Power Sellers Unite

bluestreaksi · Joined: 15 Apr 2010 Posts: 301

Okay,
So I have looked in to branching out a little. I see people talking about this site a lot.. Some good, some bad.. I have been very successful on eBay and Amazon, but I am always looking to branch out.

I have looked at my competition, and they are selling the items for more than I would with out free shipping. I'm not talking like 50 cents cheaper. Some items would be up to 5 bucks cheaper. If you include their shipping cost. So, I know I will have one of the best prices on the same items. Heck might even be able to go cheaper than what I sell the same items for on eBay and Amazon.

I just want to know if it would be worth my time.
What do you think?

elpereles · Joined: 15 Dec 2006 Posts: 1478 Location: Puerto Rico

bluestreaksi, I have only one question then I can give my answer. Do you sell to live?

Digmen1 · Joined: 12 Feb 2010 Posts: 1007

Its hard to say.
But as elperles says, I don't think many people make a full time living on ecrater.

Its a confusing site at first.

I did not do well there, as I did not do any off site promotion. They only provide you with a shop, you have to bring buyers to your shop.

They do do Google Product search feeds.

But some people do well there, so it all depends on you and what you sell, and how much time you can put into it.

I do think it pays to diversify, especially away from ebay, as they are making it harder and harder for sellers.

IllinoisGal · Joined: 01 Jun 2007 Posts: 203

Ecrater is a great place to sell if you want to keep all your profits. I have been selling there for a number of years and may not make a fortune but have saved enough to do a number of things to our house and get things we couldn't otherwise afford. I will sell on this site as long as it's around.

GAELICTITCA · Joined: 25 Apr 2005 Posts: 1384

My personal experience with eCrater was less than noteworthy.

While I did sell a few things, it hardly made the time and energy
put into setting up the shop worth it.

Yes, I had no fees associated with those sales as far as a cut taken
by eCrater, but I would have gladly given them a 10% cut in exchange
for an increase in my volume of sales by a factor of say 3 or 4.....

But even if I had reaped 10 times the sales volume in my time on
eCrater I still would have shut down shop there. It simply wasn't
worth the time it took to maintain the store.

For me selling online is how I make a living, not a hobby, so I have
to make the time I invest count.

Digmen1 · Joined: 12 Feb 2010 Posts: 1007

Yes Galectea

I would have been happy to pay 4 or 5% fvf fees if they had got me some sales.

People have to accept that if you pay nothing, you get nothing.

GAELICTITCA · Joined: 25 Apr 2005 Posts: 1384

Digmen1 wrote (View Post): › docWrite("quote")People have to accept that if you pay nothing, you get nothing.

EXACTLY

You get what you pay for.

I have no problem with a site having a reasonable final value
fee if I'm making sales there and feel the site itself is doing
something to make those sales happen.

Hell, I don't even mind paying a listing fee if I think I have a
good expectation of making sufficient sales from my listings
to make it worthwhile ( as in eBay.AU ).

But ask me which I like better...... making $38.00 in sales on
eCrater and being charged zero in fees or to take in $4000.00+
in the same time span on eBay and shelling out $620.00 in fees

It's a no brainer.

Digmen1 · Joined: 12 Feb 2010 Posts: 1007

& Galactica

16% selling fees, plus paypal (?) is getting a bit steep imho.

Of course it depends what you are buying and your margin.

elpereles · Joined: 15 Dec 2006 Posts: 1478 Location: Puerto Rico

Digmen1, that is correct. Not everybody in eCrater is living from sales in their stores. And the ones making a lot of sales in the site spent a lot of time in promotion of their stores.

Some people forget that eCrater is a free store builder site.

skylinerlw · Joined: 28 Dec 2009 Posts: 13

When I first started selling on the alternatives I equally divided my time between BJ and Ecrater. At first sales were better at BJ but it died out and sales at Ecrater have been steadily increasing and that makes it worth it to me. Keeping my money instead of giving it all to feebay is a big plus. I use feebays 99cent free auctions to drive traffic to the store and my personal website. So even if they don't advertise you can still drive traffic to a free site.

highdesertdetails · Joined: 20 Dec 2006 Posts: 548 Location: Great Basin

It's been mentioned in other posts on PSU - that whichever store you open or site you use, keep your items fresh, current (change titles, try different descriptions, etc.). Make small changes. Update things. Don't just let it sit there. I have made sales after some things sat forever, but when I really give attention to my storefront and items, the sales increase.

theplainsman · Joined: 27 Dec 2010 Posts: 150

yes, time is money..... and some free sites may make ones time too much to make a true decent profit

but with ecrater it shows a higher traffic count than some sites that charge a fvf fee and some paying monthly subscriptions. to me this then would make for a higher profit per time that the less traffic coming in from a fvf fee site

but this still may be way below the profit one can make per hour of time with the same listings at amazon or ebay like another poster posted. and then the question would be do we try to help another lower cost site build so that later there may be better competition to help bring down amazon and ebay fees?

Digmen1 · Joined: 12 Feb 2010 Posts: 1007

I think that after another year of gradual growth in listings by ebid, ecrater, bonanza, etsy and others that they will show the market that amazon and ebay do not have the market to themselves.

The other question is how much share of the market do the big online retailers (eg B&M stores etc, the top 500 etc) have compared to auction sites ?

theplainsman · Joined: 27 Dec 2010 Posts: 150

what i see from all 3 independent rating sites, is that ecrater has DROPPED with traffic per item listed over the yr not the gradual increase as one has said but that is just what i see from the independent rating sites

and with bonz the drop in traffic per listing is even more so than ecraters

now someone says when one speaks of a site a few times that is spamming but above you can see one speaking again of bonanzle and ecrater after speaking a few times in the last several posts..... so speaking of me as spamming would be hypocritical and none of this is spamming in reality

quicksrt · Joined: 26 Oct 2009 Posts: 401

Well, I see it this way. I had to write all the ebay listing descriptions anyway. So whatever does not sell there after one week - it is not that much work to copy and paste those descriptions into an Ecrater store listing after the failed ebay item.

That said, I am very disappointed with Ecrater sales. I busted my @$$ last summer setting it up and re-writing all the text pages to get them just so. Loading it up with items. I even took time away from ebay to load some fresh new items into Ecrater that were never offered by me on ebay.

The counter hits say that people are seeing my items and visiting my store. Google analitics says hits are coming in from Google, Bing, etc. I have links to my store in forums. So I am doing everything right. But still not one sale in Nov. or Dec.

Get this, I took some of my Ecrater items, raised the prices by $5 or $10 each, listed them at ebay (again) and Amazon, and sold some of them there.

So this tells me that people are just not into shopping on Ecrater for music media even when prices are lower than amazon and ebay, or even when the items are not offered on amazon or ebay.

I park my items there to save the listing work I did on ebay, and then use it later if I wosh to relist at ebay, and hope in the meantime I will get some Ecrater sales.

I'll tell you, last summer I spend weeks and weeks working on my Ecrater store as well as loading up Half.com. I nearly went broke and thought I saw my life flash before my eyes. It was really frightening to spend 35 hours a week for 10 or 12 weeks and see no real sales.

That is when i went to amazon and started putting all my CDs up there, and started to see some serious cash flow for a change.

So my advice is to use Ecrater for items which you have already written out descriptions, and already have pictures for. Then it is not so much work. To spend 35 hours a week all summer like I did is pretty much a futle effort. And Ecrater might not be a good thing if you have to do too much work.