Hate Ebay? How you can help me.

laying4profit

Hello,

I would just like to pick people brains on here about what you hate on ebay.
The reason i am asking is my site has some things but i want to know if i am missing any. (Dont worry im not going to Spam on here) i would rather people find my site by advertising,google,SEO.It just looks desperate when people go onto other sites and say go to.... Well im not like that.Anyhow..

This is what i have done so far.

No fees for the Seller at all.*
This is to stop you having to chase fees if you get a non payer.Just relist and off you go again. Tell us about the non payer and we will either Warn them or Suspend his/her account if done more than twice.(*only for enhanced things as listed)
We get the Buyer to pay a fee.For example if you sold an item for £1000 the cost to the seller is nothing.The buyer pays a fee of £2.00.
We feel that knowing exactly what you will pay for both sides helps a speedy transaction.
Buyer retraction
We have added this so the Buyer has been given every oportunity to back out of the transaction.Its best to give a get out clause before the auction ends in our opinion.If there is another bidder they would then be the winner.If not then just relist for FREE.
Free Shop
Anyone can have a free shop upto 200 items, after this it incurrs a fee. Please note there is NO bulk lister.We do however have a free auto relister (upto 10 times).
5 Photos free
Anymore and it will cost 5p per photo.
The reason for this is so that you can post detailed photos of damage or no damage. This will also help you in case of a dispute.We will also have these on our system.Unlike Ebay we wont side with the buyer if they are trying it on. We want cast iron proof from both parties that item was as stated,posted,paid for example. We dont hold or keep payments either.This is why we say use Recorded "signed for" postage. If the seller proves it got to the address then we will side with the seller. If the Buyer says it was damaged, then the claim is with the courier NOT the seller.

There is also:-
FREE Buy out
FREE Make offer
FREE Relist
FREE Reserve
FREE Custom Start Time

Plenty of Catagories, can add more later on as well.

Payments portals.
Most are on my site, No western union due to scams.

Oh.. Spammers.. If you see a spammer of someone selling fake goods or something that should not be on the site then let us know.We will suspend the account.They will have to prove to US that they are otherwise.:D

Is there anything else that i am missing?
I just want to get it right before i start paying for adverts in the media.
And if the moderator Soolin on here PM's me i would love to ask something.
Thanks.

And just to clear it up...
I am open to questions or suggestions, But i will NOT i repeat NOT give out the web addy on here or by PM so dont ask.:beer:
If a moderator still considers this as spam then please feel free to remove it and accept my appologies,I did or do not want it to come across like this.I am looking for help, advice.. And if i can get it here i can make a better site.If i want to advertise on here i will go through the proper channels.

StaffsSW

I speak as predominantly an ebay seller rather than buyer.

I don't care what the fees and policies and seller features are, I want to know how many buyers you can bring me in order for me to make money. If you could bring me 10,000 targetted visitors a day, I would happily pay 25%

If you are setting up an ebay clone/competitor/alternative, you need a unique selling point over them that attracts buyers - what is your plan for product SEO, on Adwords, offline publicity?
If you are simply saying "we are cheaper to list on than ebay" then you will be lost in the sea of ebids/cqouts etc who all say the same thing, and are closed marketplaces with sellers showing their products to eachother, but nobody actually shopping there.

And speaking as a buyer - why would I want to pay £2 more for a product from your site than elsewhere? Especially on a low value item that I could maybe buy for 99p with free P&P from ebay?

" If the Buyer says it was damaged, then the claim is with the courier NOT the seller." - but who makes that claim to the courier? Does the buyer have to wait for the courier to settle up, or do you front it and chase the claim yourself, even though the contract of delivery is between the seller and the courier? How does this process work - I'm genuinely curious.

As a seller, I'll go to where the buyers are. As a buyer, I will go where I get best value and service.

redcard

What's your business plan? How are you going to make any money?

So the buyer pays the same fees whether the item costs £1 or £1000?

It seems like you've just tried to make an ebay clone that appears a bit cheaper to use.

