Has anyone tried eBid as an alternative?

[johnwash1]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ebayuk/comm...n_alternative/

5 replies so far, very negative. Needs someone who's made many sales and has a Reddit account (or willing to register) to set the record straight.

I mean, c'mon guys, it's no ebay, but given the absolute trainwreck that place is right now and heading downwards, eBid is where I'd much rather be.

[BordersBargains]

Its all mostly negative I'm afraid from most people who have tried and left this site. When I came back here after a break, I invited tons of people to the site, many gave it a try but lots of them looked at the traffic and said 'not worth it'. The most common positive was the fast listing. After 3 months most of them left because they got very few to zero sales, lots didn't like the lack of payment options for buyers, the terrible postage system and the few who remained also gave up after seeing the owners do no advertising at all (that was around the time we all wanted branded tape back) and they were so disappointed when the site did nothing to get seen when eBay went through the vast amount of changes which chased sellers and buyers away.

My sales here this year have been terrible and I will always complain that they did nothing when *Bay made silly changes but the one thing that always annoys me is their lack of getting the site seen!!

The site has some positives, very low fee's and listing is super fast but its visibility to the public is almost non existent!

If I had one roll of branded tape like we use to have, I would be using it for everything that sold on say *Bay, so I would see probably 100+ people now seeing that tape on their parcels, half of them would probably come here and look around, if many sellers here are using the tape the traffic would grow incredibly and the site would start being seen and mentioned!

I would love to have this place as my main site but I just don't see that day ever coming and when another site produces sales, it will get most of my attention but I will never leave here since its so easy and fast to get listings on without all the hassle of 9 million item specifics etc. I will continue to build up my listing numbers and should see sales increase here

[johnwash1]

I no longer blame the site owners, I feel I can empathise with their predicament, which I guess is that they've created a potentially good site, covered most of the tech issues, but then what? Unless there's masses of revenue to fund a serious ad campaign, what would you do in their shoes?

The site has a tendency to attract over-priced sellers. Forgive me if this isn't fair of me, but I've just taken a /very/ quick look at the first page of your listings. First, well done for listing so much. But then I saw a jigsaw puzzle. My wife occasionally enjoys a jigsaw. The charity shops are full of them, ebay is full of them. Unless yours are very unusual, I don't see how a jigsaw for a tenner stands a hope of selling. I put four on ebay earlier this year, researching sold prices before doing so. Since I just wanted them cleared out I listed them for 99p each plus postage. Even so, it took several weeks to sell each of three. And the fourth? That was wider than usual, so wouldn't have gone in an RM small parcel. I listed it for 99p+6.35 (medium parcel). Zero interest, even with the millions of eyeballs that ebay has. Eventually I discovered one of Gill's students likes jigsaws, so I gave it away. That's my market research on jigsaws, FWIW!

So I firmly believe that even with tv adverts every day of the week, nothing would change the basic fact that money these days is tight and people are going to think twice before making impulse buys unless they're seeing real bargains. I suspect that's true everywhere. People say Vinted is doing well, but in the next breath they're moaning about buyers there making derisory offers all the time.

Myself I'm not a fan of branded tape. But many do mention it. Would you pay a fiver or more a roll for it? If you would, and you think others would, invest a couple of hundred quid and get some made. It's not hard to get a search engine to tell you any number of UK companies that produce custom packing tape. I wish someone would explain to me how that works though. A buyer comes to ebid, orders something, the parcel arrives and has an advert on it for... for ebid! They already know about ebid! Or is the theory that you use this tape when selling elsewhere? That makes a bit more sense, though I don't feel it promotes significantly better than what I do already, including a flyer inside all my parcels to mention ebid. And meanwhile I save money by taping up my parcels with Selotape or with duct tape that I get for about 3 quid a roll from Screwfix.

Anyhow, that's a very long posting, much too long, I'll end by wishing you success with your sales! Same to all here.

Hope someone posts something positive on Reddit about ebid.

[leadhillsonline]

The site has a tendency to attract over-priced sellers. Forgive me if this isn't fair of me, but I've just taken a /very/ quick look at the first page of your listings. First, well done for listing so much. But then I saw a jigsaw puzzle. My wife occasionally enjoys a jigsaw. The charity shops are full of them, ebay is full of them. Unless yours are very unusual, I don't see how a jigsaw for a tenner stands a hope of selling. I put four on ebay earlier this year, researching sold prices before doing so. Since I just wanted them cleared out I listed them for 99p each plus postage. Even so, it took several weeks to sell each of three. And the fourth? That was wider than usual, so wouldn't have gone in an RM small parcel. I listed it for 99p+6.35 (medium parcel). Zero interest, even with the millions of eyeballs that ebay has. Eventually I discovered one of Gill's students likes jigsaws, so I gave it away. That's my market research on jigsaws, FWIW!

