Are there any real alternatives to Ebay ?

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darkstudios

New member
Its my first time posting here so i\'ll start by saying hello to you all :)

I am hoping I might be able to pick someone\'s brain regarding selling miniatures on the web. I have been selling using ebay for the last few months and I am getting a bit sick of the way its run (the fee\'s and many or little things) so I am looking for some alternative way to sell my miniatures.

Does anyone have any suggestion where I could try or do you guys & gals all use ebay ?

Thanks in advance. :beer:
 
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Gearhead

Member
Second that! They\'ve actually gone free for basic listings and Buy-it-Now, so it\'s even more ludicrously inexpensive than before.

The site\'s still growing, so you\'ll need to try to bring in buyers from outside; friends, gaming buds, forumites, eBay clients, etc. Sales for me tend to be steady (haven\'t had anything up for a couple of months though,) so be sure to be patient. I made over $250 in sales in the first couple of months, and it cost me almost nothing, and the whole thing is very gamer-friendly.
 
lizcam

lizcam

New member
Originally posted by wiccanpony
:D you might look into these guys



http://www.wargamesmarket.com/index.php
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I signed up with them today. Didn\'t have a lot of time to look and the site will be blocked from work because of the word \"game\" in the title but it look interesting. I\'ll be unloading some stuff (mostly oop stuff) soon and this may be a good way to do that. Thanks!
 
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generulpoleaxe

New member
only by typing the link into the description.

at the moment you can\'t get a link like what you can with ebay, it\'s why i haven\'t bothered using it yet.

no point in no-minimal fees if it\'s going to sell realy low and give no advertisement.
 
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jahminis

New member
with wargames market, your best bet is to post a thread in the tradin\' post, with the direct link...that\'s what the australian guy did for his sales on the ilyad minis, and he sold \'em all for pretty good prices...can\'t remember dude\'s name though...

cheers
jah
 
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Gearhead

Member
Heh, those Ilyad auctions did splendidly.

I and some others have been trying to get CMON to allow for Wargamesmarket auctions to be featured, but I\'ve received no response from the admins. You guys might want to ask them about it as well.

My strategy has been mostly to list my items at Buy-it-now at a price I can live with that would still be attractive. I\'ve spent a lot of time on Bartertown and eBay, so I have an idea of what people are generally willing to spend. I\'ve done pretty well, helped by the fact that I\'m not in any hurry to move stuff out the door. I\'ve sold about 2 items a week, and was pleasantly surprised at how quickly it added up.

The main thing to keep in mind is how unfriendly eBay has become, and they\'re only going to get worse; I attended a focus group a few months back, and you guys won\'t like what they\'re planning.

A site like WGM mainly needs sellers who are willing to try it out and stay with it for a while- buyers won\'t go where there\'s nothing being sold, and sellers won\'t go where there\'s no buyers; the sellers are the ones who have to break the cycle. This site works, and it can work a lot more, IF it gets seller support.

And it\'s us hobbyists who\'ll benefit the most.
 
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Arma

New member
I really like Bartertown - I used to it to sell and trade quite a lot of stuff in the past few months. Check it out (just got an upgrade too).

Bartertown
 
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Gilvan Blight

New member
Another alternative to eBay for some things, but unfortunately not really selling painted minis is Amazon. I find I get better prices, pay less fees and have 1/56th the amount of headaches through Amazon. I sell all my beaten/sick of Video Games there, used roleplaying and other books etc. Amazon.ca (the Canadian site) doesn\'t do minis, toys or games, so I\'m pretty much limited in what I can sell, but I know you can buy some minis on Amazon.com, you may also be able to sell them, not sure though.
 
No Such Agency

No Such Agency

New member
I just read HERE that eBay has essentially buried its \"small\" sellers via arrangements that guarantee you\'ll see corporate and power sellers\' listings first, AND they get to list those 1000\'s of items for free. Hard to compete with that. I guess eBay is sick of dealing with the \"little guy\" except as a cash-cow, sorry, customer. I guess specialty sellers will get hit last, but I hate to see eBay get any of my money if they deal like this.
 
