eBay is destroying itself (follow-up)

GarageSale
1

Hi,

This is a follow-up for closed thread “eBay is destroying itself” eBay is destroying itself .

Like many of of you, I’m more than fed up with eBay, which for small sellers (maybe also for large ones) has become very unfriendly. Crappy interface, poor support (no way to contact per email, pricey incompetent phone support, even not in your language), , and many more disappointments …

Like Michelle, I tested Bonanza.com and I listed a few items using their interface.
One can import items from eBay, Amazon, several other platforms and CSV as well.

I agree that the name is strange, but from what I’ve seen until now they are great.
For free, you can operate one or several booth, which are almost like webshops.
Something that eBay doesn’t allow unless paying for a shop.
The booth allows you to use a custom logo and custom banner.

Furthermore, Bonanza allows custom booth categories, which can be hierarchical.
I tested them. It is very easy to create categories and you can drag and drop them to create a hierarchical structure.

After a few hours for indexation, the items listed in your booth are also visible on the global marketplace.

Bonanza’s interface is pleasant (much more to eBay one to my opinion).
Several aspects are very similar to eBay. For instance, as far as I know they use the same categories.

The management of shipping costs is very similar to eBay’s one.
You can use shipping profile and have different shipping costs for different countries.

Some differences with eBay

Fees
On Bonanza, there are no listing fee and that’s great.
There is a minimal fee of 0.50 USD on each sold item.
They charge a 3.5% on sold items.
This rate also applies to the part of shipping costs that exceeds 10$. (eg. 3.5% of 2$ is shipping costs are 12$.

How prices are displayed
If you set your prices in USD, they will be listed in EUR if the user is visiting Bonanza from continental Europe. The exhange rate is transparently displayed at the bottom of the pages.

I observed that the Bonanza marketplace is pretty well translated in many languages.

Support
At present time, I consider Bonanza’s email support being great : very responsive, friendly and competent.
Even when you haven’t sold a single item yet.

Although eBay is currently much well known, I strongly encourage sellers on this forum to give it a try.

If you have a simple booth, Bonanza will on several pages try to sell you supplemental paid services, like a webshop, advertising your items, but if they are not necessary, you can simply decline them. They do it in a friendly manner.

@fedege96 (and others): Bonanza currently doen’t give the same reach as eBay, but the more sellers, the more buyers it will attract. We need some competition and most Internet giants are currently very unfriendly for small sellers.

@GarageSales’s team: Although Bonanza is being better than eBay on editing in batch, I believe there is still place for tools like GarageSale. Bonanza has an API. I’m aware that developping for several platforms can be quite a challenge for a small team, but my conviction is that eBay is going wrong on many fronts. I hope you software can progressively get ready for Bonanza as I have been positively surprised by this alternative.

1 Like
2

Hello @Leon,
that’s quite interesting reading again about this topic. As I already said months ago in the other thread you linked, the situation is quite complicated. To summarize my personal experience, as long as I have tried and visited many different marketplace other than eBay, there is not at all a perfect one. The choice must depend on what you sell. What you sell? And how many listings do you plan to have? Which is your price range? These must be the first questions you must ask yourself before totally moving away from eBay. Here I give some consideration we all should mediate about:

  • Unfortunately for now there are no other marketplaces that reach a number of customers like eBay does. For this reason, giving up totally with eBay would be a mistake, for now. Yes, the interface is crappy, don’t talk about customer service (they are only good for jokes), I HATE the way they consider you, after many experience I really can say they have much more in consideration buyers than sellers, which is quite ridiculous because ebay fees are giving by us, not by customers. But they are clever, they know they have the monopoly for old things and collectables markets and other sites are no longer, so sellers must going on selling on their website if they want to earn. Moreover, pricing is going to be unjustified, from recent changes they put a 100€ and more fee/month if you want to keep a shop and unlimited listings (30 days or GTC), otherwise you pay a listing fee for each listing that exceeds the number of 10.000 active ones. This is a lot if you consider that we seller have to pay also PayPal fees… and taxes over each invoice… They are ridicously trying to imitate amazon, di you hear the new discount (maybe only in Italy)? You offer free shipping, and we refund you 10% of ebay fees, which means, I offer for free shipping for a monthly amount of 300/400€ (and now I am not listing for months since I am closed for shop restoration), and eBay refunds you 10/20€ !!! That’s a bargain guys, let’s offer free shipping for all! I mean, isn’t that RIDICULOUS??? Besides, if you DON’T offer free shipping, your visibility decreases… All these would be good reason to give eBay up, but where reaching the same turnover? Nowhere else. That’s right what you say, that if all seller gives eBay up and start using Bonanza, one day it will be a new serious and valuable competitor of eBay. But in the meanwhile does it give you the same turnover? NO. And so, you might start a business on Bonanza but also keeping opened eBay shop, but it would increase your monthly fees and expenses. Does it worths? It depends on what you sell, how much and price ranges, as said above.

