Monday, March 19, 2012

Ebay Suspended, Try Sell.com or Blujay

            Heard about Sell.com Or Blujay.com

    Sell.com has been around a long time and for those who first fleed from the borders of Ebay this is usually one of the first stops. I believe that it was the second stop for me. There are a great many good things about this site and some that I would change.


    First the traffic is okay. You will get views here and depending upon your price point you will get sales. Next the design, it looks as if it has not changed  since they started it. The look could use an updating. Don’t get me wrong it is not bad, but there are better.

    When you first sign up here your first listing is free that is a good thing. After your first sale you are gonna have to start paying for listing your products. This good or bad depending on how many items you sell and how long they take to sell. I would prefer the percentage based way of paying for your presence that most of the sites use. Now don’t get me wrong, I do not prefer the massive bite that Ebay and Ioffer take once an item is sold, but it some how feels more fair if both the seller and the site get paid only when there is a sale. If you want to pay up front you might as well buy a domain, some hosting and put up your own website. Check the link at the end of this post if that is something you wish to investigate.

    Overall I would say that Sell.com is worth the effort. Put some of your best selling items up for sale here and see what happens.

    Next is a nice little site named Blujay.com. It is free to set up your store here and they take a very tiny bite of your final sale. I like it for what it is. It is bare bones basic in its design and your account set up. This site is not ranked in the top ten of alternative sites, but I have done surprisingly good business here. I have kept a footprint of ten to twenty items here and some months I have racked up double digit sales. It is not for everyone, but if your price point is low you could do well here.

    The cons about this site are: first the traffic. It does not get a great deal of traffic. It is not well known. The look is about as appealing as a plate of mash potatoes. There is not much that you can do to separate your items from the rest of the crowd. Even if you spend the money to become featured you are still not going to gain much in the visibility department.

    Since Blujay.com is free to join you might as well set up shop there.

    With each store that you put up you are occupying more online space. Your products will be seen by more people. Maybe never as many as saw them on Ebay, but you will no longer have to depend upon Ebay for your lively hood. You will be creating many sources of income. All of these sources in the end can lead you to the day when you have your own website and become the boss of your own business.

If you wish to explore setting up your own website I would like you to click here and watch
a 50 minute tutorial video that will explain step, by step how to get a domain, buy hosting and then set up your own website.

    Doesn’t that sound cool? My own website. The day will come when you will no longer say I work for Ebay or Amazon, instead you get to say that I work for myself at my own website.

    If you need more time that is okay. We have other places to visit and other options to explore. Down this road there are more sites and beyond them is the valley of online classified ads.


Wednesday, March 7, 2012

How About Bananza?

                Selling On Bonanza(formerly Bananzle)

    The first thing that you will notice is that this is a great looking site. It stands
out from the rest of the crowd.  You will have your own booth where you set up and
edit your sale items. They have a monthly site feature called a Rush, where if you
choose to join your items will become part of a massive full site sale.  You will discount
your items from 10 to 50 percent and this sale does generate a lot of extra attention.
    That is the good thing.  The bad is that though the site does have traffic, sales
have been slow there for almost everyone I have come into contact with.  Visually and
customer service wise it could easily be the best of all the Ebay alternative sites. I like
everything about it better than Ebay with the exception of profit. This site needs a
massive marketing push. It could be so much more than it is.
    So as a place to work I would say yes.  Go ahead and open a booth.  Now if my
plans for you have not become clear yet allow me to help you see the whole picture. Your
road to Ebay independents is one of opening a number of stores at a number of locations
with the end goal of opening up your own site where all the traffic and sales will
belong to you. This will not happen over night and you are going to have to take
baby steps to get there, but once there you will never have to deal with Ebay or being
Ebay suspended.
    If you feel as if you are ready to try to open your own business and build your own site
I would like you to click here. You will be sent to a site where you will learn for free to build
your own site. The video tutorial will take about an hour, but it is either learn it in an hour
or spend hundreds of dollars to have someone else do it for you.
    Of course if you are not ready yet I think that we will visit Sell.com and Blujay next.