waiting 3 to 10 days for the auction to end. If you set the buy price within the same price range the items are selling for on eBay you should do just as well on Yahoo and save yourself the fees. I'm not sure if this applies to all categories, but I've done very well with sportscards on Yahoo.
posted on June 10, 2000 01:49:10 PM new
I sell both on yahoo and ebay and have found it depends on what you are selling. Lot of help hey. Experiment with Yahoo it doesn't cost anything but time.
posted on June 10, 2000 04:19:19 PM new
Spreland - I agree.
If you can determine a fair price for your item, this is the best way to sell on Yahoo. 95% of what we sell is listed first bid wins. It is fair for the buyer, fair for the seller, cuts down on deadbeats, and of course encourages impulse purchases.
posted on June 11, 2000 04:00:30 AM new
CAgirl:
Check out the sellers club on Yahoo, like this board, many helpful experienced sellers-it is not exclusively for Yahoo, but does tend to focus on the Yahoo auctions.
One piece of advice given to me months ago, that works well is that you should treat Yahoo auctions more like a classified ad.
Set your bidding price at or close to what you can take for the item and put the buy price a few dollars or percentage points higher.
I find that 3 out 4 items I sell go at the buy price.
To arrive at a price for your item, search for it in closed auctions on EBAY-that's not a typo, and then you will have a base line.
You will find yourself relisting items and the ratio of non paying bidders still seems higher, so don't fret
Rick
http://viaastra.home.mindspring.com/
Explore our destiny in Space !
posted on June 12, 2000 07:49:32 AM new
They both have their pros & cons. The best auction house is different for each individual & really the best is the one that brins in the most buyers to your account. Color & ease of use is irrelevent. I say, the only color I know is green for money.
posted on June 21, 2000 08:50:56 AM new
Neither is better or worse. They are different in many ways, I use Ebay to sell items that I want to sell more quickly and I normally list my all my items on Yahoo first, and if they don't sell there,(I list there since it is free), then I move it over to Ebay for sale. I find Yahoo buyers to be repeat buyers and are very loyal. They also offer what I like to refer to as "free advertising" with their email alerts, that let me know when a reliable seller that I have done business with before. So if they have listed a new item, I either can watch it, and make a bid or just bid at that moment. I use auctionwatch to change items easily from one auction site to the other with minimal effort. I also use the new feature on auctionwatch which is also free to follow through on each deal, to give (hopefully), each customer the care and concern and attention they all deserve. After all, without their bids, I wouldn't be making any money at all. Never become discouraged, "invent" clever ways to move on and motivate people to buy your items, don't use the places to unload junk. In this case, you are know by the stuff you sell, feedback. Best of all, only sell or buy if you really enjoy bargain hunting. Enjoy!!!
posted on June 22, 2000 11:35:41 PM new
We sell on Yahoo and Ebay. There's no comparison. Our sales on Ebay run about 70%+ on first run auctions. Our sales on Yahoo are, at best 2%. I've pretty much given up on Yahoo and just use it to list stuff that doesn't sell on Ebay rather than to relist it. I always make sure to use a buy price because people will bid the buy price to end the auction early.
I have noticed that we have not had any auctions get multiple bids on Yahoo lately but our auctions almost always get bid up on Ebay. Thank heavens for the buy price option.
posted on June 23, 2000 10:31:02 PM new
C'mon!!! It depends on what yer sellin' and the demand fer it!
What is the demand for hand knitted knick-knacks vs a Spider-Man #1?
eGreed blows and Yahoo rules. I relist and relist and relist until it sells. As Kasmoon said on another thread it doesn't cost you a thing to relist!
From my experience the lemmings on eGreed have no sense of value. Bidders continually inflate the price of items. It's a house of cards waiting for a collapse. I have personally seen comics go for 20 - 30 per-cent OVER the price guide value. It will take decades for the market to recover from this irrational and illogical idiocy.
But when there is a REAL bargain for a couple-hundred dollars the idiots avoid it like the PLAQUE....or is it plague? Others following this site will know what I mean.
posted on June 23, 2000 11:41:24 PM new
Feistyone,
Sales on Yahoo depend upon what you're selling. Feistyone must not be your user name on Yahoo, since there are no listings and no feedback under that name.