  • Now let’s talk about bonanza itself. Unfortunately, considering the average items sellers propose, I see it much more like a vintage marketplace than collectables and antiquarian. It might be a good thing if you start selling something different, but does it worth? Difficult to say, you should do a time long study of their sales, follow it constantly and maybe let’s give a try without a large expense of fees, but “without a large expense of fees” means few sales, and few sales mean not a very large and consistent visibility. Again it depends on the 3 points above: amount, price and type (of items you sell). For now, after many time, I made a decision: I gave up selling on eBay well worth items and only list specific type of goods and for a precise price range. Any other good priced more than 200/300€ circa, and for which an auction might be better than a GTC that can stay there for years before being sold, I use Catawiki. Their support is so much better and also hammered are good. So, summarizing, I made a drastic decision: little goods on eBay, smaller and important pieces on Catawiki. This is my first step to slowly giving up (partially) eBay sales. They are not following the right way, their corporate executive seem to be children. Did you remember the “watermark-gate”? Well, that was a perfect example that you might put over a book to display what to NOT DO in corporate choice: make decision before considering their potential effects. In fact, watermark rule was (again) RIDICULOUSLY removed after some time. This is just one between dozens examples I might give you

  • So, considering all these, yes further GS integration would be surely recommended, but it means lot of money, of time and work. I guess they have much other things to think about before planning new marketplace integration. But apart any difficulty in doing this plan, it is surely advisable since I really don’t see a happy and rich future for eBay. Sure, we are NOT talking on short period and we are talking about used/antique/collectables goods, but if they don’t find their way, and their way should not be the way of someone else (amazon ndr), one day real competitors will appear, and that day will not be a good one if GS will only be eBay-dependent. Again, any consideration should be made considering type of goods, price range and quantity.

I should/would say much more, but as said at the beginning, the situation is very complicated. Moreover it is not easy to say how it will develop in the feature, we are talking about something quite new called “ecommerce”, so… hard to see what will occur…
So, my opinion is: first consider your type of business, then try new platform if you thing they might suit your needs. If they suit, count up to 3 before totally giving up eBay. It’s a mess and I hate it too, but sometimes it’s better to take a little time before doing drastic choice, if this is your work and not a hobby.

3

Hello @fedege96,

I agree that at present time giving up totally with eBay would be a mistake, but sellers can give to eBay several competitive disadvantages:

  • listing first on startup marketplaces that are fighting hard to provide better service and lower fees, and only later on eBay (e.g. one month later)
  • listing more items on competitors than on eBay. Bonanza is good in this regard as they are no insertion fees.
  • better describe the products on a marketplace than on another, a.s.o.

and of course, search first on other marketplaces when looking for something to buy.

Each time that I list on eBay, I feel I’m reinforcing their monopoly, whilst the situation is worsening for sellers.

I think sellers have a responsability. The question is: do seller want to give a chance to startups marketplaces or not?
Some marketplaces are growing fast and by their behaviour sellers can help making changes in the landscape happen faster.

I’m not telling about suddenly stopping all cash flow coming from eBay, but making happen that part of the cash flow starts coming from other platforms and this percentage growing over time.

I heard about Catawiki. This marketplace is mostly for collectible and antiques and I’m in the spare parts market.

The 0,50 USD fee on Bonanza may appear high for very cheap items but it is not that high if considering that it is only on sold items, whilst eBay applies a 0,35 USD fee on all published listings (apart from the monthly free ones, which are quickly spent).

I see the migration to competitors as a progressive process, and the radicality of the switch to another marketplace depending on how things evolve, but I basically consider giving a chance to eBay competitors well worth it.

4

Well, concerning this:

it’s another matter. Yes, I never buy on eBay, I only use amazon, but what about antique coins or books? I think it is quite hard to find them on amazon and it is much more probable to find them on eBay, and so… you reinforce their monopoly. It’s something I would avoid very happily, but as said in my first message, all the discussion depend on which kind of good we are talking about. There are goods that are “rare” and not “commercial”. In this case, you buy them wherever you find them, eBay, delcampe, catawiki, or a personal shop’s website. For these goods (UNFORTUNATELY) eBay has an incomparable offer for width and sometimes also price. Sure, if you want to buy a book, a phone or a hammer, it is much better to avoid eBay (please books/phones/hammers sellers don’t kill me :smile: ), I just find other platform more convenient, safer, EASIER to use (!!) and this is part of my personal way to say no to eBay. But this is another matter than selling old stuff.

