There's a few big things I don't like about selling on ebay:
- the
paypal link. Very hard to avoid in the UK especially
-
slow; a lot of clicks and work to make just a basic listing
- seems to be moving away from ordinary people buying and selling things they don't need anymore
-
banning lots of interesting and colourful things
- I have a very rough guide of
15% overheads in my mind when selling (postage, paypal, final listing etc etc)
- I just don't like supporting what seems like a strong monoploy to me (i.e. can't search ebay from other sites effectively, payment anticompetition etc)
So I started trying other methods to sell things to see if there is another way.
Bear in mind I'm not a powerseller. What I like to do is buy used things and then sell them on again when I'm done playing with them. I like buying cheap things with the knowledge that if I don't like them I can sell it on when I've finished playing with it.
I'm happy to make less cash if the problems
What I'd like to know is:
1) Have I missed anything
2) How do your experiences differ?
-
ebid
Thought this could be brilliant. Couldn't sell anything through it at static price. I've been determining the price by looking at past sales on ebay though. Maybe I need to charge less.
-
etsy. I think if I was selling handmade goods I would use this. I like this site.
- a basic google sites and
google checkout store.
For a while I listed my items also on a basic shop store. Of course though ebay made it difficult for me to redirect people to my site and no chance generating traffic on my own. I think people won't trust a store but I hope that the google sign can give people confidence. How do yoiu feel about Google Trusted stores?
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eggDrop. This was a brilliant little app where you just photo what you sell, name it and set the price. So much quicker and easier than ebay. I listed over 50 items I needed to get rid of around the house. Nothing sold. Not one thing! Might work better in major cities like London.
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Gumtree. Few people use
Craigslist outside of London in the UK. I had someone get in contact regards a phone & leftover holiday cash. In all cases I smelt a rat and so made no sale. Did have better results with vehicles.
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Autotrader. This is still a good way to sell a vehicle. But the people buying are more likely to be savvy, carrying out a full inspection themselves. More of a case that you have to expect some haggling down. Pistonheads - could be similar.
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Bitmit. A very open and quite unrestricted auction site with Bitcoin. Quite a few users now and the escrow made me excited. However, I had no responses to any of my listings which I purposely had way below the market price. Site was sold by stealth to someone in HongKong, people are a little suspicious now though.
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carboot sales (trunk / garage sales). It's amazing but nobody will give you a fair price at these sales. All the junk leftover that hasn't been on ebay. On pulling up people practically mugged me getting out the van. They want the deals that you can't be bothered to put on ebay. Hard to cover the low fee to enter the field.
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forum selling. I find if you can get a forum for your specialist interest that allows selling and geographically near you, this can be a friendly way of doing it. But be very careful about checking the rules, posting in the right section and paying your dues
^^^
So after all this I thought to myself maybe I could
improve how I do ebaying. I did have some success. The
ebay app makes listing quicker but I had to freeze it because it's one of those apps that wastes your battery by coming out of the background with wakelocks. Good tip though for some people.
Then I wanted to know if I could offer an alternative payment processor for people other than Paypal. I've seen some companies do this but how do they actually link it from ebay? Even though Skrill (Moneybookers) is owned by ebay now I'd like to try that. I'd also like to try Google Checkout, which I don't think is banned by ebay in the UK (only the USA).
Since then I've been looking at
ebay like sites abroad. So far:
Mercadolibre = big market but a real mess. Can work. Owned by ebay unfortunately. People click buy, then don't pay and you get charged. Typically some people just start a new account after this and forgo any kind of feedback to avoid the fees. Basically you're paying for the feedback. I found it can work but it's much more difficult than ebay.
Stuff.co.nz = looks good but you need a NZ bank account
Norway (can't remember name of it) = Also need a Norgie account
Ebay USA/Canada/wherever = I've noticed some decrepencies in the payment processor policy. If you have a residency in another country then you can open an account abroad instead. Could be useful but not much help
Now what I'm thinking about
:
1) driving people to a private website that gives the assurance of Google Checkout - perhaps with a strategy of selling something for repeat sales - using ebay as a marketing tool basically... against thier rules no doubt
2)... out of ideas
!
Anything to add? I don't actually sell a lot. Fortunaately a lot of this has been for research - I want to know how to sell well just for interests sake so if I wanted to take it to a business level I could. But for the moment the ebay selling is so dominent I don't fancy it.
My attempts to avoid or improve my ebay selling experience 
