As Ebay continues it's determined slide into irrelevancy, I and others have been looking into other online auction/sales venues. One very useful feature (found on Bonanzle and Ioffer) is the bulk importation of listings from Ebay. I'm expanding onto those sites and pulling listings from Ebay to the others. I now look at Ebay's 35 cent listing fee as actually costing me 12 cents per site.
However, I would prefer to pay Auctiva their $10 a month and pay no insertion fees at all. I've been digging into Ebay's inner workings, particularly on Glassdoor.com and Auctionbytes and have little hope for it's future without a severe change in management and management type. I do not expect Ebay to remain in any way a worthwhile choice for the smaller sellers in the long run. Ebay is a 10 pound chicken running round with it's head cut off while imaging itself to be King of the lions, sitting proudly above it's shining realm...
So it appears that it would serve both Auctiva and it's customers for Auctiva to offer the option of listing on Ecrater, Ioffer, Bonanzle, etc. I'm sure these other sites would welcome Auctiva's facilitations, and it would move Auctiva into a market that no other company (as far as I know) is serving.
Auctiva would have that much more to offer it's customers, the other auction/sales sites in turn would have that much more to offer buyers, and sellers would have the potential of selling more merchandise.
Integrating Auctiva's services into these sites would more than likely be far easier than delaing with Ebay, but that's not saying much. Performing oral surgery on a rabid gorilla would be easier than dealing with Ebay. These other sites though not only have a more intelligible format, they have much room to expand into. Having to call in a team of eppileptic Witch Doctors do decypher the latest unexplainable wackadooism would not be something Ebay's competition is likely to put any of us through at this point.
It looks to me like something where everyone wins. Ebay doesn't seem interested in doing business with anyone - we sellers, Auctiva - God only knows what they're working toward, but there doesn't seem to be a place in it for any of us here.
"We should be very concerned with our futures, for that is where we will spend the rest of our lives.." Criswell
Original Post