‘eBay’ is in no doubt by far the most outstanding place to bid on new and used PCs, gadgets, and electronic components. It is also one of the best places to auction off your older equipment and make some money to fund your new purchases. But some critics of the online auction house argue that it has become too large for its own good. Luckily, alternatives are out there in the marketplace.
One of the biggest complaints about eBay is that its seller fees are continually increasing. At this writing, its fees were $1 for every item listed at $50 to $200 and $2 for every item over $200. Although these listing fees might seem small, they add up if you are selling multiple items.
For buyers, since the marketplace is so huge, scoring a genuine deal is tough. So many products are listed that finding just what you’re looking for can be overwhelming.
Also, eBay’s user feedback system is weak: The website allows users to place only 80 characters of feedback for a seller. That’s not nearly enough room for a disappointed client to speak out about how they either didn’t receive the product, that is was late or why the product didn’t meet expectations.
The Trade-Off: Slower Traffic
These days a common goal is diversification in selling. Business owners are seeking more places where they can widen their market opportunities at a low cost.
Fortunately, alternative auction sites address some of the problems, but be aware of trade-offs when going the non-eBay route. The big one is that traffic is a lot slower: Less people will see your items, and marketing something could take weeks.
eCrater provides free tools to help you construct your own Web store. It has no listing fees, and you can easily import your eBay products into your storefront. All wares are monitored by Google’s Product Search Marketplace, which provides up-to-date facts about your offerings to possible buyers.
What is eCrater?
eCrater began on September 28, 2004 in California. It began as an idea that Dimitri Slavov had of a market with no costs. This was a revolutionary concept in 2004. He really visualized an easy to navigate site with no costs to sellers as being an ideal nonetheless attainable marketplace. His vision succeeded since as of February 2010, there were three million items listed on eCRATER.
‘eCrater’ is a market place just like ‘ebay’, or ‘i-offer’, or ‘craigslist’. ‘eCrater’ is somewhere between ‘craigslist’ and ‘eBay’ in that its a more open system, but it also goes further than ‘craigslist’ to provide buyers and traders with support systems.
You, as the consumer, still have to do your homework and check the seller rep, just as you do on eBay. If you use Google Checkout, or Paypal for all your proceedings you will have no issues if the seller doesn’t follow through, the payment scheme deals with you and refunds immediately if the seller doesn’t respond, or doesn’t follow through with the sale.
On the other hand, as a seller, if you accept Google Checkout, they have protection services that actually protect you.
With eCrater you can grow your web store for free as well as join a prosperous, free on-line marketplace. When sellers sign up with eCrater they get fully customizable online stores that lodge an unrestricted amount of products for free! Also, it is possible to put a link from your own web site to eCrater.
A number of of the featured categories of products include art, antiques, collectibles, cameras and photo, books and magazines, computers and electronics. They also have movies, crafts, home and garden, music, sports and outdoors, toys and a baby category. eCrater doesn’t give any products to members to promote.
Other than those already listed, what are the Benefits of eCrater?
The first benefit of eCrater is very plain – its price!
Since it is a free marketplace, that automatically cuts down on fees that are incurred when you sell your products elsewhere. There is nothing worse than listing your product, have no one be interested and then you get hit with all those fees at the end anyway. That is simply so depressing when it occurs in other marketplaces and it is ultimately harmful to sellers.
How can a marketplace boom when sellers are being hit that way? Luckily, and thanks to the brainchild of Dimitri Slavov, that does not occur on eCrater since it is an excellent free marketplace that supports sellers as well as buyers.
eCrater is a free market place that goes above and beyond to help maintain their initial vision of free enterprise for everyone. That is something very rare in this money greedy world.
Due to the lack of fees, eCrater is a wonderful place for a new business owner or start up to start out. Many times, when a business is in that start up phase, there is not a great deal of extra cash. That is why eCrater is a good choice for new businesses, because they won’t get hit with fees that could take a new business under in the early stages.
As an added benefit, the online forum should be mentioned. The eCrater community has an extremely active online forum. One of the things that is done there that really seems to be a great idea is that everyone who has an eCrater store and also has a Squidoo lens is listed in one place. Hence, it is possible to view everybody’s Squidoo lenses and help promote each other.
This shows a great deal of regard for each other’s businesses and is mutually advantageous which is what is desirable in any online community, not simply selling communities. Squidoo has a very high reputation for improving everybody’s traffic and it seems an astute and mutually cooperative system to list links to all the store owner’s squidoo lenses this way.
If you have been struggling to return a good income from eBay – why not give ‘eCrater’ a test for a few weeks or so.
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For assistance with website building take a look at ‘Above the Matrix’, or would like to read other reviews by the same author, make sure you take a look at Jon Kews’ websitesite ‘onlinewholesalesupport.com’.. This article, eCrater.com – Just Another eBay Alternative? is available for free reprint.
