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In the last three months I have had various auctions up on ebay. They don't sell for much and the web traffic is dismal, I think my highest veiwed tally was 41 over 15 auctions.

For a website as big as Ebay 41 people looked at my auctions?

I have had a variety of stuff from books, comic books, miniatures, electronics etc. Nobody is looking. So why is ebay pushing for people to sell sell sell, I wish they would work more on getting people to buy buy buy.

Probably partially because it is the worst 3 months of the year to sell stuff on ebay. Nov-Dec are flooded with xmas offers, January is flooded with presents people dont want and Feb people have no money from christmas debt and saving for holidays.

Personally speaking, I have stopped using ebay now. Its getting nigh on impossible to find the bargains that you used to on there. Part of it is people waking up to the 'true' value of their goods and part of it is the slow takeover of people who operate as a business or webstore.

You may well find something there but once you add in the postage it really only ends up being a £ or two cheaper than a bricks and mortar store.

Speak for yourself, I'm picking up cheap miniatures hand over fist. Four-dollar Harlequins, 20€ unpainted plastic squat squads, etc, etc. It's never been so good.

eBay have put the squeeze on the seller too, they've really cranked up their cut from all the sales, it's currently a 10% commission, it used to be a lot less.

I've auctioned some stuff recently and been getting about 50-70 views for most of them, with over 100 for a couple of the rarer items. It's not stopped them selling well, I don't feel I got a lot less than I was expecting in most cases. It's often about *who* is looking rather than the total numbers.

Maybe you need to look at the way you describe your items and advertise them in various forums and online.

It's also become a pain in the rear to sell there now as well if you are smallfry anyways.

With the fees so much higher and the complaints set up now pretty much 100% in favour of the buyers.

It makes it much harder to justify my time and effort to sell on there. I'd rather trade it now, or do a car boot run.


edit - seems me and Howard are on the same wave length.

Oh and should note I have an account with over one thousand positive feedback, I used to sell on there alot.

I got canned from my eBay listing job not that long ago for a reason. They're a terrible company to work with, giving nonsensical account suspensions and limitations on a whim and never giving you a chance to adequately defend yourself. Trying to get negative feedback removed is a feat all it's own. I'd highly recommend checking out other auction sites or just using craigslist.

Edit - seems like the above 2 and I are on the same wave length

Maybe no one is interested in your stuff...it happens.

I think it's most likely the time of year - January is bound to be the worst month for sellers as so many people are flogging unwanted xmas stuff.

Agamemnon2 wrote:Speak for yourself, I'm picking up cheap miniatures hand over fist. Four-dollar Harlequins, 20€ unpainted plastic squat squads, etc, etc. It's never been so good.

I did. That's why I said 'personally speaking'. Like anything, I guess it depends on a variety of things such as when you are browsing, what you are looking for, condition you are willing to accept etc etc.

Perhaps I should further qualify that for the things that I am looking for, I have found ebay to be a disappointment latterly.

I've found it to be more hit or miss lately for the buying aspect. I finally found and won Citadel Woods, for $7.25 less than retail. WIN.

But other than bitz it hasn't been so hot lately.

I have a really good grasp of what sells and doesn't sell on ebay because I have been selling and buying since 2002. It just seems that there isn't a lot of buyers flowing through the site, meaning it has a tons of sellers just no buyers. I have no trouble finding what I want but when I try to sell something no one looks at it. I wonder how many people out there would come looks if they new it was there but since ebay seems to push for sellers they do not devote a lot of time to attracting buyers.

Perhaps the real reason the sellers fees where raised, ebay saw the way the wind was blowing?

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:Perhaps the real reason the sellers fees where raised, ebay saw the way the wind was blowing?

It's because the site has become a semi-pro online market place, not the virtual car boot sale it used to be a few years ago.

This means the majority of sales are done by traders or companies who simply factor in the fees as part of the unavoidable costs of doing business.

Amazon Marketplace is trending the same way. It used to be you could simply list an item as a private seller. Now you have to adhere to their seller's code of conduct, and you still get delisted during the Christmas season unless you are shifting massive amounts of stock, which no real private seller ever does.

eBay is still a good place to buy -- I got most of my Tyrnanid army there about half price -- but it isn't nearly as good a small seller's site as it once was.

