My current strategy and first success

I've been on Ebid for a few years, but not really done anything with it except for copying my listings across from eBay. Averaged less than one sale a year up to now, but I've decided to do my level best to make this a viable selling venue for me.

Apart from Ebid, I sell on eBay, Etsy and Amazon. Mostly eBay and Etsy. Obviously the fees, especially on eBay, are a problem, and my sales on eBay have been in a steady decline for years. It seems that the more I pay in fees, the less exposure I get. Ebid may not have the same level of built-in traffic, but I like the fee structure and they're not always mucking around with the system here. So the aim is to eventually make this my biggest selling venue. Reading the forums on here, it's quite clear that the successful sellers are the ones who know how to promote themselves. So here's what I've been doing for the last two or three months:

First of all, I've been posting some of my listings to Facebook groups, but I haven't had any success with that method so far. On the other hand, it doesn't cost anything only takes a minute to do.

I've also got a domain name (esswad.com) which points to my Ebid shop. I used Paint to design a simple shop logo that incorporates that domain name. I designed a very simple flier that tells customers that I've got a shop with over 1,000 items in it, and inviting them to visit it. It incorporates the shop logo. I sell various vintage items, including books and View-master reels. So I got some card and designed some simple bookmarks which incorporate the shop logo, and I enclose a bookmark with each book order. Some of the View-master reels that I resell don't have the original paper sleeves with them, so I make my own up and include the logo on them, too. The fliers, bookmarks and View-master sleeves all cost pennies each to make, so it's a cheap way of advertising my shop.

So now every time I make a sale on eBay, Etsy or Amazon, I enclose a flier, along with a bookmark or View-master sleeve if applicable. Using the rival sites to publicise this site, and hopefully attract some traffic to my Ebid shop.

And I've just had my first success. A few weeks ago, someone bought a vintage magazine from me via eBay. I included a flier with the order, and today, he's registered on Ebid and bought four more magazines from me. So it's definitely a viable method. It's not difficult to design a suitable flier, I just knocked one up on my word processor and I can print six of them on an A4 sheet. A cheap and easy way to get some targeted advertising going on. If I keep on sending fliers out hopefully I'll be able to bring some more customers over from the dark side. I suspect having a short domain name is going to help too.

Does anyone else have any ideas for improving on what I'm already doing?

Congratulations!

I don't sell on the other sites anymore, but when I did, I too, would enclose information that I am on eBid and the shops name and that there are other sellers on this marketplace to check out.

I print my own eBid.net labels to close the package. Too expensive to have them professional printed on stickers.

The main advertising I do is and only pinning to Pinterest.

Would love to place some form of directing people to eBid in my packages on other platforms but I always worry the will ban me for doing so, since it was a something they used to do especially eBay, don't know if that's the case now. Mind you if we had branded tape, poly bags etc for this place traffic would be 100 times better anyway

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Originally Posted by BordersBargains

Would love to place some form of directing people to eBid in my packages on other platforms but I always worry the will ban me for doing so, since it was a something they used to do especially eBay, don't know if that's the case now. Mind you if we had branded tape, poly bags etc for this place traffic would be 100 times better anyway

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Be careful about putting notes in when selling on ebay, I used to sell around 10 patterns a week on ebay, OK not a lot!! compared to other sellers but some were repeat buyers and I always enclosed a hand written thank you note then one buyer left feedback with a thank you for the handwritten note and suddenly no sales for weeks, could not find my listings so contacted them, was told yes they could see my listings weren't showing but not given an explanation as to why, so due to managed payments starting I closed my account.

I think the feedback regarding the note came from someone else selling patterns, they had bought several from me but obviously could not stand the heat in the kitchen so knew what they were doing when they mentioned the note, hence my listings stopped being shown, no mention of ebid was in the note as I had read that others who had done so had been banned. My patterns were competitively priced, unused/new and cheaper than some of the photocopies being sold, but hey ho! deep breath and think KARMA, here on ebid I average one pattern now and again, had my first sale in five months in May, as I said in another posting I only stick around as I paid for lifetime membership, "like to get my monies worth" and just in case things should pick up.

As for advertising, that is why the fees are so high on ebay, somebody has to pay for it and it certainly will not be coming from their profits.

once managed payments came in I shutdown my ebay store and removed all listings I was not going to put up with that crappy payment service. I sell, get paid and send items out to my buyers with managed payments I couldn't do that. buyers would take weeks to receive items due to me having delayed payments. so I list all my inventory here where its simple sell, get paid, mail it out!

Happy for you that you've made your first sale here, it sometimes takes a while. In my case it was over a year but that was partly because I listed a few items and left them for months hoping that that they would sell all by themselves. After the first year I started looking for ways to help them sell. Hope some of the following is helpful to you.

I don't do (anti) social media so can't say anything about that. The first thing I started doing was listing something new each week to increase what I had available. Soon after I started logging-in mid-week to keep my "Recent Activity" date fresh. It shows on each of your listings and is something I always glance at if I'm interested in buying from the seller. Presumably others do as well so I make sure they see I'm on the site regularly.

