Alternative Auction To Ebay

Yes.

Here is the link to the US eBid site:
http://us.ebid.net/indexmain.php

I was looking at the site and there are some drawbacks, though. I don't like that all coins are lumped together into one category. It doesn't allow for growth and makes it difficult to shop. This site is obviously doing better than most that set themselves up against ebay and I wish them well, but I still don't think I'd get as much for my coins as I do on ebay (unfortunately).

^Susan, no, you would not get as much attention for your coins as on ebay, but you could certainly keep more of the profit if you ddi get a nice sale.
And no, I don't like the site's organisation either (or lack of), but its more to do with freedom.

^Anemic, what do you think a 'truly viable alternative' would look like, without the people to populate it, improve it and make it grow?

You want the tree without to grow without the roots my friend.

quote:

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^Anemic, what do you think a 'truly viable alternative' would look like, without the people to populate it, improve it and make it grow?

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What would it look like? Who knows. The current crop not getting it done has less to do with their look & feel, which will evolve over time, than it does with traffic & listing quantity (& people just plain knowing they exist). Every one that starts up come off more like a hobby site or an afterthought. Yahoo auctions had a shot years ago, but Yahoo ignored it to the point that you had to hunt for it when going to their main page. It probably got the second most amount of traffic & listings and yet it's gone. Overstock's auction site seems to be going nowhere. Amazon killed theirs. A lot of these sites pop up every year & many of the folks who set them up seem to think all they need is decent software & lower fees to make sellers jump ship. They don't have the actual budget needed to try & make a go of things or they seem to only make a half hearted effort at it. They days of starting something like ebay in your garage with a few servers & decent bandwidth are gone.

The ebid setup seem ok. Yes the organization could be better, but that would probably come fairly quickly with enough input. The problem is who's heard of them? What have they done to get their name out & attract sellers & buyers? I spend a lot of time online both at work & at home and I usually visit any auction sites I hear about just in case I might find something & this is the first I've heard of them. I've seen no real promotion anywhere. They'd certainly have a shot, but it'll take more than word of mouth to do it. If their going to run a business it's got to be like any other business & they need to get very active promoting & getting in front of people. That costs a lot of money, money which these alternatives don't seem to take into account when they start up. Many of them seem to want to run it as a small side business (or hobby) until it takes off, but it won't take off that way.

I think that someone like Google, or someone teamed up with a big name like Google, is the only one that would have a real shot at gaining a foothold if they did it right. Once the foothold was gained it might have a shot at being a true alternative.



I don't really see the big problem with ebay I guess. I mean it's nice when there's true competition in any kind of market & ebay certainly has a ton of problems, but what makes them "evil"? Sellers hate the fees (it costs a lot more to consign your items somewhere or run a classified ad for them), hate PayPal's fees (although it costs no more than a merchant account). etc, but the higher fees are generally going to be made up for in more people seeing your auction & your items selling for more (this assumes you know how to write a proper listing & stuff).




Ok, now that I've typed all that & rambled on probably making little sense & sounding like an idiot I'll go away.

The other problem I've noticed is that if a competitor gets large and successful, eBorg assimilates them. It happened here in Oz a few years ago when https://www.sold.com.au began to bite into ebay's market share. ebay bought it and shut it down. Click on that link or type sold.com's URL into your browser nowadays and it'll redirect you straight to ebay Australia.

Across the ditch, TradeMe is running rings around eBay New Zealand. Take coins, for instance. Right now, there are 107 coins on ebay NZ; there are 2980 on TradeMe. Kiwis are a parochial bunch and like to support their own. But watch this space. If ebay ever notices this... resistance is futile.