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Alternatives to eBay or Amazon?

by Steven Roberts
8 replies
This week I started selling real products via eBay, driving traffic via Facebook fan page owners and FB Ads. It's going absolutely gangbusters but the problem is that I've reached my sales limit on eBay in two days, even after getting the limit extended once. So I have to wait a month for a further extension, which sucks, (as does eBay customer service). The business is about to stall if I can't find somewhere else to list.
The products (and the payment transactions) have to be listed on high trust sites, else traffic doesn't convert nearly as well. (I know - I also have an nice eCommerce site but traffic doesn't convert there and fanpage owners are leery. Facebook store? Yes, but it needs a backend that buyers will be comfortable with - like eBay and Amazon...)

So maybe Amazon is the way to go, but Amazon's fees look even higher than eBay, but at least they don't seem to have the same limits that eBay has.
The products are sold in the UK and are apparel type products.

Any bright ideas about high trust places to list without the service and cost issues of eBay and Amazon?
#alternatives #amazon #ebay
  • Profile picture of the author eklipz316
    You can try eBid or overstock, but unfortunately you won't get as many sales as you will with eBay. It sounds like you should maybe give your eCommerce site an overhaul as well if the you're not happy with conversions. Giving Amazon a try, like you mentioned, isn't a bad idea either.
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    • Profile picture of the author garyisonline
      Figure out that e-commerce website and quick! That is your real business.

      Use eBay as a traffic generator, just as you're using Facebook, not as your core business model. Sell what you can on eBay and lead them to your own website where you own the customer. Your customer database, free of any 3rd party, is your true business asset.

      Amazon fees are in most cases lower than eBay. First you don't pay to list your items.

      eBay you pay for listing, final value and PayPal around 14% or 15% Amazon you don't pay to list, and then you have the final sales fee of around 12% depending on category. If you sell under 40 items per month, don't pay for Amazon Pro. If you sell 41 items per month, pay for pro so you avoid the $1/sale fee.

      But holy schnikes captain, what are you doing reading this? Go focus on making that website work!!
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      • Profile picture of the author JJPerkins
        There are alternatives, but the problem with most is that they don't have the trust that Amazon and ebay do.
        Would your items possibly fit into etsy?
        Do you know an ebayer you would trust to market your goods for you?

        We sell on both and Amazon really isn't that bad, the fees for us are just a tad higher than ebay, and as we get top discount on ebay probably would be less for you.
        Better slightly higher fees than no sales anyway!
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        • Profile picture of the author Steven Roberts
          Originally Posted by JJPerkins View Post

          There are alternatives, but the problem with most is that they don't have the trust that Amazon and ebay do.
          Would your items possibly fit into etsy?
          Do you know an ebayer you would trust to market your goods for you?

          We sell on both and Amazon really isn't that bad, the fees for us are just a tad higher than ebay, and as we get top discount on ebay probably would be less for you.
          Better slightly higher fees than no sales anyway!
          Yes - I think you're probably right. My products probably wouldn't fit on Etsy- not vintage clothing. The issue is that the traffic comes off FB fanpages, and I'm paying the fanpage owners for conversions. (At the moment it's competitive with FB ads, cost wise. This is a revelation to me!) So he/she needs to see conversions without the suspicion that I might be not reporting them all. That's why my own site won't work for this kind of model.
          Can't think of way round the problem without using the big sites....
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      • Profile picture of the author Steven Roberts
        Originally Posted by garyisonline View Post

        Figure out that e-commerce website and quick! That is your real business.

        Use eBay as a traffic generator, just as you're using Facebook, not as your core business model. Sell what you can on eBay and lead them to your own website where you own the customer. Your customer database, free of any 3rd party, is your true business asset.

        Amazon fees are in most cases lower than eBay. First you don't pay to list your items.

        eBay you pay for listing, final value and PayPal around 14% or 15% Amazon you don't pay to list, and then you have the final sales fee of around 12% depending on category. If you sell under 40 items per month, don't pay for Amazon Pro. If you sell 41 items per month, pay for pro so you avoid the $1/sale fee.

        But holy schnikes captain, what are you doing reading this? Go focus on making that website work!!
        Yes, thank you, you're making a good point but this is not quite how this business model works. Traffic comes from fanpage owners who are remunerated by conversions of my offers. The traffic is great and works out very competitive compared with FB ads. But for everyone to be comfortable, the fanpage owner needs to know that I'm not understating my sales - which she can see on a public site like eBay but can't on my own ecommerce site. Unless there's an independent way for her to see my conversions without giving away Paypal or site logins...?
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    • Profile picture of the author Steven Roberts
      Originally Posted by eklipz316 View Post

      You can try eBid or overstock, but unfortunately you won't get as many sales as you will with eBay. It sounds like you should maybe give your eCommerce site an overhaul as well if the you're not happy with conversions. Giving Amazon a try, like you mentioned, isn't a bad idea either.
      Thanks. I'm not going for organic traffic - all my traffic comes from FB fanpages. I just need a safe public place to host the offers so my traffic sources can see I'm not cheating them. So maybe eBid and overstock would work. The last time I looked on eBid it didn't support size variants for clothing, so that's a problem, but it's a lot cheaper than eBay.
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  • Profile picture of the author gasman
    Pricegrabber, and Buy.com are both similar to Amazon. They don't have the traffic Amazon does, but they are worth a try.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steven Roberts
      Thanks for the suggestions.
      Has anyone used Ecwid to build a store in Facebook? Any experience?
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