As for everything, I agree with everyone.

The key thing with eBay is whether the right buyer is online. The only advice I can give here is to search for auctions featuring the same items you are selling. When you find them, offer your item to the losing bidder. You already know he wants it and the price he is prepared to pay. Contact him by PM, offer the item on "Buy Now" and give him the listing ID number.

I've sold several items that way. It works best for the kind of odd stuff (Original GW Judge Dredd figures, OOP Squat Command Unit) that don't come up everyday.

Kilkrazy wrote:

It's because the site has become a semi-pro online market place, not the virtual car boot sale it used to be a few years ago.

This is a very eloquent way of putting it and what I was trying explain myself. Time was, you used to be able to get decent stuff at a reasonable price because people used to list their auctions with a certain degree of realism. Nowadays, people are listing their items and then in the item description comparing it to retail prices and expecting to get a similar sort of return albeit with a slight discount. Even if I do happen to find a bargain, more often than not the price is stoked up by the semi-pro crowd who are trawling for cheap stuff that they then relist.

eBay has repeatedly raised their share of profit and have become increasingly backwards about fraud protection. eBay's 'protection policies' (if you can even cell it protection) favors the criminals.

I'd stick with dedicated trading websites like Bartertown.

DakkaDakka has a small niche of traders and sellers/buyers as well, but it is not a website dedicated to such activities.

Yeah, ebay seems pretty boring lately. Probably has something to do with what Legoburner mentioned, although it's seemed to suck for a while now.

The entire system seems to be flooded with online stores selling all their merchandise for little or no value (Like, a tactical box for thirty five dollars. Why would I even bother?) and people selling tank bits (searched "warhammer 40k". There were like 15 auctions for "leman russ sponsons/ track assembly").... It's just...not as good as I'd like it.

Kilkrazy wrote:I've sold several items that way. It works best for the kind of odd stuff (Original GW Judge Dredd figures, OOP Squat Command Unit) that don't come up everyday.

Even on something the size of eBay there are limited numbers of customers looking for certain niche items. Every now and again I have a clear out of old figures, often some RT stuff, and I'll put up 20-30 auctions. In the last 2 or 3 times I've done this I've seen a few names crop up several times. I guess it's nice to know that I have customers who come back to buy from me more than once, but given that I've not even listed 100 items over a few years and there are several repeat customers it makes me wonder how many people are really looking for this stuff.

I'm a huge buyer on ebay, what I have noticed is the deals are slowly going away. I buy most games off ebay, well use to. Same with 40K minitures. Problem is with games, to save money you have to buy used. Meaning any codes the game comes with wont work. So, you look at the new games, with shipping, there more exspensive. With minitures, I usually recieve them broke, or missing pieces.

I ordered 6 Immortals and paid 30 bucks for em. When I recieved them, they were almost unsaveable. Took me aweek to get the testors paint off em. Then quite abit of greenstuff to repair the damages. In the end, I rather spend the extra money buying new from LFG (local friendly gamestore) or GW direct.

I really just started selling on ebay in the last 6 months, and it's doing great for me.

Might be that I'm already used to the huge amounts of hoops you have to jump through when you own a store. I spent some time reading through the huge amount of material ebay has up on how to make the best use of the system. I found that having an ebay store helped a lot and was worth the 15.95 a month, along with working to keep up a high feedback score.

Most every thing I do now is a 'buy it now' and not an auction. This leaves the item up and gets a lot more veiws. In many cases I get what I want faster than an auction. If I put up 30 used miniatures, it seems like I'm taking 10 of them to the post office the very next day.

Overall, it can be a pain at times, and the rules are absolutely skewed in the buyers favor. I had to wrap my ahead around doing an over the top job on packing the models, shipping immediately, and fixing problems immediately. It works, keeps the customers happy, and in the long run, makes ebay more profitable. Learned to do this watching Neal up at the Warstore.)

A major problem for me is the amount of re-sellers. They get in and buy a stack of minis, and then sell them individually for rediculous prices. The amount of 'buy it now' stuff completely buries any reasonable auctions. For me anyway. I do buy the odd bit, mostly RT/2nd Ed stuff, but not very often due to the escalation in expectation of the sellers.