A statement like:

"Oh.. Spammers.. If you see a spammer of someone selling fake goods or something that should not be on the site then let us know.We will suspend the account.They will have to prove to US that they are otherwise"

says to me that you have only been thinking about this the last day or 2.

Crowqueen

We get the Buyer to pay a fee.For example if you sold an item for £1000 the cost to the seller is nothing.The buyer pays a fee of £2.00.

Yeah, that's REALLY going to get me shopping on your site.

Nice try but I don't think you're going to get off the ground. Most of the sites that start up now have a realistic idea of what revenue you need to bring in to keep a site going, what consumer law dictates (and consumer law places much of the responsibility on the seller) and are usually niche market sites that compete with eBay not on price or making the seller's life easier, but on catering to specific markets. Sellers are actually fairly happy to pay whatever it takes to bring in customers: paying for services they use.

Many sites like eBid which try to undercut eBay have very little revenue to promote their site to the traffic out there (which should be enough for half a dozen good sites, as there are also Amazon and Play out there who are successful though very strict and very expensive from a seller's point of view) and a number of the free listing sites have folded in the last few years as their operators struggle to cover running costs. eBid hide most of the stuff eBay give out on a per-use basis behind a subscription charge - the lifetime fee has been £50 for several years now - supposedly a limited time offer back when I thought about it in 2008 - and I find less and less for sale there every time I look. I'm not prejudiced in eBay's favour as a buyer, but I can more or less find what I want there and it has to be said there's very little I can be bothered to buy on the free listing sites. On Amazon, Play and eBay I can search for anything I want and it's almost guaranteed to be there.

The new sites like Folksy are also nicely laid out and buyer-friendly, particularly because they are pretty strict on the sellers that list there about things like business registration, and the new CastOff site, while it's struggling to get a foothold, seems to be making a lot of the right noises about having to charge to generate revenue and keep sellers from spamming the site with any old tat, and put their foot down quite heavily when it comes to buyer protection.

You've got a range of competitors but I can't believe you've thought about this for more than the five minutes it took to write that post.

Back to the drawing board, I think.

laying4profit

stevew8975 wrote: »

And speaking as a buyer - why would I want to pay £2 more for a product from your site than elsewhere? Especially on a low value item that I could maybe buy for 99p with free P&P from ebay? " If the Buyer says it was damaged, then the claim is with the courier NOT the seller." - but who makes that claim to the courier? Does the buyer have to wait for the courier to settle up, or do you front it and chase the claim yourself, even though the contract of delivery is between the seller and the courier? How does this process work - I'm genuinely curious.

When i said £2 that was for items sold between £100-£1000 a low item less than £10 would only be 10p.
As long as i cover the expenses of the hosting,advertising then thats all that matters to me at the moment.
Money is not everything to me.
On my mistake with the selling, i should have said that the item would be returned and the Seller take up the claim. The buyer would be refunded.

redcard wrote: »

What's your business plan? How are you going to make any money?
By sales on the site. Later on I will have advertisements.

So the buyer pays the same fees whether the item costs £1 or £1000?
No.
£0-£10 = 10p
£10-£100 = £1
£100-£1000 = £2
£1000 - £5000 = £5
£5000-£10,000 = £10
£10,000 and above £20

It seems like you've just tried to make an ebay clone that appears a bit cheaper to use.

A statement like:

"Oh.. Spammers.. If you see a spammer of someone selling fake goods or something that should not be on the site then let us know.We will suspend the account.They will have to prove to US that they are otherwise"

says to me that you have only been thinking about this the last day or 2.

No, any Auction site will be classed as a clone of Ebay as this is a well known Auction site. What people forget is the FEE’S that ebay charge.Yes they have the monopoly and that’s why they get away with the fees.People just continue to moan about the fees.This is why I decided to do something to give others an option.
Yes I have seen all the Cqout,E-bid ones.. They all start off free and end up like ebay.

Crowqueen wrote: »

We get the Buyer to pay a fee.For example if you sold an item for £1000 the cost to the seller is nothing.The buyer pays a fee of £2.00.

Yeah, that's REALLY going to get me shopping on your site.

