I was on the ebay message boards today. I visit the message boards often. The hottest subject right now is, all the powersellers that have already left ebay to move on to another auction place. Back in February the big sellers boycotted ebay for a week. There is a huge list of people that are upset about all the recent changes and are leaving no matter what. I am stuck on the fence on this one. I still make great money on ebay, no matter how high the fees go. But, to take more money out of my pocket, tacking on more restrictions, and giving us less, is really starting to tick me off.
I don’t mean to sound like a cry baby. I have been selling on ebay since 1997 and in the past 4 years it has really got out of hand. All you old school sellers know what I am talking about. The overhead of running a website is little to none. Give us a better experience instead of stealing our freedom of the real ebay experience. I don’t care if ebay restricts certain items to change with the times, that’s fine. But, their rules and price hikes are worse than the tax hikes in Massachusetts. They are all uncalled for and not needed.
What positive changes are ever going to come from raising auction and final value fees? The big retail companies are going to move in. They already have. Who do you think sells brand new cell phones, video game consoles, and brand name clothing on ebay at prices that beat all the other competition? Its the retail stores. You can only buy these items at real wholesale prices from the manufacturer. You need a brick and mortar retail store to do so. The manufacturer also tells the retail store to only sell at MSRP. Which means, home businesses can’t get these items for real wholesale prices. But that’s a whole other story.
Home business owners are the only reason ebay got where they are today. We started it all. Now ebay has decided to change direction in such, that home business owners can’t make a living there anymore. There was a time that home business owners could make a substantial living on ebay. Ebay has become this big over publicized monster. New users never get what they wanted because it’s over hyped.
New members sign up everyday with the wrong knowledge of “It’s easy to make money on ebay”. That’s not true at all anymore. I feel bad for new users that fall for this trap and list 100 items off the bat, thinking they will all sell. You need to know tricks and tips to make your items sell on ebay now-a-days. If you are new to ebay, don’t plan on making fast money. You need to learn the ropes first. You can’t just jump in to it.
You need to do extensive research and have the knowledge to keep a float and still make money on ebay. I have basically become an ebay tutor in the past few years. I teach people how they can make money on ebay. But I also stress to them, it is not as easy as it used to be. I just don’t like where ebay is going with all the new changes in our pockets. They can do whatever they like to rules and the way ebay is run. But stop taking from our pockets ebay.
I have already expanded to Amazon and a half dozen other good marketplaces around the web in the past few years. I don’t see more business coming from any one of them. But as a whole, that other part of my business is making more money than ebay. That tells me that: I could leave ebay and it won’t effect me in a bad way. Get going everyone. Go expand your business, so ebay isn’t the only way you make money online.
I have said this before and I will say it again. Something bigger and better always comes along. Ebay is just making it easier for the competition to take over. Look around people. Right now, there are plenty of options besides ebay. I am not saying leave ebay(unless you want to). But at least branch off, in to other auction marketplaces. The worst that can happen is; you might make more money.
Thanks for reading my blog everyone. See you tomorrow.
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