AuctionCut

I have found Amazon "Auctions" to be weak, but....

If you are selling, books, CDs, DVDs or those kinds of
items the Amazon Marketplace is actually excellent.

I have found that when I have DVDs and books to sell
I sell the items for more money (gross and NET) and much faster
on Amazon marketplace.

Best,
Aryeh

jumble wrote:did you ever get dud CD's or DVD's from Amazon sellers? how can you tell if the stuff is pirated or not?

So far so good, never had a problem, and never a pirated item. Perhaps they are more strict that eBay on that stuff. I'd recommend Amazon Marketplace any time for those items. The one time an item didn't arrive from an A/M seller, my money was refunded, no problem.

I have sold books on Amazon, it is excellent for that.

M.

Regardless, entrepreneurs are grateful for the competition of other auction sites. It is this competition that inspires greatness, which promotes more customer incentives and lower listing fees for sellers.[/quote]

What customer incentives? The ONLY customer incentatives e-Bay offers is that ANYONE can register as a buyer, under ANY name....with no identification!

That is what is screwing up e-Bay. It their (e-Bay) GREED to have ever more and more "registered users" e-Bay does not give a damm as to WHAT signs up as a bidder. No wonder there are more and more Non-Paying bidders......

And as to Customer(vendor) Service at e-Bay.... THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NONE unless you are one of the Shooting Star Power sellers. E-Bay does not give a DAMM about the small vendors. Not even about my Silver level power seller. Still NO customer service. Oh yes, they give you a 9 to 5 phone number, and if someone feels like it they will answer, if not you are supposed to leave a message. Well NOT worth wasting your breath.... Centinally DO NOT hold your breath while waiting for a response!

Obviously eBay works for hundreds of thousands of people, every day.

There are pros and cons to everything, and there are always stories of people being ripped.

The eBay marketplace for the kind of things I sold has been saturated, and destroyed. It was hot, I made some decent money for a short time period in collectibles, china, etc.

SELLERS destroyed that market, NOT buyers. Here's how:

Around 2002, sellers began to flock to the eBay collectibles market, because it is easily accessible to anyone. Anyone can go to an auction, buy unique, buy low, sell high. Right? Sure.

Well, then you suddenly got all these clowns who wanted their own, and I use this term loosely, "business". All of a sudden, they had a business. Big deal. They lost money, but they had a business. I saw idiots selling a cup and saucer, that used to be worth 15 USD for 2 USD, undercutting the shipping, no handling, and using the picture pack. I'm not exaggerating.

Other sellers just decided that the sale was more important than a profit. It was obvious to anyone they weren't making any money. They were just more impressed that they could tell their pals they had an online "business".

Around about that time, the furious debate regarding a "handling" fee started. Guess what? I charge handling. I don't care. If you want me to give you my time for nothing, then I don't want to do business with you. All companies that make money charge handling fees, reasonable albeit, but they charge them. It makes sense. You have to recover labour and packaging material costs. If you don't, you lose money, and you're out of business. Well, the new sellers with a "business" on eBay didn't charge handling either. So, you can see where this is going. I got the hell out of it. I was frustrated. Having an online business is far less important to me than having a profitable one. I work hard everyday, I work like a dog. I'm not giving anything away in business.

So, that is what "screwed" eBay for me, not buyers, sellers, idiots, morons. Bitter? No. Disappointed. Hell yeah.

I was on the verge of using Amazon, but I figured they aren't as popular as eBay.

For a comprehensive list of online auction sites, I found http://auction-websites.info/. many countries are covered, and there's a section entitled "How to Begin?". Enjoy!

Cheers.

I've tried them all and on sheer size and activity of it's marketplace eBay is unquestionably the best. Neither Amazon or Yahoo even comes close to the level of activity a properly researched and listed item receives on eBay.

I think if you're actually concentrating on books you may do a little damage on Amazon, but even then eBay's 'Half' is a marketplace you should look into as well.

