For goodness sake some of you wake up to reality !!

ChooChooGuy: I understand what you're saying. You might find this letter, the first on the page interesting reading

Yes it is, thanks for the link

quote:

Why won't people just realise that the only way forward is to go elsewhere take a hit on income short term until the buyers follow.

Hi ChooChoo

Ran into this a few days ago:

The problem facing eBay sellers is a collective problem, and therefore requires a collective solution.

Only the eBay users themselves can truly break the eBay Inc. monopoly, rescue our auction businesses from destruction at the hands of corporate greed, and save the original eBay person-to-person trading concept as an open marketplace of equals.

The eBay users—united, in our millions—can make a new fee-free home for ourselves on the Web and simply move there en masse, replicating the traffic of the eBay.com site.

Together, we can recreate the eBay Community, beyond the reach of eBay Group, Inc. The users made eBay the first time, and we can do it again—this time to suit our needs, rather than just line the pockets of FeeBay executives and shareholders.

Visit www.thepoint.com/compaigns/subat

I visited and I signed. It's free, and even if a big dream, it's better than no dream at all, and the nightmares some are having...
Check the site out, you might find it interesting.

ssandee

Hi ssandee, thanks for the link, slight typo should be
www.thepoint.com/campaigns/subat

However in my view greedbay can recruit first time buyers and sellers with ease to replace us for a long while yet because :-

1) they are a household name like Hoover and Xerox.
2) they have a massive software development budget and so have many features to make buying and selling easier than probably most other sites.
3) sell through rates are high, other sites very low, high STR = high fees, just like wide audiences command high advertising fees.
4) they bought PayPal to make even that in-house.
5) Massive PR and advertising budget capable of running TV advertisements at prime time.
6) substantial 3rd party support from companies such as Auctiva.

Personally while all these features predominate only 10,000 top power sellers jumping ship will demolish their active listing mountain standing at 13 million active listings even after the 20th Feb.

I am not dreaming any more just going to sell on other venues and hopefully set up my own online store within a year or two and have full much more control of fees etc.

ChooChooGuy, do set up your own online store. I set mine up in late 2006, after deciding to go that route and not an eBay store (I'm glad I didn't set up an eBay store...). While it was a lot of hard work, and it took a long time to get traffic, it pays off in the long run. Now, a little over a year later, it's doing great. I have a lot of items picked up by Google, and the traffic is increasing. I can have all my products listed for as long as I want, no fees. Of course, there's a hosting, domain, SSL & payment processor fee, but if you divide that by the number of products listed and the number sold, it's very tiny.

quote:

Of course, there's a hosting, domain, SSL & payment processor fee, but if you divide that by the number of products listed and the number sold, it's very tiny

kbalona, well greedbay are increasing the incentives by upping the costs to use them whilst the hosting costs etc appear to be falling.

I closed up my eBay store last November after about 18 months as numerous auction sales were going well and buyers did not even find the store most of the time so I just keep the Auctiva storefront going for now.

Meantime nominal listings here, moving most to a UK site with reasonable STR and minimal fees.

I get the impression even with your own site you really need to be fixed price but some prices I can judge from greedbay figures, greedbay still has its use