You see this is the thing.Lets look at something.
You have a buyer and he does not fulfil the contract. You then have to chase the payment though ebay.You will leave bad feedback and they could do the same. You relist your item and incur more fees whilst waiting for the other ones to be returned.
On mine you would just Relist for free with no payment to chase.
If a person want’s your item then they will pay the small fee. Its basically nothing compared to ebay. And I know it will not be to everyones tastes.


Nice try but I don't think you're going to get off the ground. Most of the sites that start up now have a realistic idea of what revenue you need to bring in to keep a site going, what consumer law dictates (and consumer law places much of the responsibility on the seller) and are usually niche market sites that compete with eBay not on price or making the seller's life easier, but on catering to specific markets. Sellers are actually fairly happy to pay whatever it takes to bring in customers: paying for services they use.
Well I hope for my sake you are wrong.But this is not going to be my income if that’s what you are thinking. Any money made from the site will be put back into it. I am not interested in making money from this site for at least 5 years or more.It takes hard work and dedication to make websites work.

Many sites like eBid which try to undercut eBay have very little revenue to promote their site to the traffic out there (which should be enough for half a dozen good sites, as there are also Amazon and Play out there who are successful though very strict and very expensive from a seller's point of view) and a number of the free listing sites have folded in the last few years as their operators struggle to cover running costs. eBid hide most of the stuff eBay give out on a per-use basis behind a subscription charge - the lifetime fee has been £50 for several years now - supposedly a limited time offer back when I thought about it in 2008 - and I find less and less for sale there every time I look. I'm not prejudiced in eBay's favour as a buyer, but I can more or less find what I want there and it has to be said there's very little I can be bothered to buy on the free listing sites. On Amazon, Play and eBay I can search for anything I want and it's almost guaranteed to be there.

I am not trying to clone Ebay. Nor am I a free site. I am just doing thing opposite to most sites. If a buyer really wants YOUR item then they wont mind paying the small fee. If they did mind paying the fee then I would be concerned that they could be a messer. The seller would be able to offer the item on my site for a great deal less as they do not incur the fees like they would on Ebay. The main point is you can list it for less and over time make more profit on my site. I’m sure that any business person would use savvy and direct folk to the cheaper option thus to gain MORE profit for your business.

The new sites like Folksy are also nicely laid out and buyer-friendly, particularly because they are pretty strict on the sellers that list there about things like business registration, and the new CastOff site, while it's struggling to get a foothold, seems to be making a lot of the right noises about having to charge to generate revenue and keep sellers from spamming the site with any old tat, and put their foot down quite heavily when it comes to buyer protection.

You've got a range of competitors but I can't believe you've thought about this for more than the five minutes it took to write that post.

Back to the drawing board, I think.
Why give up? This is what I have asked for.. I wanted comments and advice. I am happy with the responses I am getting so far to be honest. The Traffic takes a lot of time to build up, we are talking years not months. As I have said I don’t plan to make anything form this for at least 5 years plus. Up until then any income will be ploughed back into the business. I would like to do media adverts and also later on a TV advert. But this is years down the line.

[FONT=&quot]Thanks so much for the comments so far.. Please keep them coming.. :beer:[/FONT]

forgotmyname

The problem is getting the buyers, Unless you have a VERY VERY large advertising budget you are on a road to nowhere.

Until you get lots of sales you will be on a losing streak for sometime before you can even think of starting to make any money.

Relisting for free is fine but what about items you need to sell before a set date? Toys just before xmas, Cars before the new one
arrives or tax/mot/insurance expires.

How will you manage decide if a listing is legit and not ripping sellers off. What payments will you accept? Security/Refund?

I was bored & decided to query a seller someone on here had reported but were complaining that they were still selling.
A buzz lightyear toy BIN £1 but £47 postage a brand new vacuum BIN £1 £79 postage. The live help said
they can see nothing wrong with that seller.

According to their rules he should be listed as a business, Multiple brand new items, And also avoiding ebay's fees by
charging excessive postage. I can see why the OP was a bit annoyed.
Learned a few tricks myself. Ebay will only earn pennies from me from now on.

If you sell anything for more than £1 on ebay your wasting your money.

