Sales or no sales that is the question

[Bittyboy101]

Thanks for your reply Stnenopmoc

I fully understand this may not be entirely eBid's fault as I am now learning how eBid works as it is very different to eBay where everything regarding attracting buyers to your listings is automatically done for you.

I love the simplicity of eBid and I like how they just keep everything the same, even if it's so 1990's - I love it !

I am very grateful to the other forum member who put their trust in me and bought something on eBid giving me my first experience of what a sale feels like on eBid ! - Great stuff.

[FrogBearCreations]

I created a pinterest business account and run ads on certain items to get them seen - I have a lot of pin boards for my stuff and it has made a big difference in
the amount of traffic I am getting
it will help if you do not mind putting in the effort every day of promoting your items

[Bittyboy101]

Hi FrogBearCreations, Many thanks for your suggestion and idea.

Much appreciated.

[johnwash1]

Thanks for your reply Stnenopmoc

I fully understand this may not be entirely eBid's fault as I am now learning how eBid works as it is very different to eBay where everything regarding attracting buyers to your listings is automatically done for you.

I love the simplicity of eBid and I like how they just keep everything the same, even if it's so 1990's - I love it !

I am very grateful to the other forum member who put their trust in me and bought something on eBid giving me my first experience of what a sale feels like on eBid ! - Great stuff.

Hi BittyBoy, good to see you on eBid! Glad you've made a sale.Yes, things are very different here. I guess the place is well known to stamp and postcard collectors, and to craft people, but not so much otherwise. I hope I'll be corrected if I'm wrong. So I believe it means that
a) ensure your listing qualifies for uploading to Google (I still haven't got my head round doing that, too much else happening in my life, higher priority)
b) the site owners seemingly can't afford mainstream advertising (though I'm sure Google costs them a pretty penny) so you need to do your own publicity, as @FrogBearCreations says.

I'm keen to avoid the trap of listing on multiple sites (which search engines hate). So my stuff here, which I'm trying to add to every week (I believe that's good to do here for several reasons) doesn't duplicate anything I have on *bay. I thought end March over there would bring in Simple Delivery, at which point I'd be gone. Didn't happen. Then April 15 was to be the cut off. Didn't happen. They're gradually rolling it out, still hasn't hit me. And I made a sale today there of a £12 book, still no SD for me, though I'm not going to risk ending and relisting anything. That place has become a nightmare. I'm doing rather less than one item a week there. This time last year I was sometimes sending out 12 parcels in a single weekend. When I'm forced onto SD I'll end everything or make it local collect only. The community forums over there, one of the threads there has 5,000 postings and is gathering more all the time. I've never seen so much hate.

Since returning here I've sold a hard drive. Eventually I'll need to put serious thought into promotion. Or even dispose of things with Freecycle, Gumtree, TrashNothing etc.

You have lovely stuff and I have a collection of locks myself, though not beautifully restored like yours. It will be several years before I start disposing of mine though. Maybe I'll end up sending them to you, so you can polish them up! Your milling attachment needs to have measurements in the listing, I feel.

Best wishes.

[Bittyboy101]

Hey John,

It's great to be here and I am very happy to be on eBid as eBay was really going down hill with all their ludicrous changes with no consideration for small private sellers.

I am now starting to understand how eBid now works !... It is all about publicity and exposure.

It's a good positive selling platform with the benefit of the 2010's eBay where you would sell something and be paid instantly via PayPal with non of this waiting around for payouts to be sent nonsense.

If I hadn't come to the eBid board and seen your posts and posted a reply to say hello, I probably would never had got that sale as that buyer didn't know about it (the item they bought) or they had seen it briefly but couldn't find it again for some reason)... but by me coming on here That person/buyer checked out my stuff and saw something that he wanted (or remembered it was me who had something he wanted !).

I also noticed something that may or may not be in my favour, When I first logged into eBid after a very long time I noticed that after about 15 or 20 minutes I kept getting automatically logged out of eBid ! so I set eBid to keep me logged in for 6 months ! but now I am starting to wonder whether this is seen in my activity when someone looks at my stuff and they think that the last time this seller logged into eBid was the beginning of March 2025 when we're now almost into June ! so this might be putting buyers off or dropping my placement in Google Shopping as I am a Platinum eBid member.

Anyway nice to see you on these boards John I wonder where Elench is ? as he always praised this site when posting on the eBay boards.

[theElench]

Hi Bittyboy, good to see you here and a sale already!! I haven't been here much recently as Google Shopping (GS) has changed its format and its not looking good for me. More of that later.

Glad you got the sale as it illustrates perfectly why sellers here should use every avenue available to get their items noticed. Have a look at the Plug Your Auction (PYA) board. Since last Sunday my thread has been viewed 37 times for free showing the item I listed that day. Tomorrow I'll delete it (the rules are one thread per seller at a time) and start another for next weeks new item. You don't have to Plug a new listing and you can bump or change your thread every few days if you want. Use your imagination, make your hobby interesting to readers, perhaps show pictures of what furniture your locks are intended to be used for. A free ad. and only three sellers posted since I did nearly a week ago.

Your Recent Activity is showing as today when I checked one of your ads., buyers / browsers can see it on all your ads. when they view them. I usually log-in on Sunday, when I list and Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday to keep it recent. Logging into the boards doesn't register as activity on the main site.

Sometime in the lead-up to a minor op. I needed, GS changed its format. Until then I could always find some of my ads. on the first couple of pages of their results and I was on their "Sellers" side-bar for about a year as "Ebid - theElench" with a tick box to see more. "Sellers" has now become "Shops", as I don't have a shop I no longer appear on the list. Not one of my listings are shown on the first few pages. The only way I can now find any of my listings is to search for "Ebid - Art Deco Glass".

You'll be happy to hear that when I searched for "Antique locks" and "Cabinet locks" I could see some of yours and Ebid is included on the "Shops" list, tick that box and more of your locks and those of other ebid sellers can be seen.

How much that has reduced my sales by I can't be sure as last year after April my sales went down hill (IMO due to the frozen Tax Allowances). All I can say is by this time last year I'd sold 25 items out of a toatal for the year of 28. This year so far I've sold only 5 items.

Anyway a couple of other things that I'd recommend you do regularly is check how many of your items can be seen on GS by searching using what buyers are likely to type in the search box. Always leave FB for your buyers, even if they don't leave any for you. People do read the "Left for Others" section. Lastly, if you have the email or addresses of regular buyers on ebay, let them know you've moved here.

All the best for the future and good luck for future sales.