Selling your stuff on EBID. advice for new sellers

soolin

RMS2 wrote: »

Wasn't it £100 but you got a free tee shirt?

They have never charged the full price- it is a bit like the sofa sales- the half price offer finishes at 11pm one day and immediately restarts- I paid about £40, give or take. No t shirt though, I think I was supposed to get one but never did.

Mayday

A bit of light relief as it's YDC time again on eBid:



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

YDC = Your Donation Counts. This month's featured charity is Janet's Trust who is raising funds towards the purchase of a Defibrillator for Devonport High School For Girls, Plymouth.

Please come and join us with YDC129; everyone is welcome

soolin

Serious question time- has something happened to ebid or have listings been removed or something.

I sell in certain categories, (obviously) and the last time I fiddled with one of my listings there were several hundred listings in one of my categories compared to several thousand on ebay. I removed some of my stock and listed some overstock on eBid over the past week or two and have just checked something and that category now has less than 100 listings.

I've done the logical things like check the category hasn't changed or split into more than one category and there is nothing. I've checked other categories I've used in the past and some of those are showing hardly any listings

I don't want to say what category I am looking at in particular, but one I do watch is Wedgwood Jasper Ware - and currently ebid only has 126 live listings worldwide. That's a bad example as Wedgwood Jasper Ware doesn't easily sell - but it is the same across loads of my favourite categories. Basically there is just virtually nothing listed.

I've also noted that ebid have changed the way they show closed listings- it used to show whether a listing has sold or not- green for sold, red for unsold, but they have removed this as well and just show closed.

patman99

It might be that you have not logged in to Ebid for a while and have had some of your listings marked as 'inactive' and removed.

It is a new policy to stop people simpley listing stuff, then disappearing, never to return.

soolin

patman99 wrote: »

It might be that you have not logged in to Ebid for a while and have had some of your listings marked as 'inactive' and removed.

It is a new policy to stop people simpley listing stuff, then disappearing, never to return.

Sorry I didn't explain myself well, these aren't my listings that have disappeared it is listings in general. I keep virtually nothing listed on ebid anymore purely because my eBay sales are strong and even removed some to put into Facebook as that is generating some sales, but have been putting things on that I have plenty of - and just deleting them when I need to move them to eBay to cover sales.

The 126 Wedgwood jasper ware items are for instance, the full amount listed on ebid , some of the other categories that used to show hundreds have dropped to less than a handful of listings in some cases.

I've looked on the forums and can see some people have had their listings removed for various breaches, which is fair enough, but doesn't explain where all the listings are. I thought the last newsletter I got from ebid was still congratulating themselves on increasing numbers.

Frugaldom

I suspect they have deleted a whole load of dormant or inactive listings and closed stores and still haven't got to grips with advertising & marketing budgets. We have one store remaining open that gets the occasional flurry of sales then nothing for weeks, unless we advertise it ourselves, but the service eBid has provided us over the past 15 years has taught us an enormous amount about how the Internet & WWW have developed and how certain sites have their success hinged on who owns them and how they are funded. MSE itself is a prime example of how things work. If Gazza & Mark had been, say, Martin & another Mark, eBid could have been part of something much bigger by now. But perhaps the guys are happy with things as they are. I can totally get that. But it is hard work selling on there when it hasn't become a household name, no getting away from that fact.

patman99

They do run ad campaigns, but only in the USA, and then only a single State each time.

They would be better-off spending £100k sponsoring a series such as 'Shipping Wars' or 'Baggage Battles' on the UKTV network.

RFW

patman99 wrote: »

They do run ad campaigns, but only in the USA, and then only a single State each time.

They would be better-off spending £100k sponsoring a series such as 'Shipping Wars' or 'Baggage Battles' on the UKTV network.

I've never seen even a simple Facebook ad from them.

ShaunParker

Their issue is marketing - they dont know how to do it and so people have no idea they exist, Ebay for example run low bids in Google Adwords for hundreds of thousands of topics. If you check out the Ebid forum some major categories have not had proper interaction for well over a year. They need to change this approach rather than relying on recommendation because people will not be recommending to use it from a seller perspective.

RFW

ShaunParker wrote: »

Their issue is marketing - they dont know how to do it and so people have no idea they exist, Ebay for example run low bids in Google Adwords for hundreds of thousands of topics. If you check out the Ebid forum some major categories have not had proper interaction for well over a year. They need to change this approach rather than relying on recommendation because people will not be recommending to use it from a seller perspective.

At this stage in their existence (15 years +), it's safe to assume they are happy where they are and getting money in for subscriptions. It strikes me that thinking they are a serious competitor for Ebay is like going into a local corner shop and expecting them to be competing with Tesco in a few months.

There are several shopping cart software/websites/add-ons that are totally free that are a better to use than Ebid. Even private sellers can set up a blog and easily add a few products to it. Ebid don't seem to have evolved in any way and are fast becoming irrelevant.