free website and alternative to paypal?

sanova76

Hi,

Can anyone recommend an alternative to paypal to receive/process debit/credit payment please?

Also a free website hosting where I can list used items to sell.

I don't make much after paying ebay and paypal fees



Thanks.

San

soolin

sanova76 wrote: »

Hi,

Can anyone recommend an alternative to paypal to receive/process debit/credit payment please?

Also a free website hosting where I can list used items to sell.

I don't make much after paying ebay and paypal fees



Thanks.

San

I fear you are asking for the impossible. Any merchant type payment processing company is going to charge you, PayPal is about in line with most other services. You could obviously try asking for bank transfers or cheques, but nowadays savvy buyers expect to pay instantly and have full protection and trying to get buyers to give up any protection would make you look like a scammer. Personally If I came across a website or seller wanting bank transfers only I would walk away.

As for other sites, try SHpock or Facebook marketplace at least if you sell locally you can ask for cash on collection. If you want to offer to a wider audience then both those sites seem to generate a lot of interest but again people will normally expect to pay by PayPal.

If you are looking at your own website then you will need to look for ways to drive traffic to you, and that could be costly , and once again though you are going to look dodgy without a proper facility to take cards.

Assuming you are a business then if you can't make money it probably shows you are paying too much for your stick, or you are not in the right markets.

If you are a private seller just selling off your own goods, then rather than make peanuts why not do one massive car boot sale and then donate the rest.

forgotmyname

People tend to trust paypal, with an online shop you dont really want free website hosting.

Bought some stuff off ebay recently and received a voucher to purchase directly. The website was awful. It was insecure, linked to several insecure sites also. There was no way i was putting my bank or card details into that site.

Getting a site up and running is fairly cheap. I can host 10 sites and pay less than £50 a year.

What is trickier is making the site secure and driving traffic to it.

How many thousands of pounds are you going to spend on advertising your website? Whatever it is, probably wont be enough.

If your not making much then consider selling something else. Or look to see if your getting the going rate. If your getting less then look to see why your getting less.

Personally i think sticking no returns limits the buyers and attracts scammers who know they will get a refund at your expense and there is virtually nothing you can do about it.

Then look at your wording or any additional terms, people have posted plenty on here that you may laugh at or thinks thats mine.

Yes you can make a website, will you get any visitors, NO.

Used to be far easier to create a site and get high on googles search. Ive had AOL free web space on Googles No1 spot. and found copies of my web page all over the place. That was a long time ago though.

askmeaboutsofas

There's no way you would be able to have a free website and free payment gateway that is also safe and secure. How would the companies providing the services make any money?

Do you sell a lot through PayPal? Give them a call and ask if they can put you onto a different tariff. They can and do adjust the % you pay based on how much money goes through your account. It's definitely worthwhile asking.
There are a lot of other marketplaces out there, my suggestion is try everything and see what works for you! Soolin's already suggested Facebook Marketplace and Shpock. There's also Prevloved, Loot, Gumtree, FridayAd, and numerous others. Depending on what you're selling there may be a specialised site just for the products you have. I've heard good things about Instagram too.

Another way to deal with it would be to bundle up your products into bulk orders for eBay, if the category you're selling in has a final value fee cap.
Best option, do a google search for the things you're selling, and see where other people are selling them.

soolin

askmeaboutsofas wrote: »

There's no way you would be able to have a free website and free payment gateway that is also safe and secure. How would the companies providing the services make any money?

Do you sell a lot through PayPal? Give them a call and ask if they can put you onto a different tariff. They can and do adjust the % you pay based on how much money goes through your account. It's definitely worthwhile asking.
There are a lot of other marketplaces out there, my suggestion is try everything and see what works for you! Soolin's already suggested Facebook Marketplace and Shpock. There's also Prevloved, Loot, Gumtree, FridayAd, and numerous others. Depending on what you're selling there may be a specialised site just for the products you have. I've heard good things about Instagram too.

Another way to deal with it would be to bundle up your products into bulk orders for eBay, if the category you're selling in has a final value fee cap.
Best option, do a google search for the things you're selling, and see where other people are selling them.

The PayPal merchant rates don't kick in until a quite high monthly turnover , from memory over £1600 per month (although it might be more).

RFW

sanova76 wrote: »

Hi,

Can anyone recommend an alternative to paypal to receive/process debit/credit payment please?

Also a free website hosting where I can list used items to sell.

I don't make much after paying ebay and paypal fees



Thanks.

San

Tictail is a free to use web hosting/shop site.
You still have to use a payment gateway, either Paypal or Stripe (which pretty much costs the same as Paypal).


You need to drive traffic to your Tictail shop, ok if you have existing customers or a high traffic generating social media page or blog.


As above though if you don't readily get traffic it will likely end up costing you more to get traffic to a website than it would using Ebay.

soolin

It's always a shame when a persons asks a question and then never comes back to the thread , this could have been an interesting round discussion and useful for others . I feel that there is more help that could have been offered by us regulars with the statement made by the OP "I don't make much after paying ebay and paypal fees" rather than just try and find an alternative venue.

forgotmyname

People tend to forget that ebay spent a ton of money advertising over the years to attract people to them. When Yahoo auctions ended they said goto ebay.

Starting up a website will require a ton of cash to advertise and let people know it exists or already have a customer base and just use the website like a catalogue.

RFW

forgotmyname wrote: »

Starting up a website will require a ton of cash to advertise and let people know it exists or already have a customer base and just use the website like a catalogue.

That's it. Some businesses can easily get customers, others not so much.
Inside of Amazon I have a nice share of my market, outside Amazon I barely exist as far as getting customers goes. To get to any kind of similar position as I get from Amazon would take around half my turnover or more in advertising.

I am planning on pushing a new website again in January, so I'll try and remember to post here on how it's going and what it's costing in comparison to Ebay and Amazon fees.

ballisticbrian

I am planning on pushing a new website again in January

Please share tips on hosting a smallish site, who to use?

soolin

RFW wrote: »

That's it. Some businesses can easily get customers, others not so much.
Inside of Amazon I have a nice share of my market, outside Amazon I barely exist as far as getting customers goes. To get to any kind of similar position as I get from Amazon would take around half my turnover or more in advertising.

I am planning on pushing a new website again in January, so I'll try and remember to post here on how it's going and what it's costing in comparison to Ebay and Amazon fees.

I'd welcome any updates you are able to share.