Saturday 15 September 2012

Ebay v. eBid - a seller's perspective.

Over the last few months I have been listing on both Ebay and eBid. I have been listing a mix of items from various categories.
The one thing that has been evident is that some items sell much better on one site than the other. For instance, I listed a load of genuine Epson ink carts on eBid for £.99 each with free postage. So far, I have sold 9 out of 12, with 2 buyers buying multiples. When I looked to list these on Ebay, I used the 'Completed listings' option to see how well these sell and found that Ebay is full of non-genuines and even at £1.50 with free P&P, they do not sell.

When looking to sell my unused but like-new PSP however,  it sat on eBid for 2 weeks without selling. This despite having no less than 15 views. I pulled the listing from eBid and dropped it into Ebay where it sold on a 7-day auction.

This isn't the only time where I have listed electronic gadgets on eBid only for them to fail to sell, only for them to go without fuss on Ebay.
On the other hand, items such as clothing (especially branded items which Ebay regularly pull), collectables such as coins ant stamps and consumables such as ink cartridges, art materials and furnishings all tend to sell on eBid better than on Ebay (and for a much higher premium to boot.

My first eBid listing was for a Ralph Lauren man's coat that Ebay pulled due to 'Breach of listing policy'. Ebay has a system in place called 'VeRo' which makers can sign-up to. This scheme gives companies such as YSL, RL and Burberry the right to have listings removed to 'protect their brand image'. eBid has no such scheme, so listing brand-name items is not a problem.
The coat went for £9.00 + P&P and went to a buyer from Belfast.

6 years on and I reckon I have now made-back the cost of the initial joining (about £50 if I remember correctly). The one advantage being that my total sellers fees from eBid for using enhancements such as 'gallery+' have only come to a grand total of £2.34 for 25 sales to date. Compare this to around 69p just to sell a £3.00 item on Ebay.

My only complaint about eBid (and a major gripe amongst it's user-base) is the lack of a 'variations' option wehn listing items for which you may have several sizes/colours available. This is one big plus for Ebay, especially if you are retailing clothes.

Another way in which eBid excels is in the feedback. With eBay, only a buyer can leave negative fb if a trade goes wrong. whereas in eBid, both buyer and seller can leave negative fb. This encourages much better trading, as scammers who run such scams as 'item exchange' or 'item not received' are soon outed and banned. Ebay's system of not allowing a seller to 'neg' a buyer, leaves the seller open to malicious FB from buyers intent on fleecing the seller if they won't give them a refund for an item.

In my opinion both sites have their place within the market and you can make a living from both, but with eBid, you are best listing items which you don't mind selling over a longer period of time.

24/10/2012 - Added the following -

After selling a few items on Ebid, I have noticed a trend occurring.  The majority of 'Buy It Now' sales are being made on a Saturday evening. This has happened to all of the ink cartridges bar 1. Auction items still tend to finish at varied times depending on when the first bid was placed.
So if you want to really keep on top of your game when selling BIN items, you need to make sure to check your registered email account late on Sunday afternoon to see if you have sold anything. This will then give you half a chance to get any sold items packed for shipping on the Monday.

 

5 comments:

Jewel's Parlour said...

Re: the lack of a 'variations' option...

Yes, I was surprised not to find it on eBid too. On the other hand the spreadsheet bulk upload is so convenient that I don't really care any more whether all my listings are on a single auction page or several.

What I also like on eBid is their user forum where you can talk about pretty much anything. Constructive criticism is welcome. The strictly moderated and censored feeBay "community" pales in comparison.

Anonymous said...

I am a'fugitive' from ebay - they excluded me just as I as getting up and running well, over a very minor,unintentional, one-off breech of their rules.It's very distressing. So, I'm looking at using ebid, and found this article useful and interesting. I will give ebid a go and see what happens.
Anyay, many thanks for posting this.
SuMaTu

Anonymous said...

thanks for this review im sick of being raped by the ebay 15-30% SELLER FEES as a coin seller. hopefully ive found a new home.

catsmeowcreations said...

I have been on e bid for weeks now. I was very excited about selling here but to this date I have not sold one item. I use buy it now free shipping pictures which cost more if you sell. I keep lowering my prices and still I have not sold anything what am I doing wrong? someone please help. I am disabled and need badly to make some money. CatsMeowCreations

The Snakeman said...

It did take me a while to finally get my first sale on ebid.
I have also found that some items just will not sell no matter how much effort you put into your listing.

I think the problem seems to be that there are a lot of sellers on ebid, but not many buyers.

If you are having a trouble selling, try posting on the ebid forums and you will find people are more then willing to offer help for free.