If you're feistyone on ebay, then you're selling used women's clothing and beanie babies, which may not sell well on Yahoo (I don't know, since I've never tried to sell them).
But don't say "There's no comparison." Say "There's no comparison FOR US."
There are many dealers on Yahoo VERY SUCCESSFULLY selling antiques, books, collectibles, and a variety of assorted new, used, and vintage merchandise of all kinds. Some list on ebay, too, and find their sales better on Yahoo, not to mention their greater PROFIT MARGIN. For all I know, there may also be Yahoo dealers selling used women's clothing successfully, too, though YOU say you don't have any luck at it.
Could the fact that your ebay listings "almost always get bid up" be associated with a lower starting bid on ebay than you put on your Yahoo listings??? Yahoo sellers often DON'T COUNT on multiple bids to get the price up where they need it to be, so they usually START the bidding higher, which in itself discourages multiple bidding.
Your poor sell rate could also be attributed to the fact that you list your ebay "rejects" on Yahoo.
There's one thing I can guarantee, though....if your item gets one $3.99 bid on ebay, and it gets one $3.99 bid on Yahoo, YOU'LL MAKE MORE MONEY on the Yahoo listing than you will the ebay listing.
posted on June 24, 2000 11:22:26 AM new
granee, do you have numbers? Perhaps percentages of sales, percentage profit margin?
Designer clothing sells for more on Ebay, it behooves us to list it there.
Other clothing sells about the same on either, which is why it gets moved to Yahoo.
Ebay rejects does not mean the item is bad, it means (as with all auctions) that the right person didn't see it. Some great stuff hasn't been seen by the right person on ebay and has sold for the buy price on yahoo. We have also had bidders miss an auction on Ebay and follow us to Yahoo to bid on the item, which brings new bidders to yahoo. That can only be a good thing.
On Yahoo, I have found that designer stuff will more often go for the buy price as opposed to minimum bid.
beanie babies don't sell well on yahoo at all.
our researcher spends a lot of time on yahoo and doesn't see tons of bids, so numbers would be helpful.
Thanks.
posted on June 24, 2000 03:21:12 PM new
feistyone: no researcher anywhere will see many bids, alotta bidding activity at either Yahoo! or amazon.com, for you see, SO many sellers use the "BUY NOW" option, that the item disappears virtually immediately, before it has any opportunity whatsoever to accumulate bids.
posted on June 24, 2000 03:45:39 PM new
Very good point, there is a lot of buy now auctions. However, people who are selling there could give me numbers regarding percentages from their auctions. They would not have to be specific as to what they sell if they don't want to, just rough percentages. I would just like to hear from people about their successes. I like concrete evidence of people's claims.
I have had good success with sewing patterns and other sewing items on Yahoo as well as books and clothing. But my vintage barbie patterns will go to ebay, even with listing fees I will have a better profit there. Yahoo does take patience. Ebay has made it so I could have more time at home with the family, Yahoo allows me to feed my material, pattern & other crafty things desires while making a few extra dollars.
posted on June 24, 2000 04:29:16 PM new
feistyone - we sell successfully on yahoo. I have about 100 listings any given day. 70% of the items I have multiples of. Might have 2, 4 or more. The rest, 1 of a kind.
We sell through approx. 25 items each week, and I either re-list or replace sold items with new to maintain this level of listing and of sales. As I have written before, it seems to me that a seller can move as much product as they want to in this way. List 400 to glean 100 sales per week. Actually it would likely go up because of increased exposure. We sold 10 a week when we listed 50, 25 a week when we list 100 for example. We sell exactly as much as we want to sell.
We have sold on Yahoo since Jan 1 this year and what really kicked our sales into a higher gear was the one bid wins. We use First Bid Wins 90% of the time. The rest of the listings are straight auctions without buy prices. By trial and error this has gotten us the best results to date. Yahoo buyers are very loyal, much more so than ebay and selling "first bid win" gets you bookmarked like nobodies business.
radh is correct regarding statistics the buy price. Today I have 93 auctions up and 1 bid. 87 of them are one bid buys. The auction that has the bid, was bid within 10 minutes of listing. I can't complain.