Since I've been back I've purchased 9 jigsaw puzzles on ebid, including one from BordersBargains. Have a few more in my watch list which I will buy in due course. Spend most of my time either reading or completing jigsaw puzzles, so I own quite a few. It's rare I go out, only if I have a hospital appointment or the dentist so do not often have time to go into charity shops. Think the nearest is around 25 miles away.

[theElench]

"I no longer blame the site owners, I feel I can empathise with their predicament, ...... Unless there's masses of revenue to fund a serious ad. campaign what would you do ?"

It seems to me that most sellers here have paid for the "lifetime" membership. So where does the revenue come from ? Their minimal FVF ? Or from the listing and FVF of those for whom the Lifetime membership is clearly not economic ? It appears to me that there are quite a few sellers here who (like myself) buy and sell in niche areas. Do I really want my fees doubled or tripled to help finance ad. campaigns to increase traffic when very little of that increase will benefit me?

Effectively that would increase my costs and prices to help sellers with Lifetime membership sell more while they contribute little to the kitty. That's exactly where obay went wrong IMO, increasing the numbers of business sellers using the funds contributed by private sellers to enable this. I'd be more inclined to agree with the "increase fees" argument if I thought that Lifetime membership would be abolished and all sellers would shoulder the burden equally by (e.g) all sellers paying 5p to list an item and 5% FVF (as I do as a Silver seller using Platinum listings).

Another thing that irks me with (sadly) the majority of sellers on the site is their lack of involvement and apparent willingness to try anything new.

You ask if someone will post on Reddit, sorry I can't help, but I won't get involved in SM. But where are all those other members who want increased traffic? Why aren't they queuing to do that, presumably it's free and takes minutes to do. Why don't they update the site's various FB pages regularly or the Pinterest pages? Why do so few even bother with PYA threads to try to get more sales ? I noticed yesterday that my PYA thread this week has already been viewed by as many people in 4 days as last weeks item got in 7 days, it's FREE for Gods sake and takes 5 minutes.

I won't even start about my attempts to understand GS and the low level of interest by most others, apart from saying how disappointing it was that I had to almost plead with other members to spend 5 minutes of their time just to verify that they were seeing the same as I did. Yet GS is probably this sites' biggest asset and I'm certain that my sales increased once I started paying it some attention.

Some sellers still miss the Ebid parcel tape, I never saw it, but a few years ago someone got permission to produce car window stickers and probably ended up giving them away because there were so few buyers (I checked the FB). The landscape of on-line selling has changed hugely since a few people selling odds and ends and started obay on its journey to become what it is today, but it seems that these days people expect to pay high fees but also expect to list a few things, sit back and wait for the site (whatever site) to do the rest.

If those few obay pioneers had had the same attitude I think it would still be the size ebid is today.

[BordersBargains]

I would have no issue if the owners added say 2% to the fee's which then could be put towards purchasing branded tape etc for us to buy and use to get the sites visibility up. *bay will be making even more changes in the future which will make them lose even more buyers and sellers, lets hope this site sees some of the drop off people visiting


Thanks for the purchase leadhillsonline - I sell a fair few jigsaws on the other site also and tend to gift others to the care home down the road from me. Jigsaws are one thing that will never stop being a thing of fun for people.

[robbielowe]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ebayuk/comm...n_alternative/

5 replies so far, very negative. Needs someone who's made many sales and has a Reddit account (or willing to register) to set the record straight.

I mean, c'mon guys, it's no ebay, but given the absolute trainwreck that place is right now and heading downwards, eBid is where I'd much rather be.

Seems to have had nine replies now, two look positive. If you can upvote them do so.

[theElench]

@BordersBargains.

But may I ask if you've tried any of the things I mentioned before going for a fee increase ?

Like you I used to sell on both sites so here's something else that you could try and I'm 90% positive that doing it helped increased my sales on Ebid.

I used to sell more on obay than Ebid, so all my new listings went on obay first. Only if they didn't sell did they get listed on ebid. At some point I experimented by reversing the process and started all new items on Ebid. Not always, but enough to be noticeable, given a month or three, new items started selling on Ebid before they ever got onto obay.

The reason is obvious, especially in collectables categories. As the obay search gets increasingly distorted by PL, more buyers are searching for specific harder to find items using other search engines or other sites. If I just broke one of my Bagley "State" candlesticks and search google / shopping / images, to find a replacement, I'll buy one wherever I can find it. If it's on Ebid, Ebid gets first dibs on the sale.