ebid - is it worth it?

barginhunter88

Hello,

I'm sure you've all had this discussion before but I'm new to the forum so thought I'd ask first hand. I find ebay charges a little high, if you don't sell an item first time round the fees begin to mount up and it hardly becomes worth it. With that in mind I thought I'd shop around. The one that stands out the most is ebid.net - if you pay £49.99 you don't pay a listing fee and there is no end of auction fee.

Has anyone used ebid and is it worth the £49.99? e.g. will things actually sell on there?

Hope you can help.

Thanks,

StaffsSW

You get what you pay for.

I've had around 200 listings on eBid for the past 2 years, a niche product only available on my own website and my ebay listings, and still only sold about 15 items despite being slightly cheaper on ebid.

There id very little in the way of marketing activity from ebid to attract buyers, and I've never seen an ebid product appear on any google search.

Before spending the £50, try a few listings to start with to see how you get on.

cyberbob

There really isn't many customers on ebid. So yes no fees but you won't get good prices either.

If your items on ebay aren't selling the first time around you need to have a good look at them. Are they worth selling at all, Is your starting price to high. Is your listing putting people off. Would your items be better off as Buy it nows. Your probably better off looking at this and spending time doing this that ebid listings.

barginhunter88

Thanks guys. I guess the thing you are paying for on ebay is the marketing. It's hard to consider how people run business on there now though. It seems to be costly for listing and then too much of the same product. Do you know of any good alternatives that are worth going to apart from ebay or ebid?

powertron

Is it worth it?

No, not for me, paid credit card joining fee and haven't sold a sausage.

Had a lot of oiks mess up my auctions by never paying.

Stopped using it after a year.

soolin

I'm still struggling on agfer over 6 years, have never actually covered my original membership fee. I've got 4 shops open now and get a sale a couple of times a year if i am lucky, waste of time and money.

clairibel

I see ebid a lot in shopping results from google searches, so maybe there is hope.

Crowqueen

clairibel wrote: »

I see ebid a lot in shopping results from google searches, so maybe there is hope.

They have an agreement with Google, so that's not surprising, and I think eBay annoyed Google by not allowing their Checkout system, which means eBid did actually get a good scoop. Shame they haven't followed through on this. I agree eBay needs competition, but as long as the small sites remain viciously jealous of it and try to undercut eBay in terms of costs to sell, they are barking up the wrong tree.

I've bought on there a number of times, I have FB of 12 and - in name only - a selling account, but without the money to promote the site which has to come through listing fees, they can't attract people. Plus for eBay you only pay for what you sell. You need to pay eBid a subscription to get basic facilities like Buy It Now, and eBid don't use the revenue they get to promote the site. When I was into tarot reading, I looked at starting up my own business on both eBay and eBid, and was put off eBid by having to pay a sub just to use BIN when I could do that for nothing extra except the listing fee on eBay (that failed anyway because I didn't have the right image, I didn't cover my listings in glitter and fairy pictures, I was lacking a certain mystique that it is evident people looking for readings pay for and I couldn't quite bring myself to try and be someone I wasn't).

However, in defence of the small sites, new ones either go for the niche markets, or recognise that to earn money, they have to be honest about how they charge for listings and charge a reasonable amount. I think the ones setting up now seem to have grasped that free listings may pull sellers in, but they leave you just about broke to go about presenting the site as a viable place to buy. Most of the sites that end up big and successful have charges to match, so you could really say you pay for what you get. Businesses have cost accounting to make sure that this remains viable. The number of people buying online now means that you can sell in bulk to more than cover even costs that some people find exorbitant.

*Scottish*Lass*

So, as a buyer is ebid a good site to use? Do you have the same levels of protection etc as with ebay?

soolin

*Scottish*Lass* wrote: »

So, as a buyer is ebid a good site to use? Do you have the same levels of protection etc as with ebay?

As long as you use paypal you have full protection.

I used to buy a lot from ebid as new sellers would start their listings at 99p expecting them to go up like on ebay, but of course there was no one to bid against me so I would win at start price. Unfortunately sellers are more savvy now and tend to start at the minimum they want, so very few bargains left.

I do occasionally still snap up a bargain, I watch for new sellers.

jago25_98

What we really need is a competitor that automatically searches ebay for results as well. That would be supported by the OFT.

Or indeed, a site in a similar vein like Moneysupermarket, that searches ALL the bid and ad sites.