Ebid - Does Anyone On MSE Make Any Decent Sales?

TM6

As I have bought into ebid's seller plus for over a year now and not listed, I thought now is the time to start rethinking and start listing

My question is, does anyone on MSE sell weekly on ebid?

I also feel that if we all bought from ebid where possible, it could generate more enthusiasm.

Am I mad or is it possible to think that ebid is a viable proposition?

sgh1976

I add eBid to my list of places to sell 7 weeks ago.

Approx 1750 items listed.

Sales = 1. Total Value £2.25

Its going well

soolin

Been on there about 9 years, don't think I have yet recovered the cost of my discounted seller lifetime charge.

Was selling about one thing every 2 years, had a little run of sales on February this year(4- I think) and that's with 4 shops.

It isn't viable as a real working alternative to ebay, but if you are running a business and have duplicate items then it can't hurt to list them on ebid as well. There are no listing fees, you just pay for extras and if you do sell there is a small FVF.

There is a thread here, but it tends to not get used much apart from the monthy )i think it is monthly) charity auction advert which ebid use to keep their sale volume good for publicity.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/30629159#Comment_30629159

you can look at completed listings like you can on ebay by doing an advanced search- and dont waste time in a lot of categories as you'll see no history whatsoever of sales. Choose your items to list carefully.

Crowqueen

Having to exhort someone to 'do their bit' is a bit telling that eBid is not a great place to buy from, let alone sell to. Buyers will buy what they want, where they want - and basing your sales strategy on 'Dig for Victory' isn't going to get a genuine stream of customers in the door on a regular basis who don't feel pressured into buying the least expensive thing they can get away with buying and then going back to eBay and Amazon which are more notable and successful, with a much more consistent and wide selection of goods.

First of all, the lack of money eBid get charging the fees that they do charge means they can't advertise. Thus casual buyers are not likely to know about the site. Word-of-mouth can sometimes go viral, but more often it is a poor business strategy to be wholly reliant on.

Secondly, eBid promote (or used to) PPPay.com, which doesn't give the buyer any protection if things go wrong. eBay, Play and Amazon give very good customer service.

Thirdly, whenever I do browse eBid, there's very little for sale there I want. It is good for junky antique books - but anything nice gets sold on eBay. When you browse the postcard category and see the same stuff for sale that you saw there in 2007, it loses its appeal as a buyer.

If they increased the revenue they have (by charging more for their services), they could get buyers in through the door both by advertising properly and being able to underwrite better and safer buyer protection. They would be more competitive with eBay and Amazon since sellers would have another marketplace worth paying for.

However, they cannot run a business model in making things attractive to sellers alone. They have to make things attractive to buyers - and not just in a 'let's do our bit' mode, in a mode which attracts Mr and Mrs eBaybuyer in.

It could work - but they need to pull their finger out and start catering to buyers properly before I will leave Amazon and eBay.

porto_bello

I get the impression that items listed on eBid are from sellers who are willing to wait to get the price they want, rather than keep paying to relist on eBay or list for a cheaper price on eBay and take the chance that a bidding war will push the price up.

Very occasionally, I have a look on eBid, but I don't stick around, after noticing that it seems to be old charity shop stock at the equivalent of today's full retail prices - or higher!

It brings a brief smile to my face... then I'll go find a similar item at a sensible price on eBay!

skintsocks

I'm afraid ebid is a bit of a ghost town. I had listings on there for three years and only sold one item, and the customer took what seemed like forever to pay. Not the best experience. Decided I just didn't have the time to keep monitoring something which was akin to watching paint dry.

KxMx

Problem with ebid is, people were saying the same "let's promote ebid and get more sales!!!" 10 years ago. Nothing has changed.

Crowqueen

Unless eBid grasp that people will pay what the market will bear to sell their stuff as long as it means buyers come through the door they will spend more years in the doldrums or even fold like Tazbar and QXL.

eBay, Amazon and Play get the people coming because they can advertise properly. I think that should be what eBid do - because otherwise you might as well get your own website or use eBay. I don't think the once-off payment gets them enough continuous revenue to fund the site properly, which is why there are no buyers.

To get promotion you need to pay people to do it. However you dress it up, however much you complain that people need to do more work to promote themselves, that's what it comes down to and that's what people pay the other large sites to do.

If I was Lord Sugar I'd have fired them quite a long time ago.

TM6

Thank you SO much for all your postings.

I will still upload my listings and self promote them but I am now very realistic about any success!

I realise just how naive I have been about ebid up to now

Crowqueen

No reason to feel naive.

There's no reason eBid couldn't alter their strategies and provide a better service. They've also managed to stay afloat while other places fold - so they must do something right. They must have had some critical mass to maintain, if not develop momentum - there are 4m listings there, someone must be buying. (I say buying - to be worth sellers selling, there has to be another side of the equation.)

It's just that I would use them much more as a buyer if they had things I wanted to buy - I don't buy for fun, I buy when I need something, so 'doing my bit' isn't going to get the cash circulating as much as someone at eBid seeing sense and charging even slightly more in order to get enough money to advertise properly.

It seems counter-intuitive to make people pay more to attract them in, but the main third-party marketplaces all charge quite significant fees which go towards becoming household names.

eBid also need to look for a steady stream of revenue. Charging sellers once-off fees of £50-80 may seem a bargain for those sellers (if they can make it back) but it means that thereafter they are paying very little back into the site and using its resources for free - at a cost to the company and which doesn't net the company the sort of fees that larger sellers on eBay are paying out to not have to advertise, host their own site, etc.

I do still browse eBid - but they could do a lot more to help themselves flourish and promote their sellers and get in the buyers. People use third-party marketplace sites to piggyback on someone else's marketing - so without doing that the free sites are reliant on someone not finding what they want on the big 3. Maybe they like being part of a hobbyist site, but ecommerce is no longer a niche interest - it's big business and eBid could be in there with the big boys having a share of the pie. You do reap what you sow - and the responsibility for the health of their own site is ultimately eBid's.

RFW

Crowqueen wrote: »

No reason to feel naive.

There's no reason eBid couldn't alter their strategies and provide a better service. They've also managed to stay afloat while other places fold - so they must do something right.

Not spending money seems to be the key. They're a small corner shop compared to Ebay's supermarket chain. They can co-exist, sell similar items, but if they are ever to be on a comparable level they will have to have investment. After all this time it doesn't look as though they want or need to be on the same level.