I have come back to selling on eBay after a long layoff. personally I have been successful over the last few days and weeks, getting rid of old minis and other bits and bobs I hvae gathering dust.

Taking a fresh approach to listing I will not have any 'Buy It Now' auction types. I found in the past that I would get a lot of watchers and few if any bids on those items.

Buy It Now is a commercially driven type of listing more suited to retail endeavours and one which clouds the buyers perception of eBay as an auction site. Auctions should be, and could be, fun.

I never list anything as rare or OOP. In my current listings some Out Of Production IG minis have gone for huge amounts, The one I have listed as OOP has... plenty of watchers and no bids with minutes to go. Previous listings as rare or OOP have had the same outcome.
'OOP' auctions appear to attract the curious and I think most of these watchers are people who have similar items.

I don't think eBay has tanked but I think a lot more people are switch on to using the site which dilutes the offering.

Be honest and don't expect millions.

@Mr. Burning I don't really expect much just that the stuff I put up to sell. A lot of my stuff runs the clock without a single bid, For miniatures I list them at 5 dollars starting for stuff that sells for 30+ retail. Its current stuff which may be why it doesn't sell because everyone would rather buy new or get it locally who knows. Its just frustrating listing things that don't sell with only 10 views over a week.

mikhaila wrote:I really just started selling on ebay in the last 6 months, and it's doing great for me.

Might be that I'm already used to the huge amounts of hoops you have to jump through when you own a store. I spent some time reading through the huge amount of material ebay has up on how to make the best use of the system. I found that having an ebay store helped a lot and was worth the 15.95 a month, along with working to keep up a high feedback score.

Most every thing I do now is a 'buy it now' and not an auction. This leaves the item up and gets a lot more veiws. In many cases I get what I want faster than an auction. If I put up 30 used miniatures, it seems like I'm taking 10 of them to the post office the very next day.

Overall, it can be a pain at times, and the rules are absolutely skewed in the buyers favor. I had to wrap my ahead around doing an over the top job on packing the models, shipping immediately, and fixing problems immediately. It works, keeps the customers happy, and in the long run, makes ebay more profitable. Learned to do this watching Neal up at the Warstore.)

Well you're a retail pro.

You'll still receive some bad feedback (or at least, average feedback) sometime. It's impossible to satisfy some people.

I got 4/5 stars for one item I sent because the buyer wanted it to stay wrapped as a present, so they couldn't check it.

I've sold a bit in the last week or so and it's been a mixed bag.

The A5 40K rulebook and templates from AOBR went for £26.00 (I was expecting £15.00 at most!), but I completely failed to sell the DE Codex which I listed at £10.00 (ironically the Eldar codex went for nearly that amount).

In my mind, it's still a good way to shift stuff. I do query the tactics of some sellers though with bids ending at 10:00am during midweek.

Pael wrote:@Mr. Burning I don't really expect much just that the stuff I put up to sell. A lot of my stuff runs the clock without a single bid, For miniatures I list them at 5 dollars starting for stuff that sells for 30+ retail. Its current stuff which may be why it doesn't sell because everyone would rather buy new or get it locally who knows. Its just frustrating listing things that don't sell with only 10 views over a week.

If you want bids, then start low, try a few at 99cents and see what happens. It's easier to generate more bids this way than starting at a high price. People are funny like that.

I've stopped using Ebay now due to their very expensive fees and their complete bias towards the buyer.

It's funny that you see people complaining about both lack of deals (as a buyer) and lack of bidders (as a seller).

eBay isn't biased towards buyers, or against sellers. eBay's customer is the powerseller, and they are selling bidders to them. If you're a small seller, they could care less about you. As a buyer, you're a product, not a customer.

If you're buying or selling GW stuff, it's still the best place to do it for cash.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:Perhaps the real reason the sellers fees where raised, ebay saw the way the wind was blowing?

It's because the site has become a semi-pro online market place, not the virtual car boot sale it used to be a few years ago.
.

I think you're spot on with your analysis. At some point, Ebay made a decision in their business model to become a market place as opposed to an online garage sale. Rising seller fees, the inability to leave negative for buyers, immediate capture of funds if a dispute is filed....all of those lean hamper an individual seller much more than a corporate entity. My prediction is individual, category specific 'Ebays' will gain popularity. Even more so when there is an alternative to Paypal.