eBayalternatives

It is no secret that eBay is the biggest online auction market with the greatest number of buying visitors of any auction site in business.  It also arguably offers the greatest variety of goods; nevertheless, increasing seller unhappiness has and continues to draw sellers away from eBay and gives many others pause to consider finding a new "home."  Whether you are happy or not, you may have asked yourself if there are any practical eBay alternative sites or other marketplaces to take or expand your business.  As for eBay, good opinion or not, it continues to thrive making money hand over fist and hoards of new sellers launch hundreds, if not thousands, of new auctions every day.  Be that as it may, if you are thinking of striking out into new territory, this article will attempt to guide you toward realistic alternatives.

eBay alternative

It is important at the outset to keep in mind that not all marketplaces are the same and do not behave in the same way.  The various sorts of venues available to you will each have their own characteristics, and you will find that not all products will do equally well in all selling environments.  For example, a site which primarily deals art and craft goods may not be the best place to list auto parts.  Thus, one market place may have certain biases that favor some products over others.  My point is that although there are alternatives, it may take a bit of trial and error in order to make the site work for you.

If you want to branch out from eBay, there are many, many options such as selling goods from your own online ecommerce store that you run from your private hosting.  However, since you are selling on eBay, you may prefer options that do not require you to have your own hosting.  Personally, I really like the privately hosted ecommerce option, but that is a very different business model.  Your options include auction and non-auction sites.  Non-auction alternatives will ideally have a substantial traffic flow, have a substantial marketplace, and include a free means of either listing your items or building an online store.  Another option that appears to work will for certain product categories is classified ad sites, such as  Craig's List.  

If you plan on replacing eBay, then ideally you will want a site with as much buyer traffic, name recognition, and reach as eBay plus lower fees plus a management more attentive to the needs of sellers.  To my knowledge there is no other auction site that gets as much traffic as eBay and commands as much market share.  The only market environment that competes with eBay for traffic, revenue, and name recognition is Amazon.com.  According to my own research, Amazon's seller fees are much lower than eBay, but it is also a much different kind of marketplace.  If you haven't considered Amazon before, go see for yourself.  The link to the merchant program is at the bottom of the page.  I have no direct experience with management behavior towards its merchants, though it is reputed to be more sympathetic than eBay.

Two other non-auction alternatives include Blujay.com and eCrater.com.  Both Bluejay and eCrater provide the seller with an already existing marketplace and both provide a free means of building an online store on which to list products.  Bluejay actually submits your listings to Google Product Search, and eCrater allows you to import your eBay products into your eCrater store.  The cost of listing on these services is also much less than eBay, and there is no reason why you can't continue to list on eBay as well as other venues.  A moment ago I mentioned Google Product Search (http://www.google.com/products); this is another service that allows free listing of your products.  This would also be a resource to use if you have an eBay store or your own privately hosted ecommerce store.  You can find out how to sign up and list products at http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/products/submit.html.

In the event you are only interested in selling your goods through online auctions, you still face the problems of traffic and marketplace discussed above.  Fortunately, there are options!  One viable marketplace is Overstock.com.  You may think of Overstock as primarily a vendor, but Overstock also hosts an auction environment at http://auctions.overstock.com.  Put this on your "Must Check Out" list, because even though Overstock isn't as big as Amazon and eBay, it is still huge.  Another site that should be on your shortlist is Ubid.com, which claims to have over 5 million members.  Ubid is another huge thriving online auction site.  Keep in mind that no other site has the traffic of eBay, but escaping eBay's fees may require that your "retool" your business model a bit.

eBay alternatives