If you're a seller on ebay and fed up with the ever rising fees & feedback changes, there are quite a few other websites you can list on. Some don"t have listing fees - a big plus when you are selling expensive items. No requirement to use Paypal - which is great for sellers who have suffered from scam buyers as Paypal used with e"bay always favours the buyers. Here are 3 of the biggest rivals although there are many others too numerous to mention here.
ebid
e"bay may dominate the online auction market, but eBid is one of the bigger sites hot on it"s heels.
A lot of sellers are now listing items on both sites, and some have even migrated from eBay all together because eBid fees are lower.
Free listing: It costs nothing to list items on eBid.
Sellers can subscribe to ebid in two different ways
You can subscribe to eBid as a basic seller for free. You"re then charged a final value fee of 3% of the sale price of each item you sell.
This approach usually makes financial sense if you only plan to sell occasionally.
In seller+ option, you pay a subscription fee for a set period of time (7 days = £1.99, 30 days = £6.99 etc. You can even subscribe for life for say #99.99 seller+ also has additional use of various site features.
Seller+ subscribers also don"t pay the 3% final value fee. This may be a good choice for you if you think you're going to sell regularly.
Photos: It's usually free to list a photo with your item, although if you use the gallery' format you'll have to pay a final value fee of 2% of the item's selling price & it"s only available to seller+ users.
Payment system: eBid's preferred secure payment partner is Pp pay (several other methods of payment, including PayPal, are also available).
As with eBay, you'll have to pay the relevant Pp pay/PayPal transaction fees.
Downside: Although there"re plenty of items listed, there doesn"t seem to be a many buyers as sellers but you can list for as long as you like. (until the item sells of course) I also personally found ebid a bit fiddly to use.
It"s definitely worth looking at & ebid may just be the wake-up call that ebay needs - and the fees are much lower.
Amazon Marketplace
Amazon Marketplace has fast become one of eBay's biggest online rivals. you can buy and sell new, used and refurbished items, which is on the same page that Amazon displays the item new.
It's not an auction site though - sellers must set the final price of each listed item
When using Amazon Marketplace, you don't pay a listing fee. So, if your item doesn't sell, you don't lose any cash.
Plus, listings generally last 60 days (most items on eBay can only be listed for a maximum of ten days before you have to pay to re list them).
You pay a completion fee of £0.86; and a sale closing fee - which is 17.25% of the sales price & 11.5% when selling electronic and photo items.
Amazon also sets the postage costs, not you. It takes a fee from the buyer, keeps an ‘administration fee' for itself, and passes the rest on to you as ‘postage credit'.
This can work out as more or less than the actual cost of postage and packaging, so sellers need to accommodate this in their product price.
Photos: You can't normally use your own photos next to your item, because Amazon uses single detail pages on the site, where the product details already exist.
With certain products, you can provide a photo link - but they still won't appear next to your advert (they'll be made generally available to anyone browsing in that category).
Amazon operates a secure payment system of its own (the equivalent of PayPal). this service is free for all sellers to use.
Downside: What you can list is somewhat constrained by the choices of category available. For example, there's no section for ‘vehicles', so selling a car or motorbike would prove difficult.
And although you can list an item Amazon doesn't have in its catalogue - you'll have to create your own page for it first. It also seems expensive compared with other sites but for higher value items which take longer to sell it is definitely a good be
Gumtree
Gumtree was started in 2000 as a local London classified ads and community site. It now covers 60 cities in six countries, with millions of people listing everything from flat rentals, jobs and dating ads to CDs, furniture and motors.
It costs nothing to sell an item on Gumtree. You just type out the ad, attach a photo (if you want), and post in the relevant category.
What's the catch? Just stay safe when buying or selling stuff in this way. Face-to-face payment - and item handover - is recommended to avoid getting ripped off (either as a buyer or a seller).
For example, Gumtree offers no protection if you post an item and then don't see the cash. For this reason, selling locally is probably the best way forward.
Worrying developments? In 2005, Gumtree was bought by eBay. Its fee-free status, thankfully, remained unaffected.
However, Gumtree is now introducing a facility called ‘Featured Ads'. These are ads that appear in a special section at the top of the listings pages for either three or seven days.
And guess what? You're charged a fee to use this service. The price depends on how long you'd like your ad to appear in this format, and which category it's in.
Of course, there's nothing suspicious about this. The good positioning will maybe mean that more people will read and reply to your ad.
But let's just hope the free listing option remains firmly in place, too.
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