posted on October 24, 2000 08:26:41 PM
I am a very disgruntled Ebay seller that is tired of their BS and fees...I have moved most of my auctions over to YAHOO...I am selling some things but it is a much slower process than ebay...
Although my items in some cases are getting twice as many hits as Ebay, bidding does not happen, in most cases, until the very end of the auction...and often sells at the opening bid price (if it sells at all)
I offer Paypal as an option but have been turned off by their new policies and will probably discontinue them. I am seriously contemplating PAY DIRECT and am wondering if any YAHOO sellers have seen an increase in bids when they use PAY DIRECT???
I have also been using my converted ebay feedback to highlight my Yahoo auctions, but alas...that seems not to help either.
Any ideas that might help me get some bidders on Yahoo? The merchandise I sell has been extremely well received on ebay(when they are functioning properly)...and while it seems that many ebay sellers have made their way to YAHOO...Where are all the YAHOO bidders?
posted on October 25, 2000 05:13:35 AM
Ditto. I suppose that lovely (new after my User ID isn't helping, but I'm not getting any hits (all but one are listed under my old Yahoo ID, cuz that's where I transferred my Ebay rating credit).
pickersangel everywhere
posted on October 25, 2000 06:00:32 AM
This is the deal with Yahoo...
By an large it is not an auction site. It is a place where you can put a large bit of inventory in a place where it will be seen, akin to a storefront in a mall.
People pass all day long and then someone comes along and buys something from the window. A seller does not expect to turn their entire inventory in a week or 10 days, and expectation like that is ridiculous.
We sell less than 15% of what we have listed EACH WEEK, and this is completely satisfactory. 100 listings gets you 10-12 sales a week. Want 20-25 sales? List 200 auctions. As a trade off for the slower pace, you will not be giving away their inventory for 10 or 20% of it's value which happens with significant frequency on ebay, and of course, ALL the money is yours to keep, no commissions.
Re: Paydirect, it is very popular (about 75% of our buyer's use) but part of the reason is likely because we do not offer paypal. I don't think accepting it is going to jump start your sales in some incredible way, but it certainly won't hurt, especially this time of year, and it supports Yahoo, which helps keep it free to sell.
posted on October 25, 2000 06:19:52 AM
I am very tired of Ebay and their outages at just the critical auction ending times! My sales have suffered and I just cannot afford to have Ebay go down at the critical last minute sniping and top of the listing times! With the fees to pay, I need to get all of the money that I can!
I was a disgruntled Yahoo seller too. Then, I checked out all of the newbie threads here and readjusted my listings to be more Yahoo "friendly".
I started phasing out PayPal with the announcement of the fees. I took the 4 weeks to begin looking at other online payment options that I thought were more stable. I came up with Yahoo! PayDirect and ExchangePath.
My customers switched over easily and both payment options are working smoothly and about neck and neck on payments. I am waiting to see what the impact will be now that ExchangePath has discontinued their $10 signing bonus program.
I think that PayDirect was smart not offering the signing bonus so that it could grow steadily and adjust as it slowly grew. Of course, PayPal has really helped them along recently.
I think that once you have read the newbie threads and adjusted, you will really like Yahoo Auctions, but it is quite an adjustment and well worth making.
Now, I just have to figure out how to make my storefront...
Good luck and welcome! People here have been very friendly and helpful.
posted on October 25, 2000 06:21:50 AM
It just occurred to me that part if it is our "Ebay mindset". We haven't adjusted to the fact that we can list on Yahoo! indefinitely and it won't cost us a cent. IOW, just make up a listing and resubmit it until you get tired of it, or the item sells. Very much like having an item on display in a mall or store! We're still thinking "OMG, it's been listed for a week and has no bids. It's not gonna sell and it's gonna cost me more $$$$ to relist. ACK!!!"
pickersangel everywhere
posted on October 25, 2000 06:32:46 AM
pickersangel - what you will soon realize is that selling on ebay is tremendously stressful. Terrific pressure, and all for nothing because you can get the same results on Yahoo and spend the time you used to check your ebay auctions all the time, to paint your toenails or whatever else you can figure out.
Very simply, it is a better way to live, and that's no $$$$.
posted on October 25, 2000 08:50:26 AM
It definitely seems like you need lots of listings to get the volume of sales, but people do buy. I intend to put up a whole lot more listings and just wait them out.
