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EbayFancy yourself as an Ebay seller , or a newbie wannabee shopkeeper ? Then read on , we've been there , we've got the badge twice ! It started out as the first auction site , in the early days of the internet , by starting earliest they managed to corner the market ! Many other auction sites have followed but most find it's too late . The success of Ebay may not be all that good news for it's merchants , as like any large business they can take you for granted without providing the excellent customer service and lower costs (even free costs) of some of the smaller competing auction sites . Why List On Ebay Numbers - it's all down to traffic , most people visit Ebay than all the other auction sites combined , you can reach the whole UK even the world , there's no coding (unless you want to spirce up your listings with html) , when used with Paypal you can be selling your stock inventory (or junk around the home) in minutes . So no wonder many find it so compelling . Pitfalls The biggest stubling block is their (in our opinion) huge charges ! they have ramped these up since the early days so it is virtually impossible to make any kind of profit from goods you would source from the wholesaler for reselling . 99% of goods are lossleaders , that is , items that are selling for less than a profit to get you to become a customer ! Of course if you are not a business , or looking to sell second hand stuff you can make some cash profit , but generally speaking new stuff (unless you import from China) is unlikely to return a profit on individual items . Free Listing Days Ebay knows there are lot of potential businesses holding back from using their services , because of their listing and final valuation fees , which is why they occasionally do a "free listing" promotion , these days however they tend to not even offer totally free listings but a reduced rate listing for 1 day - whereby you can test the water . Ebay Shops During 2006 they ramped up their fees by a whopping 40% and reduced the prominency of the Ebay listing results in the main Ebay searches . Many Ebay shops shut up their ebay presence - even powersellers went out of business overnight . It is this inflexibility that makes turning a profit on Ebay an unlikely proposition especially for unsavvy new startups . Nightmare Experience Recently we like many businesses closed our Ebay shop for about a year then thought maybe things had improved so went back and opened the shop , this time as a featured Ebay shop , which was on a free for a month promotion . However in the small print (and without warning during the ordering process) they slapped on the full amount . Further more they would not allow even a prorata reimbusement if we were to downgrade to the Basic Ebay shop .... Gone are the days , it would appear of reasonable assistance ! Being Optimistic OK so they kick you about a bit ! They do it because they know they have 1 valuable asset that is not available anywhere else - TRAFFIC , the millions of shoppers who use Ebay around the world everyday are oblivious to hardships imposed on the merchants , and as long as there are there shoppers , merchants will have to put up and shut up with the continuous squeezing of their advertising coffers . The Ebay market is huge if you managed to get a popular item by hook or crook that is a fraction of the RRP , that you can sell dirt cheap then you can of course make it big , but don't try selling ice to the eskimos . Final Note Why not join our forum and discuss Ebay and other topical issues . Perhaps you feel you have been treated unfairly and need some counselling ! or are a young entrepeneur wanting to bang your drum about your Ebay successes - we'd love to hear from you (and so would our site visitors) . We will be adding more on our own experiences of buying and selling on Ebay ,,,, watch this space ...
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