Selling your stuff on EBID. advice for new sellers

soolin

virgil_tracy wrote: »

but how does the buyer pay me if I can't use Paypal or something similar ?

You can use paypal but you just have to raise an invoice and give the buyer the details. The invoicing procedure is not as easy as it is on ebay, and is even less simple if you are not are paid for member.

virgil_tracy

soolin wrote: »

You can use paypal but you just have to raise an invoice and give the buyer the details. The invoicing procedure is not as easy as it is on ebay, and is even less simple if you are not are paid for member.

well looking at page 1 of this thread there's a table indicating what you can and can't do with he bronze and silver packages and there it says you don't have access to Paypal .

??

soolin

virgil_tracy wrote: »

well looking at page 1 of this thread there's a table indicating what you can and can't do with he bronze and silver packages and there it says you don't have access to Paypal .

??

You can still raise your own invoice though via paypal, although seriously, you'll never have to as nothing ever sells on ebid.

I was stupid enought to take out life time membership a few years back, idiot that I am, so I can send an invoice although even for me it is not easy and streamlike like on ebay. However with 4 shops and 8 years of trying ebid I've still only made less than 10 sales so invoicing is hardly strenous.

TriedandTrue

I can't make any sales on eBid. When I first started, I listed a few items for a penny with free shipping, just to boost my feedbacks, and no takers. Worse, one of their posters said that they wouldn't buy my items for that very reason that they're priced too cheap. I withdrew them, listed on eBay, and boom, sold.

It's true that after you pay your lifetime membership, it's free to list, however if you want a few perks, such as Gallery pics, pay 2% fvf. It's not bad, but I still remember the first thing I heard, free -- sounds like a sales pitch. I'd go along with it though, but nothing happened. Then I wanted to buy a book, searched on eBid, came up empty, then searched on eBay, came up with a bunch of.

eBid doesn't advertise enough, it's one of their problems. eBay on the other hand, advertises all over the place, and not only about selling, but look at their classifieds. Lately I did a search for something totally unrelated to online sales, and all of a sudden, eBay logo stares right at me. They throw their name around a great deal, and it pays off, can't recall same from eBid.

On the other hand, certain things are better on eBid, such as friendly helpful forums, still this doesn't help my sales. However, despite the fact that eBay's forums suck a big time, eBay sells, have to give them credit for that. Ditto for the river.

Customer service on eBid is quite another story. You can access them by email only, and it takes quite some time for them to reply. eBay on the other hand, can be reached by phone.

Hey don't kill the messenger, it's only my opinion. My 2 cents worth.:beer:

soolin

TriedandTrue yours is about the experience I would expect on ebid. I still have my shops all stocked and still cannot sell a single item. I have given up checking completed listings as all you get are pages and pages of unsold items. I can often get well into double figures for pages before I find a single sale.

Mayday

It's almost YDC time again on eBid:



http://uk.ebid.net/buy/charity-auctions/ydc-your-donation-counts/

Frugaldom

I have to agree that sales are slow if you're relying on passing traffic floating in and making occasional purchases, but if you are using eBid as a selling platform for your own sites, it seems to work perfectly well. Granted, we aren't earning a living from it, but we do get some good sales:

"Buyer : xxx on Tue 08 Feb 2011 12:23:51 (GMT) for £243.00"

We mainly list individual items/books but on the occasions that collections are listed, they do sell. So it isn't that buyers using eBid don't spend their money, it's just that sellers need to find their own buyers and lead them to eBid. The book shop accountnow has a feedback score of 1926 but it's amazing how many buyers don't bother to leave feedback. I guess it's because so few people ever think to do that when buying from an online store.

Hope this helps someone. We'd certainly never give up on eBid - it was the easiest, cheapest form of advertising and stores set up we'd ever found... so we simply stopped looking elsewhere.

PS: I am biased - I've been with eBid since almost the start, so I do play the loyalty card.

Myyrrddyn

soolin wrote: »

TriedandTrue yours is about the experience I would expect on ebid. I still have my shops all stocked and still cannot sell a single item. I have given up checking completed listings as all you get are pages and pages of unsold items. I can often get well into double figures for pages before I find a single sale.

I have had over 500 items listed on ebad and cqout and I am lucky if I get a sale every 2 months or so. It has been now 3 months since a sale on them.
At least it is free but it needs customers not sellers.

soolin

What I find interesting is that I can have the same line on ebay and ebid and continually sell out on ebay and have to restock yet have no page veiws on ebid, not just one or two but NO page veiws at all.

As for loyalty, I think I am coming up to 8 years on ebid now and I've made less than 10 sales, all my feedback is from buying. I used to buy from new ebid sellers who tried to low start approach thinking, naively, they would get a bidding war. I'd buy at a pound ro two , leave feedback then resell the item at a good profit on ebay. However sellers seem to have realised there are buyers so low start auctions are rare and i haven't bought anything for a couple of years now.

patman99

Ebid advertises mainly via physical means, i.e. billboards, TV, radio and sponsorship (they sponsor the top WSB team, so get plenty of TV exposure.

Ebay pay a fortune to google adwords to ensure any google search will come-up with an ebay listing at the top if there is a corresponding item for sale. As ebay pay by click-through, I always make sure to 'click-through', but never follow-up with a bid. That way I have the satisfaction of costing ebay money.