Anyway, just my two cents.

ebay and google are friendly.

I have purchased a few items from amazon, but haven't sold yet. I have looked into selling there, but it seems confusing compared to Ebay.

Thanks, I didn't know Amazon had an auction site either. Gonna check it out.

Amazon's auctions were not very popular, and they realized they couldn't compete with eBay in an auction format, so they have dropped them and concentrated on their Amazon Marketplace.

The following is NOT meant to be a plug for Amazon over eBay, just a brief comparison, listing the major drawbacks I've found, and including instances in which I've found it a very useful alternative.

The one thing I like is the ease of placing ads. You do have to find a listing for the item you want to sell (more about that later). But then you just click the "Sell yours here" button, fill in price, condition, and an optional comment, and you're done.

There is no listing fee, and you can relist indefinitely at no cost. Amazon takes a 15% fee on the final selling price, plus pays the seller what it considers a reasonable amount for shipping and handling. Granted, this is more than the lowest percentage for an eBay sale (12%), but apparently numerous sellers prefer the single fee to the possibility of multiple listing fees.

I've made a nice profit over time buying items on eBay and reselling them on Amazon, marked up 20% to as much as 100%. (I've also made a profit the other way around...pricing on Amazon is all over the map.) For all the millions who use eBay, there are just as many who are scared they'll get ripped off, so they prefer to buy at a "safe" online retailer. And, yes, believe it or not, I've talked to people who are willing to pay more rather than use eBay.

Last, I have been able to sell some items there that no one would touch on eBay.

The drawbacks? There are certain items you're not allowed to list unless you're a full-fledged storefront, or a certified seller. This includes computers, MP3 players, and so on, though computer parts are fine. You can find the complete list in the seller FAQs. You are required to accept returns for any reason (just as Amazon does), though you may set your own return fees policy, e.g., restocking fees, return postage, etc. You are not, however, required to cancel an order unless you wish to.

Amazon decides how much you'll charge for shipping and handling - usually plenty, but when they have the weight completely wrong (1 oz instead of 1 lb), you either go through the listing correction process first, mark up your price to allow for the difference, or just say to heck with it. There may be a better way, but I haven't had time to look - I just make sure on those items NEVER to offer expedited shipping, and put my price up a bit.

Biggest drawback, as noted: if Amazon doen't have a listing for the item, you're out of luck. But here's a tip concerning that:

Amazon's own search is terrible, and often omits items not in stock. Instead, use Google to search for your item, and add site:amazon.com to the query - that will search Amazon's listings only. I've found dozens of otherwise invisible listings that way - including in stock items that I could not get to turn up no matter how I entered them using Amazon's search. In fact, I use Google to search Amazon most of the time now.

Oh, those "invisible" out of stock items? Once I found them I sold each one I listed - after all, when you have the only one in stock of something popular, there's no competition! Plus, you'd be amazed at some of the odd little products that have accumulated on the Amazon site.

Again, NOT to tout Amazon, but FYI, since a number of posters have commented on eBay's dominance of the online market....The balance between the two has been changing steadily, primarily because of complaints about eBay and fees, fraud, counterfeits, and lousy customer service. A quote from the New York Times, January of this year:

Now the latest audience figures from Nielsen Online confirm that the e-commerce traffic crown has changed heads. For the month of December, for the first time, more Americans clicked over to Amazon.com (59,624,000) than eBay (59,374,000).

Despite the slim margin between the two companies, eBay’s visitor count is particularly alarming. According to the Nielsen data, the number of visitors to eBay.com dropped 10 percent from December 2006 to December 2007.

The Times has some other articles on the whys and wherefors - be interesting to see what happens.

EBAY did 53 Billion Last year no other online auction company can come close to that.

if another company comes along and offers almost free auctions, or much cheaper, and has a tiny word name, it'll overthrow ebay in like 5 years. easy.

Yeah for Auctions, ebay has top of mind.

Amazon = books.
Ebay = online garage sale.