Patience!!!!
posted on October 25, 2000 09:02:50 AM
I'm in the process of uploading all my Inventory items from AW (stuff that didn't sell on Ebay, some of which I really thought would) to Yahoo!. It can sit on Yahoo!'s auction servers for free just as well as on AW's Inventory server, and at least someone can see it there.
pickersangel everywhere
posted on October 26, 2000 08:42:39 AM
pickersangel, just remember you won't have a "thumbnail" photo in Yahoo's "Show only photos" gallery viewing unless you upload the photo directly onto Yahoo (unless that has changed?).
I agree with VeryModern....gone is the EBAY STRESS, the checking on bidding all the time, the worrying about deadbeat bidders, the rules and Vero, outages.
Yahoo has its own set of problems (like poor categories and the new listing order), but only a tiny fraction of the STRESS LEVEL of selling on ebay.
Just open bidding at what you want for something with no reserve, list everything you have, check your "closed/sold auctions" list periodically (if you use the buy price), and monitor your email often to give fast customer service. Offer PayDirect, and create a "booth". I noticed last night that Yahoo is putting "Featured Sellers" booths on some category homepages.
posted on October 26, 2000 09:50:08 AM
Not really Keziak.
Half.com has media, Yahoo has everything, almost 3 million unique items.
Also, MOST people (not around here, but at large) do not use a buy price, never mind first bid wins, because they just can't shake the ebay way, and they don't come to a board like this where people share good ideas.
Thanks, by the half.com reference I just meant that at Yahoo maybe there needs to be more of a "list it, then chill out" mentality, compared to the "gotta get a bid before it closes" situation at ebay.
I am struggling with this because I find listing on Yahoo fairly time-consuming because of writing descriptions, plus I need a photo. So I WOULD like to see some action, and I am not sure why I'm not getting bids when the same stuff ends up selling on ebay. Meanwhile I have 100+ items on half.com and get 1-2 sales most days, no sweat.
I'll just have to decide whether it's worth the work to put that many items on Yahoo.
posted on October 26, 2000 11:26:00 AM
Gotcha Keziak, I misunderstood.
To be very candid, I think most of us who are doing well on Yahoo were DETERMINED to do well on Yahoo for whatever our personal reasons. We were going to make it work in this new land, come hell or high water, failure was not an option - and for many of us it has become the promised land.
Cheesy?
Maybe, but it's true.
posted on October 26, 2000 03:30:36 PM
Verymodern is absolutely right. List it at the price you need, and relist until that particular widget lover comes along. It is much less stressful-the buyers and sellers both seem to be less 'intense'.
And every month, when the Ebay bill DOESN'T show up on your card, do a happy dance!
posted on October 26, 2000 03:37:26 PM
"First bid wins" may make sense on yahoo for the quicker sale unless you are offering a potential bargain in a hot category where multiple bids is realistic, however the claim that it increases sales may be a superstition.
I just spent about 20 minutes sampling fairly random categories' closed listings and saw no clear correlation between successfull sales and "first bid wins".
It looks like if it will sell on yahoo! at a given price with "1st bid wins", then it will probably also sell without.
Another strategy many use is a buy price slightly higher than opening, with this even with only one bidder the higher price will often be accepted.
posted on October 26, 2000 06:41:02 PM
Thanks for all the helpful ideas.
I am going to put some of the tips I received to good use. I have one more question...
Has anyone found a particular time-slot that bidders seem to peak at...I know on Ebay Sunday night is huge (of course they usually can't handle the crush and the site goes down)
I was wondering is Yahoo more of a daytime bidding operation or are nights and weekends the peak bidding time.
posted on October 27, 2000 03:35:17 AM
you will get hits, bids, emails, and everything else at all hours, especially if you sell internationally. I have tons of international customers, in multiple time zones. It's FANTASTIC!
Also, you'll find a lot of moms shopping after the kids are in bed, at least I do. I get a lot of late-night email from all directions.
To be honest, the time at which your auctions end doesn't matter as much with the way things are currently displayed on Yahoo. Right now the default auction listing order seems to be based on some mysterious combination of seller feedback, seller sell-through percent, and number of bids the item has recieved. Customers CAN choose to order the way they view listed items differently, but many don't bother.
I have not seen that an auction's ending time matters much. (All my auctions are 1st bid wins, so bear that in mind.) I often have people close my auctions with a winning bid within 24 hours of having listed it. And most people who bid on & win my auctions do so well before the auction would have ended naturally. (Then there are those that have to be re-listed again & again & again...until they FINALLY sell...but that is another story. )
Like the girls have pointed out already, Yahoo is pretty different than Ebay. It takes some getting used to-it's like learning a new language or something. But it's very rewarding to learn it!
posted on October 27, 2000 10:22:05 AM
Hello to all! I also am a E-BAYer who is moving all of my items from E-Bay to Yahoo! I am also cancelling me PayPal account!
