Yardsellr

                    Try Yardsellr

    Next stop on our replace Ebay at any cost tour takes us to the site known as Yardsellr. This site has been around for a while. They are easy to sign up with. I do not believe that they will ever be a rival to Ebay and the main reason is that there is not evidence that they wish to be.

    Yardsellr is a nice little site and seems that they are comfortable being what they are. The layout is pretty simple and easy to navigate. Yardsellr seems to be a site that depends upon social media and interaction. This may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but face it social media will be an important part of the future of this kind of business. (Speaking of which, if you could find the time to add us to your Google plus and or stumble us on Stumbleupon that would help us out a lot.) So if you have a presence on facebook the social part of this site will be easy. Yardsellr may not be your last stop on your road to freedom from Ebay suspension, but it is a good place to set up shop.

    Here now is a basic video review of the site.


Final note for today if you are looking for places to wholesale supplies for your online business, I have built a website to help in that area. Whether you sell book, clothing or electronics I have found a few sources and if you are interested then  click here.

Why not Your Own Site?

            Best Ebay Alternative, Your Own Site

    Face it, the best alternative long term to Ebay is your own website. The number one reason is that it is yours and it belongs to you. You run it, you promote it and you collect all of the profits.

    And isn’t that what we are really talking about here. Profit.

    We are in this to turn a profit and earn a living.

    Some of us did that at Ebay for a time and then we either moved on or were forced to move on. At the end of the day it will always come down to the first rule of nature. To survive you must adapt. The dinosaurs could not and that is why they are not here anymore. Leaving Ebay has forced you to adapt.

    Right now you are probably adapting to working at new sites and getting use to the routine where ever you are working at the moment. Wouldn’t it be great to have your own website? Filled with your own content. Selling or marketing anything and everything that you wish?

    You would be your own boss and I can help you to do this.

    You could either pay someone or a service to do this for you. Or you could do it yourself. Why do it yourself? You will learn a skill that may come in handy down the road. You will save a great deal of money. Face it people want hundreds for website building. Why pay them or me? Do it yourself. I got a free tutorial set up for you. It will walk you through getting a domain. Signing up for hosting and constructing website. The tutorial is less than an hour. The time from start to finish will be about two hours total and you will have a site of your own. You can come back to this post and click here when you are ready, if you are not ready to do this today. The site you will be sent to will also have pages listing wholesale suppliers for your business.

    Okay my DIY sales pitch is done. If you are not ready to branch out on your own I understand. Next stop will be a site named Yardsellr.

A site called Etsy

                Heard Of Etsy?

    A great many former Ebay sellers have moved over to this wonderful site. It is not for everyone. It a site to buy and sell vintage and or home made items. The best way to look at this site is to see it as a cross between Ebay and Amazon when both sites were worth being a part of.

For a flat rate of about 20 cents you can list your items. They charge about 3.5 percent for each transaction.

    If this place fits within your sales niche this is a great place to conduct business. The traffic is great and if your items are quality you can make a steady income here.

    There are some very successful sellers here. Many of them have been there for a while and have developed a solid following. I have been told by someone who does well there that the key to growth is having  high visibility, being very active on the forums and getting to know people. Also you should have your own website if possible so that you can steer traffic from there to your site. Face it you will still have to pay a final value fee no matter where you sell unless it is your own site and for those of us who worked at Ebay for years you never know when those fees will jump. So if you want to build your own website click here  and you will be shown a do it yourself tutorial for free.

    Lastly about selling there. Do not try to get into price wars. Sell your items for what they are worth. The buyers there understand better than at Ebay that quality items cost money.

    Look it, getting over having been suspended by Ebay or restricted by Ebay and or Amazon is not going to be easy, but once you have moved on to bigger and better things you will wonder why you were so concerned in the first place.

    Coming up soon we will talk about Paypal and its restrictions and suspensions. All of you should keep in mind that paypal and Ebay are part of the same company. If you are leaving Ebay behind there will come a moment when you will have to leave Paypal as well.

    Okay, good luck at Etsy and please feel free to post comments and if you wish to mention where you are selling now. There are a lot of Ebay alternatives and if you know of a good one let me know or if you have created one yourself let me know about it and I may invite you to write a guess post about it.

Plunderhere and Epier?

    Why Not Plunderhere?

