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Card Sellers May Benefit as Auctiva Prepares for "Life After EBAY" (Fee Update 12-19)
storm888
Posts: 11,701 ✭✭✭
Auctiva Storefronts January 2009
With rumors circulating that Auctiva and EBAY may not
reach agreements to continue their "relationship," it may
be that Auctiva has a "Plan B."
With rumors circulating that Auctiva and EBAY may not
reach agreements to continue their "relationship," it may
be that Auctiva has a "Plan B."
Folks Who Bite Get Bitten. Folks Who Don't Bite Get Eaten.
0
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Here's Auctiva's YouTube introduction to the new service if anyone is interested:
Auctiva Store Intro Video
for January openings on ecrater.com.
The thing that interests me about the auctiva deal is that they have a LARGE
base of users that are already hooked into their existing products. Keeping
many of those folks - and moving them into a new platform AWAY from EBAY -
seems like a fairly easy task.
The auctiva scheme seems to be a good bit like EBAY ProStroes. ecrater has
most/all of the same features, but there are no fees at ecrater.
If a long splintering-cycle precedes consolidation, the answer may be to have
MANY stores at MANY places. I expected a more rapid consolidation but the
competitive impulse of the mall-builders makes me think that more fights/splintering
are inevitable BEFORE we see "one winner" that will replace EBAY among
small/medium-sized sellers.
Again, the intrigue of auctiva is that it is ALREADY "famous" among sellers. If
enough could be pulled in at one time, it could win the war before the first
2009 battles are even fought. (I am not saying that will happen; only speculating.)
The ease and power of ecrater are formidable, but the seller must do most of the
work. The auctiva scheme seems a little better suited to folks who want more
help.
//////////////////////////////////////
At ALL of the similar platforms, buyers will have to be earned/bought.
The "earned" come from google, msn, yahoo. The "bought" come
from click-ads and pay-per-action ads.
No mall-site is likely to EVER duplicate the current gross bulk-traffic that
EBAY has earned over the years.
Buyers do NOT know what "auctiva" is. They will not easily be driven into
typing www.auctiva.com in the same way that they routinely type www.ebay.com.
The buyers - at all of the new platforms - will come from the search engines,
from network-marketing sites, and from ads. Buyers will not often be entering
the stores from the auctiva homepage, the way they do on EBAY.
///////////////////////////////
Here is the current auctivacommerce.com forum. It has some traffic.
Q&A with the owner
I spent a little time playing with the new BETA site, today.
It ain't your daddy's Auctiva.
The main thing I am taking away is that bulk-uploads - in the first version of late January 2009 -
will be via the Auctiva listing tools. This means that if you think you want to experiment with it
next year, you should consider NOW starting to use Auctiva to load your EBAY items. (There will
be NO other spreadsheet or database uploading tools; items currently in Auctiva will load instantly,
other items will have to go in one at a time.)
The GREAT skills of the folks who designed the thing are pretty obvious. It's the best computer-science
project I have ever seen. Surely, it is the most over-engineered and over-built store builder EVER.
It seems bug free. Slick and fast. The wizards are disgusting and use terms that most EBAYers
have never heard of. The learning curve will be PrestoStores/ProStores on STEROIDS. But, it is
certainly learnable and doable. (I had to fight off the frustration of being forced to do something
new; some folks will not be able to do that.)
The end product is a nice thing to look at and is as "professional appearing" as anything out there.
On cable, the pics upload instantly. Virtually no waiting. Lots of drag-and-drop design gizmos. Too
many features that only one user in a thousand would even think they needed. The templates
are VERY limited, compared to what Auctiva provides for EBAY; odd that is the case.
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There is some confusion - inside/outside - as to whether the new scheme is a "mall/marketplace"
or just "a host/helper for independent stores." Auctiva wants it to be a ProStores competitor, but
the users may push/holdout for an EBAY-marketplace. (I like the free-standing concept, but since
most folks think they need mommy-EBAY to bring customers, the appeal may be limited.)
The owner says it will be "the wild wild west" at the start. IF "there is fraud or abuse," they
will "step in" and clean house. It appears there is no solid FB system, but that could change if
they go with some/all elements of the marketplace concept.
////////////
The fee schedule will be announced after Xmas. I expect to try it out, just for the drill. Eventually,
somebody will create a winner; I want to be on the bus when it happens.
<< <i>Geez, and I've been working out an ecrater store for the last week...I may have dropped my load a little too soon. >>
/////////////////////////
I don't think so.
I am still building stores on ecrater for other folks. I will throw some up
for myself before the end of the year.
ecrater is FREE.
auctiva will be priced in the range of ProStores.
If you have a few hundred items in a FREE spot, you will get surprise
money every now and then. And, you will get to keep ALL of it.
Based on what auctiva has said thus far, there is no indication that
auctiva will offer any marketing that is not available to ecrater users.
Auctiva has said that they will NOT do a "pure pay per sale" scheme.
(That is really the one I want. I can afford to pay 25% on many items
and still make money.) Auctiva may do a "pay per sale/pay per action"
option, but the main marketing will still be ad-words that the seller
buys independently.
I would NOT under any circumstances cut loose of ecrater; it's money
for NOTHING. (If you do multiple stores in different places, it is wise
to use different names for all of them so that google will love the
content from each.)
I have 2 stores. One named for my player collection website I'm building...I'm linking it as my "store" on my PC site. It will be sports cards and memorabilia.
I just reserved another for 1980s and 1990s toys...I think I named it GenerationYToys. I can't remember as I haven't completely set it up yet. I didn't realize it until recently, but Lego play sets and many toys from my childhood have a market value, even in used condition. I figure, why not move some of them.
<< <i>I just opened my ecrater store last night. At first, it can be quite confusing, due to the difference between them and ebay, but after a while, I found that it is actually easier to some extent. I figure I will put a 100 or so items up, just to see. I havent actually tried the adwords or any of that yet, since I havent had anyone explain in English what it is yet. >>
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I have talked - in person and online - to a bunch of folks who have been
selling on "the moon" for a long time. They all say that it is important to
list one or two items a day; the indexing at the search engines like it.
EBAY store inventory is usually thought to be at the bottom-range of critical
mass when 100-items is reached. That range is higher on "the moon." The
numbers of 150 to 300+ are believed to be correct.
//////
You can read about adwords on google.
Google Checkout should be an accepted payment method on ecrater. They
have a relationship with google that may affect search returns based on GC
acceptance. GC is easy to open and the same account can be used to buy ad-words.
///////////
auctivacommerce will release its price list, this week.
Hopefully, they will have some marketing schemes that they have not yet revealed.
If not, ProStores will eat their lunch after a bunch of fish are sucked into the net.
I am surprised at the level of hostility against EBAY revealed by some of the auctiva
workers' postings. Folks large and small seem to find that to know EBAY is not necessarily
to love EBAY.
On a bright note about auctiva, they have HUGE experience with buying adwords. This may
mean that they understand the marketing issues they face better than they are currently
revealing. That would be very good for their customers.
Question about the Ecrater, and let me prefice this with the understanding that I am Computer/Internet Illiterate and can barely do a store on FeeBay.
You state that Ecrater is free for us Sellers, but when I go to their Website, all of their services, after one month free, are pretty pricy. $39.95 to $59.95 it would cost me per month.
Where am I getting confused??
Neil
What is eCRATER? eCRATER.com is both a free web store builder and a free online marketplace. Sellers can easily create their own free online store in minutes. Buyers can easily browse and compare between thousands of products.
Sellers receive free website hosting, a free subdomain and a powerful admin tool to manage their free online stores. All products are posted to Google Product Search as well.
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I dunno which site you are looking at, but the correct site is:
the moon
There are no fees. BUT, you will need to buy some adwords, or spend
money on other marketing schemes.
$9.95 a month, plus a little % taste.
click on fee schedule
They will have a Pay-Per-Sale scheme as well. (Like ProStores.) They
will do the marketing for you and charge an added fee; 8%+ est.
Looks easy to operate and very professional....
BUT getting traffic would be the hard part.
Thanks
Stoney
For Sale
community
For Sale
Specializing in Certified Autograph Cards, Rookies, Rare Inserts and other quality modern cards! Over 8000 Cards in stock now! Come visit our physical store located at 1210 Main St. Belmar ,NJ
<< <i>What users are saying.........
community >>
Doesn't look like the users are currently happy....and looks like Auctiva took a play from the eBay playbook.
Edit to add: Looks like they were happy before the update that messed up their stores though.
Raw: Tony Gonzalez (low #'d cards, and especially 1/1's) and Steve Young.
<< <i>I am not sure if there are any real alternatives to an ebay store other then going out on your own and building a real website. Even then, it is extremly hard to get people to visit your site and actually purchase something. >>
///////////////////////
Bruce left EBAY last year. In 10-months he did $3-million in sales.
A Success Story
........
The key to sales is pretty simple: Control the search engines
with your tags, keywords, and paid adwords.
Auctiva will continue to have startup pains for a bit. Some
folks will do fine, some will not.
ecrater is still working well for LOTS of folks.
......
EBAY still works well in MANY categories; less so in some cats.
The combo of scamming-buyers and PayPal policies makes
EBAY a poor option for some sellers.
........
Listing counts
items listed
NOTE: About half of the EBAY listings are from "Diamond PowerSellers."
They include AA-batteries and single rolls of paper towels.
It is expected that many of these sellers will be gone soon. Even though
they pay NO listing fees, they say it is still not worthwhile being on EBAY.
(Maybe EBAY will start paying THEM to list, if they agree to stay.)
If you have an Ebay store you can use their free service called traffic report. One of the tools keeps track of the referring domains when somebody views one of your items. Did they discover it via an Ebay search, or did they find it on a search engine like google or yahoo. Of course the overwhelming leader is Ebay, but the fractional numbers of referrals coming from major search engines shows you just how hard it is to get your items discovered on the world wide web. On a typical Ebay store this runs 90% from Ebay, about 8% from Google, 1/2% from Yahoo, and all the others less than that. With your own website or Auctiva store, unless you spend a ton of money advertising, the only way people will find your site is from referrals from that 10% coming in from search engines like Google, etc.
/////////////////////////////////
In my EBAY categories - not collectibles - more than 50% of traffic
comes from search engines.
............
EBAY traffic is in a steady decline.
That decline simply is not impacting some collectible categories.
Cards seem to be among the most stable traffic draws.
TONS of Traffic Stories
AMZN gets fewer lookers, but sells more stuff and makes more money.
When EBAY next reports, in mid-April, there will be some shocked folks.
I will not be one of them. The news is not good.
JD will continue to blame the troubles on "the economy," but he cannot
get away with that forever.
.......
EBay's income dropped 31% as traffic declined
By Laurie J. Flynn
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO: The weak economy took its toll on eBay as the auctioneer reported its first revenue decline in a decade.
EBay reported net income in the fourth quarter declined 31 percent to $367 million, or 29 cents a share, from the year-ago quarter.
Even as the most-visited retail site on the Web with 84.5 million visitors, eBay's traffic in December was about 4 percent lower than the year before. Overall holiday spending online was down about three percent from last year, according to market researcher ComScore.
During the year, eBay made considerable changes aimed at reducing the company's dependence on its auction business, where growth has slowed in favor of fixed-price sales.
The company, based in San Jose, California, said revenue fell 7 percent to $2.04 billion, its first drop in sales in 10 years.
Excluding one-time items, eBay earned 41 cents a share, beating analysts' forecast slightly. On that basis, analysts had expected 39 cents a share and revenue of $2.12 billion, according to a survey of analysts by Thomson First Call.
"While the holiday season was tough and competitive, our overall results for 2008 were strong," said John Donahoe, eBay's chief executive in a statement. "We will build on our strengths in 2009 while managing our business prudently in the continued challenging environment." Donahoe, who became CEO and president in March on the retirement of Meg Whitman, took the reins just as severity of the economic crisis intensified.
The company laid off 10 percent of its work force of 16,000 in the fourth quarter, and paid $1.35 billion to acquire the online payment firm Bill Me Later and two Danish advertising companies.
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