I started putting fliers in obay parcels once I had enough listings here to interest buyers. I'm sure it helped as it was noticable that a sale there was sometimes swiftly followed by one (or more) here.

I always have a thread on the "Plug Your Auction" section of the boards showing my latest addition(s). Some doubt the accuracy of the number of views shown, some might well be bots. The number of views mine get is generally around 40 a week (once broke through the 50 barrier) and the "average" has been steadily increasing over the years. To start with I was lucky to 20 views in a week. Views have been in decline recently (as people have tightened their belts?) so I was surprised to find that last week when I listed something outside my normal category the views increased. The last time I looked -- 60+ views:eek: So I think the numbers are accurate enough to get some idea of whether there is any interest in the item.

No-one has mentioned google shopping yet. I read in the Help (FAQs?) pages how to get my listings acceptable for up-load to GS and did as advised. Later, following advice on these boards, I made sure my Listing Titles differed significantly from the one used here if I listed the same item on obay. The advice I followed was that GS doesn't allow duplicate listings and if two are the same, it will show the obay listing and drop the one from ebid.

Putting fliers in parcels declined as I made fewer sales on obay, but as my sales here continued to be mostly to new ebid members and slowly increased, I can only guess that GS played a part in that.

Some buyers must also have found ebid by themselves which I put down to the obay search making it increasingly difficult for buyers to find my sort of Collectable items, so they started looking at other sites including this one.

Until the end of last year my sales here were running neck and neck with those on obay but stopped abruptly on both sites at the end of March, begining of April and I think they are going to be few and farther between for a while. I don't think it's a coincidence that they stopped after buyers received their winter energy bills and inflation started to bite into household budgets.

I hope you do well here and keep getting sales but I think anyone selling collectables is going to struggle for the foreseeable future.:(

Incidentally, as a vintage glass collector I'm always looking-out for information about pre-war pressed glass (UK and Continental). There are many unidentified pieces and about the only way to get information these days is to find contemporary manufacturers catalogues, departmental store catalogues and adverts from newspapers and magazines. If you have anything like that, that you could list here I would be interested :)

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Originally Posted by Policequilts

Congratulations!

The main advertising I do is and only pinning to Pinterest.

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I've heard of people promoting listings through Pinterest. I haven't tried it myself yet, but I probably will do in the fairly near future.

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Originally Posted by theElench

No-one has mentioned google shopping yet. I read in the Help (FAQs?) pages how to get my listings acceptable for up-load to GS and did as advised. Later, following advice on these boards, I made sure my Listing Titles differed significantly from the one used here if I listed the same item on obay. The advice I followed was that GS doesn't allow duplicate listings and if two are the same, it will show the obay listing and drop the one from ebid.

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I hadn't thought of that. I'll bear it in mind for the future, thanks.

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Originally Posted by theElench

Incidentally, as a vintage glass collector I'm always looking-out for information about pre-war pressed glass (UK and Continental). There are many unidentified pieces and about the only way to get information these days is to find contemporary manufacturers catalogues, departmental store catalogues and adverts from newspapers and magazines. If you have anything like that, that you could list here I would be interested :)

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I haven't come across anything like that so far, but you never know what I may stumble across in the future. I'll bear you in mind, cheers.

Thanks, for my purposes even copies are useful if (say) it's one page of a magazine or newspaper that you don't want to damamage. Only recently a powder bowl, often thought to be German or Czech, was identified as Sowerby (English)when someone gave access to their catalogue collection. There is still be info. to be found out there, if only people knew what they have :)

Echo previous comments

My 2d worth: 1st - exposure on any platform is always better than none at all... even if draws attention to eBid - it gets it out there not just for you, but everyone else on eBid... viz: the viewer will look around to see what else is on sale. All it takes is time which is not wasted at the end of the day.

Second - put keywords in your title that will attract your buyers and help with google searches

Third - make sure you have good pictures of your products - nothing worse than not seeing what you are selling

Fourth - add specifics about you and your products in the description - more the better.

Best luck with sales.

Fifth - under listing type always choose gallery listing over free, you will pay a 2% fee on the sale but in the listing, there is a picture to see unlike free where there isn't one (this is in search results, not the listing itself) so as a result, I don't think your item can be listed on google or bing.

Only my opinion (and probably a minority one) but I wonder how much of a draw the "Free To List" option is these days? It was probably much more so back when obay charged everyone listing fees. Now it doesn't, it's free to list for many and that includes integrated checkout and a picture in the search results.

Even as a collector, always looking out for something unusual, a title has to be pretty intriguing to persuade me to click on a pictureless listing to see a photo.

I think "Platinum" listings at 5p + 5% FVF, with integrated checkout and a picture in the results should be high-lighted instead. They're more attractive to buyers. Even with the fees they are still a big saving over the other site and every one brings in some immediate revenue to ebid, plus enhancing the possibility of a FVF, that could be used for site improvements.

I'm not sure about google or bing up-loads either, but I don't recall ever seeing a pictureless item on google shopping. All in all I'd guess that without a photo in the results, an item only has a slim chance of selling.