Dragon Forge Design

Dragon Forge Design

New member
Originally posted by No Such Agency
I just read HERE that eBay has essentially buried its \"small\" sellers via arrangements that guarantee you\'ll see corporate and power sellers\' listings first, AND they get to list those 1000\'s of items for free. Hard to compete with that. I guess eBay is sick of dealing with the \"little guy\" except as a cash-cow, sorry, customer. I guess specialty sellers will get hit last, but I hate to see eBay get any of my money if they deal like this.
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That may be true if you were selling DVD\'s and socks and kitchen knick nacks and so on.. but people on this forum are selling pretty unique items like figures and game stuff..I hard think Im going to have to compete with buy.com for a market share. Saying that I do feel their fees have gone way to high for the little guy and this whole feedback thing had got me really pissed..Im already having troubles with more dead beats not paying for their stuff.. the lack of a way to leave a poor feedback sucks .

I found selling from my website and using Pay Pal as a check out system has been my best option as most of what I see these days is a Buy it now type item. So on a $10.00 sale Im keeping at least $1.00 extra of my profit.
 
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Gilvan Blight

New member
The new feedback system is the worst. My wife recently started selling some of my old Thundercats toys. Out of 10 listings we have 3 issues, all of which I think wouldn\'t exist with the old feedback system. Two of the people are claiming they didn\'t receive their items, the third claims it arrived broken. The third refuses to submit a picture. We are going through the dispute resolution system on all of these, and expect things to resolve well at least financially. The problem is that all of these people left negative feedback. This is something that can no longer be removed. One of these three buyers has even since realized that he was the one at fault, but now there is no way for a buyer to re-tract negative feedback. WTF is that?!? Now that we have these three black marks our feedback rating is now 66%, even though we have over 2200 positives. This is due to their other change, where only items sold in the last 12 months count towards you feedback. So no matter how well we did in the past, or how many items we have sold since opening an account back in the late 90\'s we only get rated on our last 12 months.
 
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Onis Lair

New member
Yeah, unfortunatly Ebay is no longer that world wide garage sale that it use to be. Instead it\'s becoming just another ecommerce site for multipule eshops and companies then a place for the average joe to sell his crap. Ebay is about as friendly to use now as sitting on a porcipine is comfortable. And as if the ebay fees wasn\'t enough paypal charges fees for beign payed through them and more fees if you withdraw funds with their own debit card, plus the ATM\'s fees. Soon that cash you made is wittled away from just fees.
 
gohkm

gohkm

Active member
Yes, I did make a fair bit on those Ilyad figs. But I daresay, that was mostly because of the rarity of said figs, and their popularity.

I\'ve found that WarGamesMarket still doesn\'t have that level of exposure as compared to e-Bay. While it lets you keep a greater percentage of your profits, landing a serious buyer on WGM is still quite a big lottery.

E-Bay, on the other hand, has excellent exposure, but as many others have already pointed out, it\'ll cost you an arm and a leg just for the privilege of selling on e-Bay.

Personally, I haven\'t yet found a truly viable alternative to e-Bay, but WGM is so far my favourite. I\'ve found that for collectors\' figs like Ilyad, it\'s best to deal with collectors direct.

So, in a shameless self plug, if any of you chaps needs an Ilyad, you know where to find me :).
 
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generulpoleaxe

New member
people could always move on mass to E-BID

it\'s more proffesionaly set up than wargamers market with no fee for using it.
their is a 3% seller fee for when it\'s sold but for a one off payment you can forgo any future fees.

maybe that\'s a better option for us all, advertise and take our custom their.
 
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Gilvan Blight

New member
What is this E-Bid, never heard of that one?

One I miss that I used to do really well on was E-Wanted. This site used an inverse auction format: you would post a listing saying what you wanted to buy, and sellers would bid what they wanted to sell it to you for, with the lowest seller winning (actually you got to pick the seller, but usually the lowest one). It was a very interesting format. Again probably not the best for selling painted minis, but I did get rid of some old unpainted Orcs though there.

EDIT: Decided to not be so lazy and googled E-Bid. Not quite as user friendly as eBay but interesting. Will be spending some time checking it out. Seems it could be a viable alternative if enough people start to use it.
 
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generulpoleaxe

New member
i\'ll be starting to use e-bid as a store for painted minis at some stage, ebay just isn\'t worth it anymore with all of the fees and hassle.
it\'s not even worth it for advertisement anymore due to all the crap people have to sift through.
 
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