    It is a small and still relatively unheard of site, but it is growing and I would put it in the same category of a site like Blujay. It is small, but a nice place to plant your flag. They allow you to import your listing from other sites so if you have the time why not do it. You could pick up a few sales here and if you have a website you can use it to promote it.

    Like Ecrater you can set up your own store front.  The 5 percent fee is charged only if or when you sell and item. The basic store allows you 1000 listing and who really need more than that.This is a solid little site with a lot of growth potential and another good reason to leave Ebay behind.




Epier?

       Epier is another alternative site where you can buy and sell almost anything from a baseball card all the way up to a new car. Here you can get a free store front. Just sign up and start listing  your items

     You do not pay here if you do not sell. Secondly there are no listing fees. No insert fees and no final value fees.

     There is a premium service where you will get 200 Megabytes of Image Storage Space. Your Own Integrated e-Commerce Storefront,  Not just a list like other Storefronts- Customize Your Store (ie-Your logo, your background, etc.)

        For an optional 5.00 fee you can be featured on the home page and category featured for 1.00 dollar.

       Neither one of these sites will be the answer to overcoming your ebay suspension, or restriction, but they can become part of the solution. At the end of the day the only lasting solution will be to build and grow your own website. When or if you are ready to take that step click here and visit my free tutorial on creating your own website. 

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.

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.

A Place Called Ecrater

                Ebay suspended,
 Ecrater.



    The page layout is not great.  It is pretty standard.  You can not do many ad ons
or anything in the way of banners.  You do not have the option of setting your items
apart from the rest.  That said, there is not much to complain about here at Ecrater.
    You can list for Free there.  You have sort of your own mini webstore and you
can list as many items as you wish.  In as many categories as you want.
    Ecrater uses Adsense and they are willing to share revenue with you.
    Did you get that one?
    Share revenue with you.
    Depending upon how many items you have up and how much traffic you
generate this can be a good thing.
    On the other hand because of the ease of signing up and posting the market place
is a bit flooded in some key categories.  The competition is stiff.  You are going to
have to go lower margins on your price points to get some separation from the competition.
Because of the limited traffic you are going to go through dry sales periods, but if you
have a hot item or two you can generate a lot of sales quickly.  Ecrater has become a
place where the bargain shopper goes for items with a set price rather than having to
deal with the auction set up at Ebay.
    One more con about the site, customer service is not great.  If you manage to get
someone it will feel as if you are talking to someone, but not an actual human being.  Not
saying a robot responder.  It will feel more like an alien who has not completely grasped
the concepts of logic or reason.  Do not get me wrong they are ten times better than Ebay
because they will actually respond rather than sending a form letter that tells you absolutely
nothing.
    Many former Ebay sellers look to Ecrater as the first and best alternative.  I will not
go that far, but on this move that we have undertaken this site is one worth planting a
flag upon.  I am suggesting that you set up shop here.
    What?
    Is this it?
    Is the journey finally over?
    Are we moving in?
    Yes and no.
    Say what?
    Rent a room here.  Or as I look at it, a display case.  Let’s put up some product
here.  You can list everything that you have.  After all why not, it is free to do so.  I do
not believe any of us can earn a living here, but we can make some money here.
    The answer to your question is that we are not moving in.  This is not our final
stop, but if a friend will let you stick around without paying any rent and will actually
give you a few buck (Adsense) to sleep on the sofa then why not.
    If you have not figured it out yet.  The moving on from Ebay plan involves multiple
stops along the way.  We are not going to be able to do it all at once, but it will get done.
We will not stop and we will not fail in our mission to achieve freedom.
    Summing up, Ecrater is a solid place to hang a open for business sign.
    We are not done yet.
    So let’s go get some items from the trunk of the vehicle, leave them here for sale
and then we can hit the road again.
    Our next stop is a place called Bonanza.
    No, no, no, cut that out.  There is no massive ranch run by a old man and his
sons.  Paw and little Joe will not be there.  Although it is located on the  west coast and
does have a west coastal laid back kind of feel about it.
    Will you please stop humming the Theme music.
    If you would like to bypass this journey and create your own website please visit me by
clicking here
     I can offer you free help with building your own website and the full video tutorial will
take about an hour.  If not then fine, let's go visit Bonanza next.