eBid - An Excellent Pre-Christmas Sales Site

[bunsock]

Thank you eBid for providing an excellent selling site. In the 3 weeks prior to Christmas my sales were up by 33% by items sold and 61% by value compared with the same period last year. Keep up the good work.

[Busylizzy59]

Thats really good

well done

[gazlannathai]

bunsock - was that due to eBid's efforts, or due to your own at promoting your items and stores, and generally having more of them listed?

Then there's the "meaningless percentage" factor - if your sales last year were 99p and this year were 1.32, then you'd be up 33% - if you get my drift?
Cheerleading for the sake of it was what got the Bonanzle flag hags banned from a great many blogs and forums.

I love to hear good news related to eBid, but I also like some meat on my T-bone too, I'm always sceptical of skimpy statistics.

Gaz

[bunsock]

Hi Gaz, I am not trying to say how good I am but to say that eBid is a viable and improving marketplace. If you like, I am trying to offset comments (usually on other forums outside ebid) that nobody sells here. I take your point re the percentages; for the number of items sold last year during December prior to the 25th I sold 107 items and this year it was 143. My selling may be to do with my own advertising but as this hasn’t changed in concept and I believe the increase in sales is to do with an improved and more vibrant eBid. The revamp of the site last January certainly saw an upturn in sales for me.

[gazlannathai]

I agree about the comments outside of eBid - they are usually made either by people who do a drive-by review, or by sellers who did not give the site a fair crack (i.e. trying 10 listings for a week with a new, zero feedback ID, and then judging the site based on the performance achieved).

I realise you weren't trying to promote yourself, but to give the site a slap on the back. That's all well and fine, and I'm very pleased you've had success - don't let my negativity put you off - if you check my feedback, you'll see that 98% of it was from 2003 - 2005, and since then practically nothing. Admittedly I practically gave up on the site in 2006 and 2007 due to sheer volume of sales over at the Sith Lords, but since returning late in 2008, I've had almost zero sales and this year it has been zero all year, despite rotating inventory in and out every 3 months or so.

I'm not blaming eBid itself for the lack of sales, and I could probably list 100 things I know I've done / am doing wrong (even though they're no different to what I did in 2003-5). However, I've picked up on a massive reluctance to buy from overseas these last couple of years, in both the UK and the US, which is undoubtedly due to the overall economic climate.

That hurts my efforts badly, as does eBid's unwillingness to rectify the displayed location for me and my items in the forums and auction-side (I know that Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, Singapore, United Kingdom as a locale is putting off buyers as I've had messages asking if I'm a scammer because of that) - that's one of the very few things I lay squarely at eBid's doorstep. Another is the ppPay rules they introduced about 3 years back, which completely hobbled and knackered my ability to use that account.

The third item is that despite running my account as a UK account registered at my Northumberland address until 2008, having tried it as a Singapore account (nearest eBid country to me), eBid refuse to transfer it back to a UK account (they might have no choice about that next year if current expectations come about). As a Singapore account, my listings are not included in Google Shopping submissions, and are penalised when UK buyers search on eBid for items (local search, exclude xyz countries etc). This is despite the fact that I could stock-hold within the UK and despatch from there, that I use only UK banking for online services and ppPay plus all the others, and that I have an official UK address. (Even the Sith Lords are willing to let me have accounts in the countries of any of their sites).

The point I was asking, which you have answered, was to what degree the growth in sales was due to your own efforts and activities, compared to those of the site. I'd guess that the Google tie-in has probably helped you more than anything else from what you've said. eBid can be given kudos for having gained Google's attention and approval, but the traffic from there has to be due to the combination of your own listing titling and descriptions, and Google's sheer volume of searchers. Other than maintaining stable daily updates to Google, there's not much credit can be given to eBid in that scenario.

The site revamp I am sure has helped make it more attractive to browsers and buyers once they land here, but in what way has it increased the organic visibility of the site outside of people who know it exists anyway, and those arriving from a Google shopping search? I think enthusiasm on that aspect needs tampered - there were many features, regularly requested by users, that didn't make it into that upgrade, and still haven't - one of the key ones being visibly increased offline marketing by eBid themselves.

So, yup - fantastic you had the increased trade (personally dead chuffed for you), but I'm convinced you made that happen yourself, not that it was intrinsic to whatever the site has done. Therefore keep it up, it's your business, only you can make it succeed or fail (and this year I seem to be an expert at making mine fail).

Gaz

[bunsock]

Hi Gaz, Its difficult to say where buyers come from. Each month I have a classified advert for my eBid stores in the Railway Antiques Gazette. In addition if I sell anything on another site the buyer will get a follow up email promoting eBid and a leaflet with their goods. That’s all the advertising I do. Neither of these would explain an increase in sales and particularly new buyers. Over time I would expect the Railway Antiques Gazette adverts to bring a declining level of new custom as a lot of the readers are subscribers like me and will see the same adverts each month. In addition to a few regular customers I have had a spate of new buyers this year which I can only assume are through Google or because of eBid’s revamped site. I had one today who bought 35 photos. The other thing I do every week is to add fresh items to my stores so returning customers will, hopefully, see its not just the same old goods for sale. I think this is quite important and may make folk visit on a regular basis.

[gazlannathai]

I agree 100% on the need for weekly additions to the stores - it's something I repeatedly berate myself for failing to do with regularity and constancy.

Just thinking as I reread the thread - you know what's missing on eBid? This is blindingly obvious as soon as its pointed out, and I don't know if anyone has pointed it out before - I would expect so.

eBid does not have a site Blog - they rely on the forums and newsletters to issue updates and news, which is fine for people already registered on the site, but what about reaching out to the hundreds of millions who aren't?

With a site blog, the RSS feed from it could be submitted to the likes of Technorati, ping-o-matic, facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and so forth, as part of a wider eBid social marketing program, and members like Kimbo or me could also use it to feed our Squidoo pages and so forth. "Pro" bloggers like me could then also use the blog feed as a news source for our ecommerce news blogs and e-magazines etc. It would also guarantee mmore regular mention of the site on mainstream ecommerce newschannels such as Auctionbytes, Brewsnews, and all the other big name sites.

I'd even go so far as to hypothesise that just adding an eBid blog and having it in place before New Year (it's a 20 minute job) with regular (minimum weekly) posts throughout 2011, would double the site traffic and membership on its own before this date next year. The SEO benefit of a blog is enormous - all the search engines love blogs and blog pages are consistently in the top results across all search engines.

Therefore as a tool to promote the site, and gain new registrations, a site blog would be far more effective than that crappy clixGalore affiliate program (which NEEDS a product feed API from eBid if its ever going to be worthwhile for affiliates).

I'm now sitting here slapping myself around the head that I didn't spot this site omission before, and suggest it to da Boyz.