Concerning the responsibility:

You have to consider that behind a huge part of eBay shop there is a medium/small company which has medium/small assets, workforce and time! I give you an example: if I had 5 employees and 48h days, I would have the possibility to list hundreds of thousands item I have forgotten in my archive, but until now I worked myself and had to divide time between: 1) find material in markets/people basement/auction houses 2) buy and divide it 3) scan each one, describe and list one by one 4) reply to customers’ emails 5) prepare orders and ship 6) time to leave, other than work, like sleeping sometimes and eating, holidays already gone years ago :no_mouth: . So, in this situation, would I find the time to follow one marketplace by one? List before on bonanza, then recreate listings in GS and list on eBay, keep the shop open and also following other marketplace like Catawiki? NO, I don’t have time! Sure I might have one employee, but he would not make such a difference since he is not as fast as me doing all this stuff, it’s hard to find someone with knowledge in this field, and sure, you have to pay decently him/her, which mean less money to invest in material, less potential listings, less active items on eBay (or anywhere else) and so… less sales! It’s hard and it depends on your turnover and on many other aspects.
All this is just to say that it is not so easy to do what you suggest, and if you don’t have a managing app that simultaneously sell on 4 different platforms, you have to manually follow each one. That’s time (and money) and for now I don’t have enough! And I guess this is the situation of many other sellers on eBay. Then if you have a team that follow each step of your business, what you said would be of course recommended!!

Sure I agree with you, but consider this situation: if you don’t have a team of employees, the more time you spent over other platforms, the less you have to dedicate on eBay, and this is not affordable (for now) if your main workflow comes from eBay (mine fortunately doesn’t because I dedicate to other platform, but it means I am not available to give up this time to dedicate to other growing marketplace that would not guarantee the same income as other marketplaces do).
It is quite hard to explain in English, I mean, you have X time in a day, if X/2 for marketplace A guarantee you 1000 of income, would you give up this X/2 time and move it to marketplace B that probably will provide the same income in one or two years (or more, as I suppose)? No, the solution would be slowly moving and keeping the 2 marketplaces parallel, but it requires anyway time, time and time…

Spare parts is something very specific, if your business has very few competitors (I mean, not cars spare parts but something very specific like old bike/camera/projectors/toys/…), you might find solution almost everywhere because people would look for those goods on eBay and not finding them on google. Just think the different with selling a coin. Looking for that coin on google would give 1000000 results, so it obligates you to put your coin on a specific marketplace where you know that many collectors go and look for that specific coin. Otherwise your coin would stay buried somewhere on the net. Concerning this example, sure you might have the same coin on two different marketplace like bonanza + eBay, but just consider how crazy you become following both sales, be aware to close one if the other on the other marketplace goes sold… and multiply it for thousands goods. Not possible at all… otherwise you have a very powerful managing app (like a GS 9 :innocent: ).

That’s not much at all, if you don’t sell stamps for few cents.

Yes, and I say I will do the same, as soon as I have time enough… better again, I would invest for a personal ecommerce website (integrated with the same managing app) and bring there ebay and other platforms buyers. However it is not something close to happen and in the meanwhile everything might happen… again, any company choice like these must be studied case by case before from your possibility (time/money/workforce) and always considering what would happen after doing a change like this… just avoid doing choices like ebay powerful managers do :joy::joy:

P.S. Apologize for any mistakes or phrases without sense, let me know if you get what I want to say

5

Like you, @Leon, I found everything about Bonanza pretty good, except for one thing:

They do not have enough traffic to make sales flow. :frowning:

I considered trying Amazon’s auctions – I currently sell only books there – but Amazon’s fees have risen to the point that it’s not worthwhile. If I have to pay $4.12 to Amazon on a $8.86 book, I can’t even imagine the fee on a $600 item, so Amazon’s out…

6

I imported 8000 listings into Bonanza. My usual for Ebay is 100 per month, for Bonanza I have sold 1 - one - item in 3 months.

1 Like
7

I’ve got a couple things on Tradesy.com to see what happens there.

I believe it’s only haute couture and designer clothes, but I don’t think it’s a bad idea to share all I know about this stuff. :slight_smile: It might be of use to someone besides me.

8

This topic was automatically closed 10 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.