Power Sellers Unite

scrappingmemories · Joined: 21 Jul 2006 Posts: 14

Ok so I spent some time working up the code to pull the products out of my website and make a feed for googles froogle. and Yahoo Stores as well as yahoo auctions. Yahoo stores was 50 bucks and its pay per click so that should hold me a while.

I will admit though my attitude is really starting to suck. I am used to getting results right away. I have a decent amount of invintory to move and I almost feel like I wasted alot of money. I don't even scrapbook traditionally anymore, I do everything digital.

I am still not going back though. I have accounts for bidville and epier too that I still need to make feeds for. Though I think I will probably pass at epier. Also Tried to make a ecrater account but they don't accept authorize.net though their payment set up and I emailed them and got no responce.

I checked out Waggle pop which I will admit I thought someone was making a joke when I first saw the name. It reminds me of fraggle rock from when I was a kid. Or Generic Flavored soda.

I also checked out Low Bid and High bidder but there just not big enough yet.

I also joined just about every yahoo group that I could find that accepted ads. I have used these before to help advertise my big lots on ebay and it seemed to help.

I keep coming back and checking ebays stats it seems they are holding steady. Frustrating.

I even posted on that stockholders blog. Feel like I am screaming into the wind.

I also posted on the google forum- Anything to help the cause.

Starting to think I shoud go back to web design.

Honestly I am really hoping that something magnificant will happen but in all honesty the reality of defeat feels really close. I keep second guessing if this is going to work. But... I have had many an Item sell after 1 0r 2 page views before so whats the differance right. Plus since I don't have such high fee's I can give my customers better prices.

Well got to get back to work Need to go hack that code up somemore so I can make a cvs file for bidville.

Let me know what you guys have done. It's good to bounce things off each other.

Anna

elgato · Joined: 24 Feb 2005 Posts: 17241 Location: Texas

Trust me on this one. You're not going to get near the traffic from these alternative online auction sites that you were receiving from ebay.
Most of the alternatives are new, unknown to the public and have a long ways to go before becoming anything near ebay. Ebay has a 10 year head start on most of the other online auction sites, plus has the major $$$ to promote themselves worldwide, if they choose.

Contact your loyal buyers and let them know you've moved to another site and offer a small discount if they follow you :D

Good luck!

Pipphoe · Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 1:48 pm Post subject: Re: What to do what to do????????

As the Cat said, market your other sites to your buyers. That is the key. If everybody waits until a site gets better the site will not get bigger. The only place I've had sales anywhere in several months has been LowBid. I've had six there. And HiBidder with over 18,000 listings is pretty impressive for a site this young. Wagglepop grew extremely fast because of it's prior reputation, bad though it was.

I'll say it 'til I'm blue in the face: It's a 50-50 relationship. The site markets the site and the sellers market themselves and thus market the site. If they come from Ebay and have a customer list those are potential buyers on other sites. If your customers really like your items they'll follow you. Goodness!! If you don't want to take advice from my seller side then take it from my buyer side. If any of the sellers on Ebay that I'm loyal to ever have the good sense to leave I will be more than happy to follow them wherever they go -- even if :cry: :cry: it might mean signing up at Wagglepop.

angelsolutions · Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 2:08 pm Post subject: Re: What to do what to do????????

Hi Anna!

First off...keep your chin up! I'm in the same boat as you, as are many others here. It's very easy to get discouraged--I know I get that way at least 10 times a day. :roll: But you gotta keep your eye on the goal!

Now, what is it exactly that you want to do? Then, how is it that you want to get there?

Why am I asking? Like ALOT of the other sellers here, I've listed not only at eBay (trying to decide whether to close my store or stick it out to the end of the year), but at bunches and bunches of the alternative sites, large and small. In the end, I just ended up frustrated and bitter that none of these sites were ready for prime time in one way or another. NONE.

So, I grabbed myself by my bootstraps and took my little side store and re-did it. In fact, tried oscommerce, cre-loaded oscommerce, a PSU-store (virtumart), a godaddy store and shoppingcartsplus. Finally bit the bullet and BOUGHT my script.

Anywho...my decision is to build my own store, promote it HEAVILY, and then...only when I'm ready...start listing at selected...VERY selected alternative sites, using my own criteria. I should be ready to do this by Labor Day.

IMHO, you have to have ONE home site that your customers can always go to, like my web store. THEN, for bringing new folks in, yes...I will googlebase, yahoogroup, rssfeed and everything under the sun. And for more sales, yes...I will list on alternative auction sites.

Sorry for the long post. It was a long road to this point. LOL What do YOU think, Anna?

sylvia

lammergeiernet · Joined: 01 Feb 2005 Posts: 1007 Location: Canada

scrappingmemories ,your type of product looks like it would be good choice to promote via "MySpace".

I know a seller in Vancouver that has done very well doing so with folksy items.It would take time but if you have good product and service then this word of mouth can spread like wildfire.

Have you considered listing on eBay in a more moderate pace without an eBay store ,and have mass listings on free foreign eBay sites ?

Then via e-mail drive traffic to those listings.

eBay can still be part of a strategy..its just not the "end all be all" it once was :cry: