Better than Ebay?

[misty]

It's free to become a member at xxxxxx.com. You must register before you can auction your goods.

For less than US$63 for a whole year (for a limited time) you can buy your own multi-lingual shop to sell or auction your goods. Imagine online viewers seeing your ad in their own common language! Awesome marketing!

Check it out: http://my.xxxxx.com/2363831/

Folks, if you are going to go fishing you need to go where you know the fish are. eBay is where the buyers are. Posting ads anywhere else is sort of like fishing in a dry lake bed. Even if you save $100 per month in ad cost if you make no sales because there aren't any bidders you won't end up ahead.

Jim

[Natalie Williams]

Here is my opinion on the whole "other auction sites" issue.
To me, until Google gets an auction site up and running, I would go nowhere else. I really wish they would.
Actually I wish ANY commpany could get an auction site up as successful as eBay JUST so there's a little competition out there.
eBay basically has a monopoly on the auction world and so we have no choice.
I do love eBay and I am not knocking it at all. I'm just saying it would be nice to see a little competition in the market.

[Jim Wilson]

The fact is that a monopoly is never good for the consumer. But at the same time anyone who plans on competing with a powerhouse such as eBay needs to make sure that they have the money to market. This limits the competition to:

Google

Amazon

MySpace

Yahoo

And that's about it. The above represent the only online entities that I am aware of that would have the money to really give eBay any real competition.

Some of you might be asking "Well why is the competition capability so important?"

The answer is really quite simple. It is all about marketing. The website that has the money to market itself to the masses is the one that will get the traffic coming in. When eBay got started it did not need to market itself as hard because it was unique. But now if anyone plans on getting into the online auction business they will have to finance a mass media blitz in order to draw traffic away from eBay and into their realm. They would also have to draw sellers as well as buyers.

This IS NOT why I banned "misty". I want to stress the fact that I don't mind the idea of competition. And I even put a thread onto the main board specifically for ads to be placed. If "misty" had placed the ad there I would have allowed it. I might have still stated something about the difficulty of any new upstart online auction website fighting the powerhouse that is eBay but the links and all would have stayed. "misty" basically did not come here to offer useful info. They simply wanted to come here, draw some traffic to their affiliate link, make some money, and then move on.

In summary...

Competition is good but in order to truly compete it has to be capable of doing so. I know of NO online auction entity that can do this right now against eBay. (consider a high school football team taking on a pro team. It might seem interesting but in reality there would be no real competition)

This board does welcome ads now but they MUST be in the right place.

This board is a work in progress and chances are things will continue to change as it grows and settles. But the one thing that will remain constant is the fact that the integrity of the board is going to be maintained. Sorry "misty" but that's the way it is....

Jim Wilson

[Stephan Iscoe]

What's the purpose of eBay?
To buy and sell...?
A value exchange...?
Other big players are:
Craigs List, and
FreeCycle
both are free to join and no membership fees

Best of Success,
Stephan

[Natalie Williams]

I love Craigs List, just the simplicity of it.
I registered on my local freecycle website...
I gave a guinea pig cage away but never asked for anything.