Has Ebay Finally Shot Itself In the Foot?

[canuckbid]

I still promote paypal although I know eb*y owns them. They have total different support teams though. Paypal has always been good for me but eb*y support let me down. After being a 6+ year power seller they let a few kids rip me off and got me shut down with their feedback system. Everyone who complained received their money back as well. I even did about 200K gross sales one month over there previously. Then a few 5-10 dollar sales took all my years of hard work away. I was selling info how to go wireless with your xbox 360 without the 100 dollar adapter. I sold a few hundred info packs but a few kids must of had problems following the 3 easy steps to do it. I'm sure they do not enforce their age policy to buy on eb*y. It was a terrible crash for my online business. I have nothing to hide. My sales here have been slow and far inbetween. Welcome to ebid for all the others that have been treated like garbage by eb*y support.

[deltadelta48]

Unfortunately it happened alot which is why a class action lawsuit on the suspensions is being planned in US. It may take years.

Never too late to increase sales. tweeking helps. I looked at your listings. Prices seem ok but shipping seems high for some items, can you use alternative such as first class international for DVDs, CDs etc?

In DVD store, I noticed you often waste title space with non searchable words. i.e.: "Best selling Moonlight buy now cheap" change to :" DVD Moonlight 2001 Pitt Jolene " (fake of course). In first example only Moonlight is searchable (no one ever searches for DVD under "best selling"). In second example, every word is searchable, including DVD, actor's names, movie name, etc. Your chances of getting a hit or two are better when every word counts in a search.

Of course check spelling, don't run words in title together, and don't add any unsearchable symbols just to make it look pretty.

Descriptions are searchable too, so repeat and expand title for even more hits: ("Brad Pitt") adding detail so if someone is looking for "Alberta Canada" it will turn up in a search.

Every little bit helps, better to polish the headers and descriptions than to miss sales because neither was effective in a search.

Good luck. I notice my sales are up these last few days, so hopefully yours will be too.

[canuckbid]

Hello and thanks for trying to help. I'll have to revamp some titles perhaps. Believe you me I was ill with eb*y. I only sold info packs for about 3 months but eb*y sure was happy to take my listing and selling fees. After one complaint it almost seemed like the buyers jumped on the band wagon and then got the info free and their money back as well. I did liquidate vehicles for an oil company for awhile and made some pretty good numbers. I found out then paypal is only good for 10 grand. Alot of people were happy with those vehicles. Even had a buyer fly in from Ontario to gather one up. They were lease vehicles and I got on average 3-5 thousand more for the company than what the lease companies offered on buyouts to take them back. I ship all software light packet airmail in cases with tracking and insurance included. Also in bubble padded envelopes. (letter mail in Canada) My costs are higher with Canada post I think than USP. I do offer to sell pc games without the box as inside it's just a jewel case anyway. Try anyway I can to cut shipping costs. I'm working on getting more Canadian members to ebid. I think that would help sales. Well I hope anyway. I have some great suppliers and can offer new titles at great prices. Before I put in another bulk order I need to move some of the stock I have presently. On eb*y it would have been moved in 7-10 days and I was constantly buying more stock to sell. 10 months on ebid has been a little disappointing of course compared to what I was doing over there. I'll just keep plugging away at it. If nothing else alot of the forum members have given me alot of chuckles. That's enough of my whining for one day. Thanks again for your tips.

[johnwash1]

Well I finally worked out what to do and listed them. You just put Courier - large and bulky item, then let potential buyers know what the postage and carrier will be in the text, ...

Yes, but that's bad news. As a buyer there, I'll do a search, come up with 50 hits and scan quickly down the list, being careful as always to consider the p+p as well as the price. If I can't see your p+p in that summary listing, it's likely I won't spend time visiting your auction if I can see a reasonable deal elsewhere in the search result.

Of course if yours is the only one in the search result, sure, then I'm going to look at it.

[johnwash1]

There are too many restrictions on sellers on Amazon for me to want to trade there in a big way.

Just did a few searches last night for products that I list on other sites...but on Amazon the same products are only allowed to be sold by selected sellers.

