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>> Ebay ALTERNATIVES << Auctions Listing...
 

HI- Thanks to Imjustme, and his article on cnn, I have pulled all the auction sites listings from the CNN INterview for everyone to peruse..

Some are new to me, and I will be checking them out..heres the complete list:

Online Auction .com - Auctions With Free Unlimited Listings

Free Online Marketplace & Free Ecommerce Website Builder - get a Free Online Store at eCRATER.com

iOffer: A place to buy, sell & trade

www.ubid.com

Bidville Auctions

Overstock.com: Online Shopping Bedding, Furniture, Electronics, Jewelry, Clothing & more

buy.com

etsy.com

Wagglepop.com

Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more

OnlineAuctions.com

mns auctions

weBidz.com

AuctionQuests.com

>>>Take your REP with You! >>Repatoo - you know what they say - online auction feedback/reputation manager

Buy It Sell It Storefronts by Inkfrog

Google Base

SpecialistAuctions.com

eBid.net

wholesaleauction.com

bidtopia.com

Nice list, thanks! Shame all of these aren't a touch on ebay.
I am just waiting for the day that Google roll on an auction site.

Few more I came across:

121Bid - the 100% FREE auction site !

Football, Computing, Music, Movies, Collectables, Stamps, Books, Gaming, Telecommunication, Toys, Electrical, Over 18's

OnLine Auctions

UKBids Away-Premier UK Auction Website

www.bumblebeeauctions.co.uk

Bids2U

Auctionair

AVABID.COM - YOUR FREE UK ONLINE AUCTION SITE

The only alternative is to wait until some really big company starts up their own site because these small companies just can't hack it. It would be cool if buyers and sellers all migrated over to ioffer but it aint happening.

HI, Yes, ioffer isnt bad, but their site loads really slow... for me.
I do like the idea, of starting up with 3,000 fb though :)

Is Google now starting up their own auction site? Googlebase? I sur ehope so, give ePay a run for their money. woohoo!

Google won't be starting an Auction site considering the format is dying. Google base feeds into Google Product Search. Googles strategy is to have etailers and other stores items to show up on google product search. From there they want your buyers to pay via Google Checkout for a fee.

Googlebase is more of a way for your items to show up on google product search. From those that I've talked to, they say that Googlebase isn't all that useful.

Well Google checkout is more like competition for Paypal. That's why everyone wants it to launch competition for ebay

ebay alternatives
 

there are so many auction websites out there without any sucess and they are all trying to be next ebay.

There are at least 100 websites there and I think if they all got together and created one single website and forwarded all their traffic and put all their work and resources into this one website I think they could get somwhere.

what do you think is needed for a website to make it out there and how much traffic do you think it needes and how many members for a website to make it big.

I see all these website with a couple of thousand registered users but if they combined it they would have almost half a million members and that would be a great start.

What is your opinion.

How is anyone going to get another group together to beat ebay?
People are like sheep. It is extremely difficult to make them change.

I knwo of a way.

First a group needs to get together and develop a site that is better than eBay... That's software development, and it should take a year.

Next, another group of people needs to build a website that is better than PayPal.. Another year of development, but these could be done parralell.

Next they'd need to build traffic..

There are several points that would attract people:

a) USA support team available by phone.
b) All sellers have to be ID verified, and products and money have to be secured by that site (similar to PayPal).

c) No selling fees.



Eventually that site that is similar to PayPal should be sold, once it becomes popular. Preferably to American Express, Visa, or Master Card, or the companies that own them.. Deal should be such that those companies can not sell it to eBay or PayPal for a 100 years..

Armed with that, advertise on TV your auction site, and then your payment site, powered by American Express.. A team of highly trained professionals from USA is always available to address your concerns via phone, those other guys just reply to e-mail from India.

The point I think people are missing is the costs involved. To get some to create an auction site similar to ebay alone, (or, on the same kind of level), would be a vast amount. Then you would have to give people a reason to sell on your auction site, the most likely being reduced or zero fees. So it would take a lot of time to cover the initial cost of the website.

Advetising is yet another budget breaker, and unless you are making sales, then advertising will be down the pan. Ebay had no competition when they were marketing their auction site, so people wanted to try it out. With a new auction site, people already know they can list their product on ebay and expose it to an audience of however many million, so why would they bother spending money on another auction site? (Unless they are banned from ebay...)

I can't see any reason why people would use a new auction site, other than if it was totally free, and really looked/operated the part.

I think ebay is hurting itself with the feedback and fee structure, I think it just be a matter of time before someone like google or a large company figures it out.

Google had mentioned in the past that it was interested in doing something. They got aggressive with google checkout.
an auction site could be next. The guys at google are good at keeping things under wraps and then out of no where coming out with new stuff.

Google is also good at ****ing with people's heads for example everyone thought the G phone was going to come out and be the most unbelievable phone in the world.

Venture Capital.
 

Such a plan is preliminary, and mostly obvious but I like the bit about selling off the payment method to fund advertising. Though, if you could keep the payment method you'd be better off.

How about, writing an awesome business plan that addresses all of the issues of coming into a monopolized arena, how our auction site would be different (e.g. actual customer support, etc.). How it would be financially viable, how much we'd need, if it can be making excellent profit within 5 years its seen by VC's as a worthwhile long term investment. We could do this as a community effort using appropriate collaboration online software, elect a UK and USA representative(s) to champion the business plan to venture capitalist firms, get a large investment, set up a huge advertising budget and take ebay to town.

At the end of the day, the people most fiscally benefited would be the venture capitalist, who's going to one a nice big stake in the company. Everyone involved in the collobarotion effort can be compensated according to their input, and elected status.

By following a collaboration route, we can compete with eBay in the same way than linux competes with microsoft... by originating out of a completely different playing field. Not only could there be colloboration on the business planning side, but there could be collobartion of the software side, and on the management side. At every point in the process, individuals would have to be highly trustworthy, and we may have to do things to verify identity, etc. In fact, the colloborative teams may have to be involved on an application basis, rather than a free for all. This would prevent back doors in software, claims problems on the business side, etc. etc.

A big project, but with enough involvement you could get it done. Then everyone could go back to making excellent money selling online, and actually have access to their money, and actually be able to sell high volume without having their integrity questioned, challenged or outright dragged through the mud.

Amen.

And we could use the domain bidmad.com :D

I really am still waiting for the day google bring out an auction site.

Has anyone signed up with Online auctiom.com, I would appreciate your feedback. Can anyone suggest in their opinion the best alternate site to ebay from the list posted above, there is also another new site called bidtopia.com

ebid is getting better now i have had 25 sales this month and i`m sticking with it ebay will get no more cash from me

25 sales out of how many listings?

I like ecrater.com. Its easy to set up the store and if you use googlecheckout there are no fees at all.........

I'm pretty small time but I was still happy to make my first sale in just 2 days of the store being open.

mattnem05.ecrater.com is my place- still pretty small but I'm working on getting it bigger daily

Alternative to eBay Auction site
 

I was checking on a site, a former ebay seller, has called bidtopia.
That site has a lot going for it, and the listings there have bids, nearly every page I looked at (several) have bids on all items. Might be a place where sellers may want to join and list their auctions.
bidtopia, is the name of the Auction site

Amazon, still steady for me, I can count on 2-3 sales/ week like the mailman showing up.. but thats it...pays for your gasoline..:))