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.

 

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.