Zombie Sellers

[SparkyLabs]

So tell me how many times have you heard of ebid at outside of ebid? Perhaps I'm coming at things from a different angle I'm trying to sell volumes of new items rather than one-offs. Nothing is ever perfect but working out the imperfections and doing something about it makes it better. Or at least that is what I do as an engineer. As has already been pointed out a lack of variety does not keep buyers coming to ebid by default but unless some sellers move over there would not be that variety. I have come to list my items so some extra variety has been added.

People seem quick to take anything I say as criticism of ebid. I'm merely stating the facts that because buyers do not come to ebid to browse there is less chance of them buying and in order to attract buyers to just hang about and increase general traffic and sales more variety would help. Ebid can't create that variety it needs people like me and everyone here to want to come and list. Most people don't change their habits unless there is an overwhelming advantage what advantage does your average buyer get from coming to ebid rather than eBay? Ebid does keep telling us that thousands are moving over, maybe thousands are they import their listings from eBay never login again unless they get a sale and become a zombie seller when they don't sell anything as they are being called here.

There now seemed to be a couple of other sellers here which sell in the same sort of sector which I do although not quite the same items which is good as I cannot cover the whole of what electronics enthusiasts want to buy. One of the sellers has a feedback rating of 3548 most of these officially imported by ebid from elsewhere I assume eBay judging by his listings as having an intimate knowledge of the eBay listing system I can see that the way his items are listed would have made him savings on eBay. His total sales here have been 3 items.

Hopefully with an increase in components and products for electronics hobbyists coming from more than one seller on ebid results will start popping up in Google more often and people will feel they can shop here as there is some competition and not just one person holding the prices high. I'm afraid I even passing on the 8% saving in fees that really is not going to make a vast amount of difference to my prices and I'm sure the same goes for everyone.

[madelaine]

You really took note of John Wash's comments, didn't you, Sparky?

[FBNeNotes]

Sparky.. keep your shoes on.. 2019 is around a very long corner. Seems my 2019 came in 2014.

[SparkyLabs]

Sparky.. keep your shoes on.. 2019 is around a very long corner. Seems my 2019 came in 2014.

I'm not quite getting the reference. I think the big difference here is that I am working as an online retailer whereas most people are selling on ebid as though it's an online car boot sale, no offence to anyone intended. Trends in the sector I sell in are quite low on ebid so maybe it's not the right website for the sort of products I sell perhaps the variety is not a good idea after all. Time will tell.

But I can see how and why the website will have a problem with sellers who genuinely abandon it without taking their products off the site. I don't think your zombie sellers are a case of people intending to defraud buyers because most people buy with PayPal which gives you all the protection required, I think your zombie sellers are people who listed items found they weren't selling and didn't login or possibly even change the email address.

[madelaine]

eBid has taken steps to deal with zombie sellers, as has already been explained.

[olivia8143]

eBid has taken steps to deal with zombie sellers, as has already been explained.

Post #12

[johnwash1]

you really took note of john wash's comments, didn't you, sparky?

rofl!

[johnwash1]

So tell me how many times have you heard of ebid at outside of ebid?...

Never. And yes, that does annoy me, but I recognise that eBid's business model no more allows expensive advertising than my own freelance business does. And it annoys me when I see the hero(ine) in a film using a Sony Vaio with Windows or an Apple Mac, instead of a superior system such as Ubuntu Linux that gets no advertising.

But I have to live with these annoyances and work around them.

In your case I'd be thinking about the upsurge of interest in hobby electronics due to the Arduino and especially the Raspberry Pi. Admittedly there's companies already offering add-ons for these, but might there be room for yet another? If you were selling DIY kits, collections of your components, for such projects, then the prices would be over the threshold for getting uploaded.

Maybe that doesn't make any sense, I don't have enough insight into your business. What I'm really saying is: the game has rules, the rules may be daft/irritating/uncongenial/whatever, but maybe there are ways to get ahead.

[thebeddingman]

Here is a Zombie seller

http://uk.ebid.net/for-sale/adult-sh...-133547725.htm

[SparkyLabs]

In your case I'd be thinking about the upsurge of interest in hobby electronics due to the Arduino and especially the Raspberry Pi. Admittedly there's companies already offering add-ons for these, but might there be room for yet another? If you were selling DIY kits, collections of your components, for such projects, then the prices would be over the threshold for getting uploaded.

Maybe that doesn't make any sense, I don't have enough insight into your business. What I'm really saying is: the game has rules, the rules may be daft/irritating/uncongenial/whatever, but maybe there are ways to get ahead.

At the moment my budget allows me to deal in individual components of very low value only. These will always be required. It's difficult to put them into kits because electronics has become such a diverse field. The reason why companies like Tandy have gone and people like Maplin have turned to selling many other things is because they cannot cope with the huge diversity in the electronics world these days. 20 or more years ago there were fewer individual components that people would consider to be jellybean parts so it was easier to stock parts that would keep everybody happy. These days particularly with the advent of things like the Arduino and Rasberry Pi as you say the field has become much vaster and it is difficult to put kits of components together to keep everyone happy. I did try one kit once but it was not successful although I may try and do a few more basic ones. I have a few small projects in mind which could be turned into constructional kits but again these take a bit of investment as I would need to have the circuit boards mass produced and they may not sell at all. I'm generally reluctant to sell larger items like add-ons for the Arduino et cetera because it requires quite an investment and I often struggle to match other sellers prices unless I'm buying in larger volume than I can cope with. I also don't have huge amounts of storage.

Again as we are told how many hundreds or was it thousands are moving over to ebid, it would be interesting to know how many become zombie sellers.