buysmart.co.uk

ClaireLR

Hi guys and girls

I've had a few emails now from www.buy-smart.co.uk basically it looks like a website set up in competition with ebay, the emails I've had so far all advertise no selling fees, free picture uploads and no final value fees.

I've had a look myself and it seems to be quite good, not in the league of ebay though (not yet anyway!)

Just wondered if anyone else has had a look at it and what people think? I think Ebay has become really expenisve to sell on these days so was thinking that I might try this new website next time I'm selling.

Any opinions??

soolin

If you want a free listing site try https://www.ebid.co.uk . They have been going for about 9 years now and have over a million users.

jumbojuice

i think that its going to take a google or yahoo to set up a competing site to ebay for it to be worth selling elsewhere - there just isnt the traffic to make sales anywhere else..

StaffsSW

jumbojuice wrote: »

i think that its going to take a google or yahoo to set up a competing site to ebay for it to be worth selling elsewhere - there just isnt the traffic to make sales anywhere else..

Yahoo tried their own auctions but closed them down a couple of years ago.

Google already has it's own quite unique niche market, and is in fact an "auction" site already. The difference between ebay and google is that on ebay buyers bid for sellers goods and on google sellers bid for potential buyer traffic with adwords.

And that is why Google will never become an ebay type site, as they will only be reducing the revenue they earn from all the sellers that are currently spending billions on adwords.

I do not see any one site becoming a true alternative to ebay for a couple of reasons, the main one being is that the format is saturated, and dominated by ebay. Something new needs to come along that does not use the same principle, something fresh that gets people talking, and more importantly, acting - by listing and buying that will chip away at the ebay user base.

The only other option is for small niche sites to take over certain categories such as those where free P&P have been imposed, or for items that ebay have embargoed - the most popular item sold on CQout is tobacco, and on ebid it is adult material - DVD's & sex toys for example.