Is ebay still viable?

[medieval_shoppe]

I will soon be paying $25,000 a year in ebay fees, and ebay seems to now be so strict with sellers that it has reached the point of "passive hostility" (I think). I would be interested in hearing other people's opinions. I run a website which has virtually no advertising budget, and costs me  about 2% of what ebay does. And yet it's not unusual for the website to perform better than my eBay! In my small specialized field, $25,000 would be a MASSIVE budget for targeted advertising in Australia; for that kind of money I could pay for some very heavy-duty, year-round, very focused GOOGLE & FACEBOOK marketing. Of course the easy answer is "do both" - but things are rarely that simple. I could only afford a $25,000 advertising budget if I pulled the plug on my ebay.

(I actually wonder if, from a strictly business point of view, whether eBay is sustainable long-term. Over the last 4 years it has become more expensive/irksome to use ebay as a sales platform, if this trend continues by 2016 it's going to be such an expensive, repressive and time-consuming environment to sell in, that it seems prudent to have an exit strategy.)

[go-tazz]

You might just need to add Chastity belts to your stock,(they would be a top seller considering how many young

kids seem to what to be in "control"),

[nuthinbutposters13]

I`ve recently stopped selling on eBay. Was a combination of increased fee`s, increased postage, and being so disheartened with eBay as a whole. I totally disagree with their new fees on postage costs. I was on target to have eBay fees of over $12 000 this FY, but due to the way they were treating sellers (not just me, but others as well) I decided on principal I would stop listing items. I am now in the process of building my own website, which I hope to have completed by the end of next week, and will put some money into generating traffic to that.

I may list a couple of dozen items per month for 1 cent on eBay, to generate interest and generate further traffic to my website, but will no longer be listing 300 to 500 items per month.

The advantages of the website I see are, you put your item on it, and its there for until you want to get rid of it, no more relisting when it sells, no monthly fees to relist it etc. There`s a flat cost of under $40 per month for my web hosting (until I upgrade to the unlimited package, which is $80 per month), and I have full control over my business.

Yes, there may be some downsides, but when taking into account eBay fees, and Paypal fees, I have $1000 per month to share between advertising the site, and lowering my margin on the most popular items, to keep customers coming back.

If eBay rethink their attitude toward customers, and also the fees applied to postage, I will rethink my presence on eBay.

[clarry100]

Our exit strategy is similar to yours and our own web site is also close to completion.

We will end up this tax year with somewhere close to $6,000 in ebay fees. Plus of course the unavoidable PayPal fees.

We also are totally disheartened by the way we and other sellers are being treated.  Hence, the exit strategy.

We will maintain a lower presence on ebay for much the same reasons as yourself until our website is generating sufficient income that we are happy with then we will close out of ebay 100%. Maybe inside the next 6-12 months or so.

Our web developer is highly confident that if we spent $500 per month on promotions via Google and Facebook then we should have plenty of traffic to the new site.

[wehavethatau]

I wish I spent 6k on fees a year.. I do that per month 😞

However I ventured to doing a site and Facebook and didnt find THAT viable. I threw so much money at it but still couldn't generate the traffic that eBay is able to bring to me. I can spend $6k a month in fees for $100k in sales but if I spent that $6k on advertising via the site or Facebook, I struggled to get $20k worth of sales.

As much as I feel like I am throwing money down a hole at times, the traffic that comes to me via eBay is just unbeatable. Customers find me without me having to find them.

[misterforgetfulsbooks]

bit like paying the high plaza lease to have 1000's of people walk past your goods compared to paying peanuts for a back street suburban shop where you might be lucky if 10 people walk past it a day.

I think a plaza charges you for the cubic metre you use as well as a % of your t/over. ie: the better you do the better they do. It's in their interest to make you successful. Bit like ebay, the more you sell the more they make. Some other sites have no return traffic that ebay has, it's a no brainer as to where the money is. whoever leaves only means more t/over for the sellers still hanging around.

[clickbaitoz]

can someone answer my Q please 'when i looked on Facebook for stores i couldn't see them, are they hidden away somewhere?'

[digital*ghost]

Facebook don't actually have stores, it's more like Gumtree than anything else, I guess (not that I'm overly familiar with either - I tried to look into selling on FB, but I don't think it's for me).

Someone else can probably give you more specific information, but I think you have to find pages or groups dedicated to your categories and/or area and post listings there. 

[fairlaneltd]

Just go to FB and look for the buy swap sell pages, go to serch, just write something like you area name, then buy swap sell . And seel what turns up,, there is **bleep** loads, lm a memeber of about 20 or so, just be warned..when selling on fb if list an item for $50, they will try and bid you bown to 20,, alot of fb people do you head in.. good luck

[clickbaitoz]

ok thanks guys, i was looking in the wrong places, like it would be in a seperate section. Hmm not sure i want to give out my address to facebook people to come & collect lol. I suppose i can set up a new account under another name, although i think i read thats illegal now except if its an official business name?

[cq_tech]

You say that you've been a member of Facebook for around 20 years? That's a pretty neat trick considering that FB wasn't founded until February 4, 2004, or about 2 years after you joined ebay.