I gave up searching after a while because I am not one of their approved sellers and can only sell a very limited range there.

Agreed, but I'm only interested in selling books on Am*zon (and that in a very small way). I doubt any hobbyist or small seller is interested in selling on that site for anything but books.

[SalusLibrorum]

Yes, but that's bad news. As a buyer there, I'll do a search, come up with 50 hits and scan quickly down the list, being careful as always to consider the p+p as well as the price. If I can't see your p+p in that summary listing, it's likely I won't spend time visiting your auction if I can see a reasonable deal elsewhere in the search result.

Of course if yours is the only one in the search result, sure, then I'm going to look at it.

That's the reason I don't normally sell the same things that three million other people are selling. As far as I'm concerned, if I'm part of a choice of hundreds of others, I'm wasting my time. I did list a load of single books on here, but it's kind of ground to a halt, I have several hundred detective novels and Mills and Boons to sell, but I think they're probably going to be put up as job lots on eBay, I can't see them selling here for a sensible price.

I am also not in the game of making a loss on my sales, so I'm not going to be listing at all if it comes to more than £2.75 postage and I have no alternative. I don't think that losing a sale, where I'm going to be making a loss, is much of a lost sale, quite frankly.

[Cocksparrer]

Well greedbay has suspended me for 30 days due to a fruadster customer, I have been arguing with greedbay about this & theyre adamant, regardless of the evidence placed to them, I will no longer use greedbay nor peepal, all my items on ebid are google checkout or pppay check/postal order.

They claim theyre trying to make their site more user friendly & a safer place.

Well blow me down, certainly making it a better place for fraudsters.

[fruitbats2020]

Hi,

Im new here, another hacked-off ebay refugee. 9 years I was there, a casual user (ID there:fruitbats2002), and just recently had a bit of a 'session' there, only to be mucked about endlessly as new 'policies' came to light as I transgressed! I am a good buyer an seller, ebay really insulted me.

Anyway I'm sure the rest is covered elsewhere in this thread, but I haven't seen anyone grumbling about compulsory paypal there. That was a big issue for me as I believe paypal are far from squeaky clean: it scared the hell out of me while they had my money!

So I've fully jumped ship to here, and ebid has my fullest support for now. Thanks for being a proper 'venue,' and letting us buy/sell as we see fit.

I think it would be VERY much in ebid's interest to splash a little cash on advertising/promo at least for the next few months whilst ebay spirals downwards. It could clean up! Just look at how much promo ebay does, even though they come across as the top dog.

And had to laugh today, having googled for yahoo auctions, the results page had the usual ebay claim, "feed your passion for yahoo auctions at ebay." Now that is BAD advertising!!!

Cu about peeps,
Dave

[kengillam]

Hi Dave welcome to eBid, quite a few of us ex- bayers here, some of us quit a couple of years ago. You may find a read of this thread may help you get started. http://helpdesk.ebid.net/showpost.ph...postcount=6223
Just shout if you need a hand

[harold69]

Unfortunately it happened alot which is why a class action lawsuit on the suspensions is being planned in US. It may take years.

Never too late to increase sales. tweeking helps. I looked at your listings. Prices seem ok but shipping seems high for some items, can you use alternative such as first class international for DVDs, CDs etc?

In DVD store, I noticed you often waste title space with non searchable words. i.e.: "Best selling Moonlight buy now cheap" change to :" DVD Moonlight 2001 Pitt Jolene " (fake of course). In first example only Moonlight is searchable (no one ever searches for DVD under "best selling"). In second example, every word is searchable, including DVD, actor's names, movie name, etc. Your chances of getting a hit or two are better when every word counts in a search.

Of course check spelling, don't run words in title together, and don't add any unsearchable symbols just to make it look pretty.

Descriptions are searchable too, so repeat and expand title for even more hits: ("Brad Pitt") adding detail so if someone is looking for "Alberta Canada" it will turn up in a search.

Every little bit helps, better to polish the headers and descriptions than to miss sales because neither was effective in a search.

Good luck. I notice my sales are up these last few days, so hopefully yours will be too.

Very good advice, i will learn from it also