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.

 

Real head-scratcher of a day today.

Went to list my PSP on eBid today. Took the photo then tried to upload it. Every attempt to access the CF card containing the image failed. Tried the card in both a card reader and in the camera itself. But the laptop steadfastly refused to 'see' the card, let alone access it.

After an afternoon out round my parents, I tried the card in the card reader on my desktop and bingo, one photo accessible without fuss. The PSP is now up and available.

As for the laptop, I will have a look at it another day.

Talking of eBid, I sold an old N64 with controller. The winner paid for it yesterday, but when I looked in my Paypal account there was nothing showing. I began to scratch my head as to where it had gone. The mystery was quickly solved when I went back to eBid to check the email address I had set-up for Paypal and realised I had set it up for my 2nd Paypal account. Re-visited Paypal again. This time logging-in to the 2nd account and there it was along with all my other sales. Only another £2.00 and I can withdraw the cash for free.

Have spent all week trying to get all the way through a ValuedOpinions survey to reach the £10 cash-out. I am only 40p short, but every survey kicks me out. Suspicious, me ?, never.

The Ebid millionare challenge

Ebid (Ebay's biggest and fastest-growing competitor) is probably one of the best auction sites on the web. However, unlike Ebay, you don't get many stories about sellers making a million like you do on Ebay.
I intend to put this right. I am going to rise to the challenge to see how much I can make by selling on Ebid.

Now, the biggest part of the challenge is the lack of users on Ebid (although this is growing daily). This is countered by the lack of scammers and fraudsters so is much safer to sell on than the 'Dark side'.

Another bonus is the way Ebid manage the listings. Unlike Ebay, they are quick to jump on sellers who list the same item multiple times, thus reducing the number listings to wade through when hunting for a bargain or two.

I will keep this blog up to date as I go.

Has the Ebay bubble finally burst?.

Has Ebay's bubble finally burst ?.
According to their latest TV ad campaign, they have 30 million new/used items. This is down from 65 million 2 years ago. Compare this to their biggest rivals eBid, whose listing-count has increased over the same period from 3 million to 5 million.

The fall in listings can be accredited to several factors including increased final value fees, postage price caps (now lifted) and giving 'Diamond Powerseller' status to the big brands such as Argos and HP just for signing-up and they have managed the impossible, reduction of listings and alienation of the very core of their business - the small seller.

There are a lot of problems with Ebay which are causing people to leave in droves. Allowing sellers to list multiples of the same item instead of insisting on a single multi-quantity listing really spoil the whole search experience, with many users getting bored of wading through page after page of like-for-like splings (multiple listings from the same seller for the same item) in an attempt to find a particular item.
This is where Ebid wins-out, with a block on such practices, which in turn, leads to a more pleasent browsing experience which in turn, leads to higher sales.

Another thing that is beginning to get up the noses of those of us who have been with ebay for 10+ years is the increase in scammers on the site. I find it incredible just how many news stories appear about people being ripped-off by dodgy ebayers.
 

Ina Steiner's flawed survey skews voters results.

Every year Ina Steiner from EcommerceBytes undertakes a survey of online marketplaces. However, a flaw in the system has come to light.
The flaw is in the way that the results are calculated. Basically, the results are weighted on the basis of the average rating score given by each individual undertaking the survey.
What this means in real terms is that if just one person were to give 10/10 for each category to, say, Bidscammer, but then give 1/10 to every other site, Bidscammer would automatically appear above a site with 500 people giving an average of 9.7 across the board.
A fairer system would be to use a 'percentage-based' calculation, as used by many other survey sites.

This flaw opens-up the possibility of some less-than-popular sites encouraging their members to give the site perfect 10's, thus anyone reading the survey would consider them to be a better site than they actually are.

Having such a blatantly-open flaw does little to give credit to what should/could be a good consumer-rated guide to who are the the best 16 online marketplaces and may even damage the reputation of AuctionBytes itself.