Last, I should point out that we do not sell garbage on Yahoo, ebay rejects or whatever. We sell everything on Yahoo and everything sells. Also, since I have gathered that we have gathered a following, I work hard to offer up tasty items every couple days to keep our buyers engaged.
posted on June 24, 2000 07:26:15 PM new
feistyone: you stated,"However, people who are selling there could give me numbers regarding percentages from their auctions. They would not have to be specific as to what they sell if they don't want to, just rough percentages."
~ ~ ~
I don't know that this is "safe" for any seller to do..... I'm not being "argumentative", just kinda bringing up a sad fact of selling online. People who are successful selling online have complained in other forums of feeling that their product offerings are "stalked" by the competition, who then immediately copy them.
I had great success at the initial version of the amazon auctions, but even following me around with a magnifying glass, it would be difficult to know what I was doing, and infinitely more difficult to "know" what I was doing -- I was simply applying the common sense of what books a large segment of the population seems perennially interested in, NOT rare or distinctive or one-of-a-kind.
I doubt I've have even the remotest success dumping any of my books at Yahoo, for I believe that 1/2.com has irrevokably changed the course of cyber book sales forever. And I won't use 1/2.com in its current broken condition, and even if it weren't broke I wouldn't knowingly use any of the eBay's subsidiaries.
posted on June 24, 2000 07:51:52 PM new
VeryModern observed, "Last, I should point out that we do not sell garbage on Yahoo, ebay rejects or whatever."
~ ~
posted on June 25, 2000 07:18:09 PM new
feistyone,
Your designer labels sell better on ebay, so sell them on ebay....but please don't trash Yahoo because you don't find that market on Yahoo. Since you are finding Yahoo buyers for your ebay "rejects" (at the higher "buy price" that you don't want to pay ebay fees to list again, there must be SOME market for your clothes on Yahoo.
Since you've had bidders who "missed" the bidding on your ebay listing and then bought it on Yahoo, you understand one of the problems with ebay---they should never have discontinued the "free relisting once" policy. I, and many other Yahoo sellers, used to sell exclusively on ebay....but ebay got greedy and made selling more expensive for us, while the auction got larger and larger, and bids on everything but the rarest and most desirable items got lower and lower and lower.
Just as you move non-selling ebay listings to Yahoo, other sellers prefer to list on Yahoo FIRST, then move to ebay if it doesn't sell. Everyone does WHAT WORKS for them.
My "fresh" (first-time listed) items sell very quickly on Yahoo, then somewhat less-so the longer they're listed (though they seem to be periodically "revived" with selling spurts). Since it's not costing me fees, I don't worry much about whether it sells THIS WEEK, because it will eventually. Relistings on ebay often BOMB for me, unless I reduce the opening price to cost, with no reserve....so I prefer the free relistings on Yahoo.
About 6 months ago I listed identical books (of which I had multiples) on ebay and Yahoo at the same time, with lower opening prices on ebay (both to save on listing fees and to encourage multiple bidding), and I was dumbfounded to find the Yahoo listings FAR outselling those on ebay (and all FEE-FREE on Yahoo). I simply had far less competition from other listings, and less "give it to me for nothing" bidders on Yahoo than I did on ebay.
Those of us listing on Yahoo wouldn't BOTHER with it if we weren't satisfied with our Yahoo sales, even for free listings. We'd save ourselves the time and trouble, and list elsewhere. With Yahoo listings now well over one million, I'd say bidders are buying SOMETHING, or there wouldn't be all those listings.
[ edited by granee on Jun 25, 2000 07:33 PM ]
posted on July 29, 2000 09:01:41 PM new
I say Yahoo is better because they don't charge you any fees. It depends on what you sell and how much it is. Yahoo is the better why to cut cost but still get the sales.
that you don't want to pay ebay fees to list again, there must be SOME market for your clothes on Yahoo.