05-10-2006, 06:02 PM
>is it just me that would like to see eBay lose some business to a rival? i am happy for these people, but eBay fees and charges have made it a lot less tempting to sell quantity there. unfortunately, it's still the only real game around for quantity selling.
You are correct there is no real competition. The same
could be said about Apple maybe I'd like to buy a clone and
buy software from Apple but I can't. Problem is most
people aren't willing to get out in the field and find items
that have the potential for a large profit margin. I've
paid as little as 25ยข for an item and sold it for $96.00,
in this case fees did not matter to me I made plenty. I
have an item on there now that I paid $15 for and it's up
$356.00. I took a chance on this item because I had never
dealt with one before but my intuition was correct.
Sometimes you have to be willing to take that chance and
learn from the experience. It takes years of hard
work to find out what sells and what doesn't
and you have to be willing to change your
product if the market is no longer there for your product. We
started out selling pottery, glass, and similar items out of
our home, items that we already had or had inherited, some
were even left behind in our current home. The market
pretty dried up for glass and such, unless it's a really
rare piece, and we had to change. Watching Antique Roadshow
and other similar shows can teach you alot, even the show
called "Junkin" on Turner South can teach you a thing or
two. I'll never carry a mainline product on eBay where's
the fun in that and you have tie up a ton of capital in your
merchandise and that's just not for me.
Back to the question at hand, there isn't enough real traffic at the
other auction sites for me to even think about trying them.
The fees at eBay are high but I can't do what I'm doing
any other way that I know of and eBay knows that and can
keep going up on fees but like everything else someone will
come along and knock them off their block one day just like
it will happen to Apple and Microsoft.
You are correct there is no real competition. The same
could be said about Apple maybe I'd like to buy a clone and
buy software from Apple but I can't. Problem is most
people aren't willing to get out in the field and find items
that have the potential for a large profit margin. I've
paid as little as 25ยข for an item and sold it for $96.00,
in this case fees did not matter to me I made plenty. I
have an item on there now that I paid $15 for and it's up
$356.00. I took a chance on this item because I had never
dealt with one before but my intuition was correct.
Sometimes you have to be willing to take that chance and
learn from the experience. It takes years of hard
work to find out what sells and what doesn't
and you have to be willing to change your
product if the market is no longer there for your product. We
started out selling pottery, glass, and similar items out of
our home, items that we already had or had inherited, some
were even left behind in our current home. The market
pretty dried up for glass and such, unless it's a really
rare piece, and we had to change. Watching Antique Roadshow
and other similar shows can teach you alot, even the show
called "Junkin" on Turner South can teach you a thing or
two. I'll never carry a mainline product on eBay where's
the fun in that and you have tie up a ton of capital in your
merchandise and that's just not for me.
Back to the question at hand, there isn't enough real traffic at the
other auction sites for me to even think about trying them.
The fees at eBay are high but I can't do what I'm doing
any other way that I know of and eBay knows that and can
keep going up on fees but like everything else someone will
come along and knock them off their block one day just like
it will happen to Apple and Microsoft.