Crowqueen

You see this is the thing.Lets look at something.
You have a buyer and he does not fulfil the contract. You then have to chase the payment though ebay.You will leave bad feedback and they could do the same. You relist your item and incur more fees whilst waiting for the other ones to be returned.
On mine you would just Relist for free with no payment to chase.
If a person want’s your item then they will pay the small fee. Its basically nothing compared to ebay. And I know it will not be to everyones tastes.

Why should I go to your site when I can go to other sites that don't charge me? Why should I care about other buyers who, you say, are in breach of contract? What do your sellers have to offer me that someone else can't provide? Are you able to guarantee me my consumer rights e.g. those given to me by the Distance Selling Regulations? In short: why should I pay for something I can get elsewhere for nothing?

It's not going to be to many people's tastes - they will be able to get the item cheaper elsewhere. Gearing things to the 1% of sales that go wrong on eBay is not cultivating the 99% that go right that make the site so attractive. Never mind that Amazon and Play have fewer NPBs than eBay and are huge in themselves, eating up another large chunk of the marketplace market. Their proprietary payment systems ensure that buyers pay for the item as they agree to buy it, so you're not really guaranteeing anything here except your own jaundiced perception of eBay buyers. If you insult your buyers' intelligence, they won't come.

Well I hope for my sake you are wrong.But this is not going to be my income if that’s what you are thinking. Any money made from the site will be put back into it. I am not interested in making money from this site for at least 5 years or more.It takes hard work and dedication to make websites work.

You need income to advertise the site, to generate more income, to live for 5 years before you start seeing a return - to actually motivate yourself to run the site. You will end up working for free, which I doubt you want to do. I wouldn't do it for free. Or you have a massive private income and want to do something in your spare time. Either way, if you don't make any money from it fairly quickly, it will end up not being a viable place, and, given you will want other people's support and investment, you will need to offer them something (such as buyer traffic, a niche market, and so on). Again, it comes down to what you are prepared to do to encourage traffic, and all I see you doing is putting off potential buyers rather than encouraging them to come and have a look at what your sellers have for sale.

I am not trying to clone Ebay. Nor am I a free site. I am just doing thing opposite to most sites. If a buyer really wants YOUR item then they wont mind paying the small fee. If they did mind paying the fee then I would be concerned that they could be a messer. The seller would be able to offer the item on my site for a great deal less as they do not incur the fees like they would on Ebay. The main point is you can list it for less and over time make more profit on my site. I’m sure that any business person would use savvy and direct folk to the cheaper option thus to gain MORE profit for your business.

You're not a free site but you're charging the wrong people. Carboots may charge people admission but people won't pay for a website as there are already free alternatives out there.

You had a reply from a businessman on this very thread saying he would happily pay 25% commission to a site that provided him with enough traffic. Simply looking to undercut other sites - which you may claim not to be doing but are trying to do - doesn't work, as you would lose the revenue that allows you to promote your site, increasing the traffic, and you are already penalising any traffic that does come your way.

In the end, the reason why eBay is a big success is that it has got sufficiently large to attract millions of buyers, has sufficient buyer protection to make sure the seller upholds their end of the deal, and enough money to advertise on television and in national media to potential buyers, alongside Amazon and Play. It didn't get where it is today by making it difficult for a buyer to assert their statutory rights (though it may seem like it at times) and as an on/off eBay seller I'm sticking where that traffic is: I see 10% commission as a reasonable price to pay for that traffic and have had very few if any transactions that have gone wrong in six years' selling. I do look at other sites as a buyer, I buy loads off Amazon (possibly at the moment more off Amazon than off eBay), but you're not really thinking that realistically.

Do you see what word I highlighted there? BUYERS BUYERS BUYERS BUYERS. Without them - no site, no money, no competition for eBay and no competition for Amazon or Play either. Sorry.

laying4profit

forgotmyname wrote: »

The problem is getting the buyers, Unless you have a VERY VERY large advertising budget you are on a road to nowhere.

Until you get lots of sales you will be on a losing streak for sometime before you can even think of starting to make any money.
Yes i realise this, this is not my income and wont be. I would honestly wait 5-10 years if i had to.

