This is the last time i ever sell anything on Ebay, its a rip off !

[hizzatoyb]

I recently sold a musical instrument on Ebay and it was the most expensine sale I have ever made. After selling the instrument I was charged 80 dollars for its sale. I think a ten percent comission is exessive. I will never make that mistake again. It seems if you want to sell cars or car parts, you can advertise in the Just Cars or Just Parts magazines for free but when it comes to anything else there are very few options if any. 

 If i had my time over again I would have joined musicions forums and listed the instrument there or else the trading post or a community billboard. What a mistake I made, I am seriously thinking about shutting down my account.

From now on when I selling any thing I will do it through the forums where i can list thing for free !

[clarry100]

The fees you will be charged are clearly displayed when you are listing the item before you click SUBMIT.
This is the time to back out not later.

Also you should keep in mind the traffic volume you get on ebay compared to other platforms.

[waddingtonfirstaid]

Facebook is a fast growing online selling place and it's mostly free. It's becoming surprisingly co-ordinated, it will out-do eBay like nothing before it. See this for Canberra https://www.facebook.com/CanberraBuySwapAndSell

[davewil1964]

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@weducational2 wrote:

Facebook is a fast growing online selling place and it's mostly free. It's becoming surprisingly co-ordinated, it will out-do eBay like nothing before it. See this for Canberra https://www.facebook.com/CanberraBuySwapAndSell

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Depends what you sell. I sell used books. There are a large number of secondhand book shops in Canberra. There is a mega eBay seller who has their B&M here. Most Op shops sell books for cheaper than I can post. Lifeline has humungous sales twice a year.

How do you propose I sell to Canberrans (and make a profit)? Witness to the difficulty is the fact that I sell to very few Canberrans, even though I offer pickup.

One size DOESN'T fit all.

[waddingtonfirstaid]

davewill1964, sorry, you've missed the point. Why would you restrict your sales to only Canberra? Think laterally about Facebook opportuinities and establish a page for used books then start adding friends. In no time you will start to establish a network of people who like secondhand books. Send a message to all your past buyers so they can add you as a friend. There are many more possibilities to mention that I don't have the time to go into here but I'm sure you have a better picture now?

[clarry100]

We established a Facebook page for our things too.

But it ended up reaching about 31 people and we sold a single item thru it.

So aside from paying FB to promote it I'm not sure how/where we go from there.

We tried Google Adwords too but that failed to realise a single sale.

[waddingtonfirstaid]

clarry100 I hear what you say but all I can refer you to would be this link and the fact that maybe you need to diversify and/or add specialist focus fields to your products - such as wedding, baby shower supplies for example.

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/columns/the-ecommerce-corner-office/11024-Why-we-abandoned-Amazon-...

[davewil1964]

You were promoting buy-swap-sell.

Which is a pickup only site for Canberrans, I believe. Who all have access to the sources I do for books. And I have actually advertised there, but the results were 0.

[clarry100]

When we did Google Adwords it seemed that our keyword selection was spot on.

Our ads were showing up right at the top of search results when we asked friends across Australia to do a test search for us.

And we could see them too.

And the clicks were happening as our money was being depleted.

But the follow through to sales did not happen.

We guessed that anyone who was searching on Google was not looking for an ebay store but some other independent web site.

So after 1-month and spending $125 we cancelled the ads.

Fortunately only $25 was our money and $100 was a Google bonus.

We asked a number of our ebay buyers at the time if they found us using Google or eBay search and 100% said it was an ebay search.

We may try again once we have our own web site running. That should be soon.

[creekman51]

i gave up selling on ebay a long time ago as i sell mostly high end merchandise ebays  fees are too high and then i was  taking another hit from paypal as well ivé gone back to selling at stand up auctions and i'm miles in front ebay's lost the plot they need some competition to bring them back down to earth the way they used to be not a greedy multinational like they are now. i feel  all sellers are are unpaid workers for ebay!!!