Anyway..I would like some help with something I do NOT understand. How do you move your E-Bay feedback to Yahoo?
I have never sold anything on Yahoo before and I thank all of you for what has been posted here, it will help me get started!
posted on October 27, 2000 10:27:26 AM
You cannot "move" your feedback from e-bay to Yahoo, but you can put a link in your Yahoo auction descriptions to your feedback on e-bay.
When you consider that only about 30,000 Yahoo auction listings (as far as we can tell from title searches) out of 3-4 million total are "First Bid Wins" auctions, you'll probably see the correlation if you look at closed auctions again. And if you look at all the successfully-closed auctions that used the "buy price" feature (which requires looking at the actual listings, since few sellers put "buy price" in the title), I think you'll see a disproportionately high number of those, as well.
I don't recommend "first bid wins" or "buy price" for ALL listings, if you EXPECT multiple bidders and a bidding war for rare or one-of-a-kind items (and feel confident you won't lose money on the deal). In fact, those are the very auctions that are featured as "hot" on category homepages, thereby getting lots of attention from potential bidders.
But if your item is new or common or readily available elsewhere, and you KNOW what it's worth, you can't beat the "first bid wins" strategy. The buyer is happy with a quick sale in which he doesn't have to monitor the auction for a week and worry about being outbid. (He may also look at your other listings and bid on MORE "first bid wins" auctions, all to be shipped together.) The seller is happy to get his asking price in the least amount of time, ship it, and get it out of the store/house/warehouse as quickly as possible. AND, if the seller has MULTIPLES, he can quickly relist and wait for the next buyer to strike.
To be honest, when I came to Yahoo a year ago (with the advent of ebay's "only a dollar" reserve fee), I WASN'T "determined to make it work" as VeryModern suggests. It was the first time I LOOKED for another auction to sell on, since I really wasn't even *aware* that another viable auction site EXISTED on the internet.
My initial sales were good. A month later I listed identical items on ebay and Yahoo (of which I had multiples), and found my sales MUCH BETTER ON YAHOO than ebay, I guess because there was less competition and because the ebay buyers had largely developed a "give it to me free" attitude (which is still alive and well on ALL internet auctions now). Every few months I'd list identicals on both auctions again, more disappointed in ebay sales each time. Not to mention the outages for which my fees were never refunded.
There has been a gradual slowdown of sales this year, both in brick and mortar stores and online, due to a variety of reasons....So don't leave ebay, wounded by sales that are "lackluster" or less (blaming it on the "outages"--which are only part of the problem), and expect to find yourself a *miracle* on Yahoo. It just isn't there.
As VeryModern said, you'll typically sell less than 15% of your listings each week (and as little as 2-3% in the slumps lately), unless you have very, very desirable/collectible items or you GIVE your stuff away. You can start every auction at a penny, with no reserve, and you'll sell them all---but do you really want to???
For most of us, the point isn't just to turn merchandise quickly, it's to turn merchandise *at a decent profit*, and Yahoo's "first bid wins"/buy price enables that to happen. Turned perhaps not as quickly as on ebay, but with the "decent profit" intact. If you have to list and relist 4 times on ebay to sell something, what has happened to your meager profit margin when it finally DOES sell, often for the opening bid? It's all gone to ebay in fees, that's what's happened to it. Relists on Yahoo cost you nothing but time and patience.
keziak, making an auction listing IS a lot of work. If you're happy with your results on half.com then list there, since it's the least amount of effort (for the least amount of money, I might add). For those items you consider WORTH THE EFFORT of listing on ebay, you should consider putting on Yahoo instead. If they sell, you don't pay fees for the transaction. If they don't sell, just copy all your work and move them to ebay. Your photo and description have to be created regardless which auction you put them on. It's possible the market for your particular items is weak on Yahoo, but you won't know until you try.
I think your "list it, then chill out" expression fits Yahoo to a T.
posted on October 28, 2000 10:53:45 PM
Yahoo bidders are more active during a FULL MOON- so load em up and let em rip just before......I know, you laugh, but check your sales next moon!
I suppose that lovely (new after my User ID isn't helping, but I'm not getting any hits (all but one are listed under my old Yahoo ID, cuz that's where I transferred my Ebay rating credit).