Relisting for free is fine but what about items you need to sell before a set date? Toys just before xmas, Cars before the new one
arrives or tax/mot/insurance expires.
I dont see the problem? You would list these items for less that on Ebay. This would offset the Buyers fee so he still gets the item cheaper.

How will you manage decide if a listing is legit and not ripping sellers off. What payments will you accept? Security/Refund?
Better than Ebay would. The payments are all the Normal ones paypal included.

I was bored & decided to query a seller someone on here had reported but were complaining that they were still selling.
A buzz lightyear toy BIN £1 but £47 postage a brand new vacuum BIN £1 £79 postage. The live help said
they can see nothing wrong with that seller.
The postage is WAY out of line. But that would not happen on my site as the seller has nothing to gain by doing that.People do this on Ebay to save FEES.. Ebay will catch on and just ban them as Ebays ivestors are losing money

According to their rules he should be listed as a business, Multiple brand new items, And also avoiding ebay's fees by
charging excessive postage. I can see why the OP was a bit annoyed.
Learned a few tricks myself. Ebay will only earn pennies from me from now on.

If you sell anything for more than £1 on ebay your wasting your money.

Another good comment. Thanks...:beer:

suited-aces

You seem to be ignoring half the questions!

Relisting for free is fine but what about items you need to sell before a set date? Toys just before xmas, Cars before the new one
arrives or tax/mot/insurance expires.
I dont see the problem? You would list these items for less that on Ebay. This would offset the Buyers fee so he still gets the item cheaper.
Doesn't solve the timeliness issue?

How will you manage decide if a listing is legit and not ripping sellers off. What payments will you accept? Security/Refund?
Better than Ebay would. The payments are all the Normal ones paypal included.
They asked how, not how well

And I'm wondering, on ebay you have to "prove" a non paying bidder, but when you do, they refund fvf's. Wouldn't they have to prove a buyer didn't pay on yours before getting a free relist? I can't see the advantage.

forgotmyname

Yeah no good selling my car for free if my insurance is due 1 week after the buyer was supposed to have collected and now
i need to pay to insure the car because i dont have anywhere offroad to park it. So i am now down £100+

How many staff are you employing to monitor the auctions and action complaints? One ebay gripe are savvy sellers who list
dodgy items for 24hours with BIN prices, Knowing the fact ebay will take ages to act and the item will have sold.
If the buyer paid instantly they mark it as despatched quickly.

You maybe willing to put 10 years into it, Me if i dont get results in 1 or 2 weeks im gone.

Have you done an auction site before? I signed up to one that kept spamming my message boards and chat room,
Well i signed up and created lots of accounts. Listed all sorts of dodgy stuff. I even avdertised his own website for
sale once. Be he was celebrating when it reached £500k + Shame it was me. Sold for 75p the 2nd time, Not me?


What would you put into place to stop me creating lots of accounts?

Think you need something "NEW" to compete.

Ebay wont catch onto people abusing the excessive postage scam, Live help proved that. Put monkeys on live help
and anythings possible.

terra_ferma

First of all good luck with your new site, I think we really need an alternative to ebay, a monopoly is never a good idea.

I have been looking at alternatives, in this countries and abroad, but I've not found one single credible site for listing general inventory.

As a seller I have 1.000.000 reasons why I would like to leave ebay. As a buyer none...
even as much as I would like to support sites like ebid, and maybe yours, ebay has too much to offer.

Unfortunately the very things we all hate about ebay is what brings business....

Our fees pay for advertising, marketing, brand, technology.
Buyer protection gives buyers confidence to buy from a complete stranger (even in a totally different continent...).
The imposition of Paypal (in some countries) enables me to do business in several countries and using different currencies, at a cost competitive with banks' charges, but much easier to set up and use.
Paypal and ebay sellers restrictions ensure that a new seller cannot simply list 1000 of fakes overnight, get the money and run.
The fact that sellers cannot give neg fb encourages buyers to leave meaningful fb without fear of repercussions, and trust fb left by other people.

The DSR.... well I cannot find anything positive about those....