Has Ebay Finally Shot Itself In the Foot?

[Kless]

Unless Ebid sellers offer a better place to buy. I dumped Ebay 2 or 3 months ago, started Ebid, set up a lifetime seller account and opened a couple stores and have one sale. Now whenever I buy anything online, I price shop and compare ebay to ebid. Ebay is nearly always cheaper. The last thing I looked at differed so much it made me think my eyes were going bad. The same item on Ebay at 32.95 was $140.00 on ebid. I don't know about you but I want to sell things, not just have store listings. Sellers think about competing with Ebay sellers and we might get Ebid rolling faster.

[kengillam]

Sadly I have to agree, some seller seem to utilise what one could call optimistic pricing A little more realism is called for, it doesn't take much to research and see what competitors are selling for and if you can't match the price near enough you need to look at your selling strategy.

[Heruur]

The biggest problem with ebid IMHO is not enough real auctions, all buy it nows with high prices. This scares off bidders.

[deltadelta48]

Bad question to ask around here. Don't get any of us started on the evils of the dark side!

Welcome to ebid! Remember to tell all your best customers that you moved via email (get from Paypal) or even postcards. Taking your customers with you is the best revenge!!

[marschenegger]

I agree with Kless and Kengillam. Sellers who overprice are not really looking for sales, though. They are trying to create a false illusion of the how the market is performing. I think Canadian paper money has moved up in value too quickly and is due for some corrections, but you'd never know that from the way some jacka**es price notes at 2-3x catalogue AND overgrade. EBid really needs to put in place some listing restrictions such as shorter time limits for fixed-price listings. One jacka** in particular has had the same listings up since I joined this site in June 2008. His feedback to date is still 0.

[deltadelta48]

Makes you wonder, some people list, never sell and seem to be ok with that. Just like the restaurants you see that never have any customers, gosh are they fronts for something? How can they afford to stay in business if no one ever stops in and buys?

In US there are wonderful tax deductions for businesses so it is advantageous to have a "business". IRS requires business to make a profit or answer lots of questions. Maybe ebid has to start to question the people who just are satisfied to list and wait for like a few years?

Or maybe it does not matter anyway?

[kedo]

Sorry to disappoint you but my view is not coloured by success or failure on this site.

I find that difficult to believe, mine certainly is.

I've just been compiling this http://www.flickr.com/photos/sellingonebid/ , mainly as a service to other sellers. You can get a clear idea of some of the type of items that will sell on eBid (obviously it's limited to what I do, collectables, plus, keep in mind, I do have many hundreds more items to add). I find eBid more 'profitable' than feebay for many items because of the absense of listing fees. That's not to say I don't use the other place too, I do.

[CrazyJay]

The biggest problem with ebid IMHO is not enough real auctions, all buy it nows with high prices. This scares off bidders.

It's a bit of a catch 22 situation there though. I would list more for auction, but only if there was a good chance that those items would get sufficient bids. I don't want to start off an auction to gain some interest, only to see it sell for a single bid.

[kedo]

It's a bit of a catch 22 situation there though. I would list more for auction, but only if there was a good chance that those items would get sufficient bids. I don't want to start off an auction to gain some interest, only to see it sell for a single bid.

It looks like 'Catch 22' but there is a way out. The best strategy is to use BIN but to price at slightly under what an item might be expected to achieve elsewhere. This way you catch those who are slightly more extrovert in character, who can't be bothered to wait for an auction to end. You also get a lot of of underbidders who've just missed out on something similar. Even though you have to sell slightly cheaper you win out because you don't have to pay listing fees. It seems to me that it's the BIN listings that create the traffic (via Google etc). Auctions will eventually become viable but only if sellers list enough interesting stuff, on BIN, at competative prices.

[trkh_nikki]

Hi, for QCPOTS on FeeBay try looking under "crasherbill" or to make it real simple
http://cgi3.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI....id=crasherbill

Have a great weekend, I'll be pulling weeds tomorrow. 8-)

i just checked this and it hsa been pulled, but i have a link to ebid from fleebay me page