"Viable alternative to Ebay?" Topic

I've just registered with Ebid. I have no idea if selling with them will be beneficial, so i have started with a record or two to start with.

I'll see how it goes. No lisintg fee %3. final value fee. Seems reasonable – I'll give it a go.

Good luck, and let us know how well it works. Ebay is the 900-pound gorilla with all the eyeballs.

I'm inclined to try Chortle's Wargames Market but the "verification fee" puts me off. I'm also not sure whether its reached "critical mass" yet on potential buyers. It winds up being a math question: is the 20-30% "business expense" of using e-bay less than the potential reduction in final value received through another venue?

Wyatt

It's difficult to know the answer to that straight away. If an item costs very little to buy initially, and I can make a hefty profit on it, then I don't mind E-bay skimming off 20% or thereabouts….. (Although, when you think about it. 20 – 30% is a heck of a chunk.!) However, there are some things which have cost me a fair bit to buy to start with – the profit margins run in at about 25% – 30% – Suddenly, the viability of selling it on E-bay is gone.

With E-bid, there is no listing fee, you only get charged 3% when an item sells. To start off with I will list a handful of items. If they sell, they sell – If they don't -I don't lose anything…… I like that sort of proposal :)

E-bid is probably your best bet living in the UK. There presents is rather poor here in the US with 90% of its listings being UK based, so unless a US seller wanted to do more international sales its pratically useless for us here.

If you were in the US I'd recomend trying atomicmall.com started by a man who has build his life selling on-line in kinds of venues and knows what the virtual seller needs.

WM certainly has not yet hit critical mass. to be successful there your going to need to list lots of items to even get a bid/buyer…

"WM certainly has not yet hit critical mass."

That's what I was afraid of. And, since you've been a pretty vocal supporter of WM, I'm taking that pretty seriously – even much as I'd like to help Chortle out.

I have a bunch of what may be Peter Pig and MiniFig 15mm Napoloenic-era naval forces and ships to move along with a huge pile of original Battletech stuff. It sounds like I'll be better off simply making a bunch of fixed-price units and selling through TMP directly which should make everyone exceedingly happy.

Wyatt

20-30%? The last round of auctions I ran I was thinking that between ebay and Paypal I lost about 12%, which I considered acceptable for a nationwide audience. Why so much for you? Or if you have an ebay store do they hit you with lots of extra fees?

WM would definately benefit from a seller doing more to advertise there listings, but I have zero time still, I am always about 6 months behind as it is. Hardly have time to do relists on there much less advertise the auctions all over the web.

Ebay takes about 20% between the ebay fees and paypal for auction as well as fixed price store listings. Store listings used to be cheaper, but not now after the fee changes.

there fracking expensive for the headaches they have dumped on us this year…

Dang!

I may have to take another look at Amazon.com. They were a bit too IIRC.

mjc