EBAY ALTERNATIVE

This page explains why we are making an ebay alternative.

welcome to everylist, the web's best ebay alternative. we provide a simple way for buyers and sellers to connect and exchange products and services. create your own store and start selling. the best thing about our ebay alternative is that we don't charge any fees. we wanted to create an ebay alternative that's simple and remove the corporate feel so that you can focus on your business.

why make an ebay alternative? many people are frustrated with ebay's policy and want an alternative website to do business. if you google for "ebay sucks" you'll find plenty of complaints from angry sellers.

when you google for "ebay alternative" there are over 7 million results! this is a clear indication that people are tired of ebay, and are therefore looking for an alternative. there are many reasons why people want to leave ebay, and there are many reasons to make an ebay alternative - so we can serve those who are leaving ebay. there are many alternative sites out there that already offer similar auctions like ebay. as many people have said, ebay won't die from one single competitor, but will die from myriad of them who offer nich auctions - eventually killing off ebay in the long run.

in response to sellers' complaints and demands, we made everylist as an ebay alternative for buyers and sellers by offering them a simple marketplace without all the hassle found on other corporate sites like ebay.

if you have any questions about our ebay alternative service, please contact everylist.

while making an ebay alternative, we are starting a discussion dialogue on our forum about our endeavor to make a an "ebay alternative".

 

good arguments why an ebay alternative should NOT and can NOT be made

you simply cannot beat ebay because it is huge, and well-entrenched (in the auction industry), well-funded, and has loyal customers well, that says it all right there and I agree 100%. since it's clear that ebay cannot be beaten, you have to change the question to: "how much of ebay's pie do you want to steal?" one niche auction site can steal 1%, another ebay alternative can steal another 0.7%, and other alternative can snapped up 2%, and so on, and eventually ebay will go down. some other arguments: most ebay alternative sites have it all wrong: they cater to the sellers, when they actually should be catering to the buyers well, that's true, one cannot exist without the other. you must cater to the sellers first when making an ebay alternative. why? because you need items on your site to attract buyers. you need merchandise, to build supplies, and stockpile so buyers can browse through them. I always wonder how one caters to buyers though. more selection? easier navigation? better bidding system?...

we are always looking for feedback for how to improve our ebay alternative service. please use the feedback form and let us know how we can improve our alternative auction, classified service to you.

currently, we have an alexa ranking of around 570,000 - it's not great and we need to rank higher. ebay has about a 22 rank on alexa. we hope to get there some day. and by making a great ebay alternative, we will soon. getting more traffic is a key plan for us to attract more buyers and sellers. we're going to get more traffic by targeting keywords and letting people know about our ebay alternative.

people are sick of ebay and that's no surprise. our problem is not with making a great auction service, but instead it's very difficult to attract customers (both buyers and sellers). ebay has a great following, and people need ebay more than ebay needs them. sure, sellers are sick and tired of ebay but in the end, they really need ebay because they know ebay can move their items fast. it has a large community and they know their listed items will be seen by a large population. and there are surely those people who swore they would never use ebay again for whatever reason, and it's those people that we need to attract. we're not quite sure how we're going to reach those people, time will tell as we think out strategies.

to fee or not to fee (should an ebay alternative have fees?)

below is a screenshot of fees charged by ebay as of june 16, 2009

according to the above image, if you sell a $10.00 item, you will pay about $1.00 in ebay fees total (the listing fee + the final value fees)

our approach will be different. at first, I wanted to not charge any fees at all for any auction listing or when the auction ends. but after thinking about this approach more carefully, I think anything free will invite abuse; and it will be too difficult to control abuse. all the abuse and spam we get will also make everylist look bad, so we don't want this. therefore, something must be done to reduce any abuse.

one idea I thought about is charge a flat account fee, and leave the listing fee and the final value fee alone. users will be charged an account fee of say $10.00 for a specific amount of time, say 6 months. and they can listed as many auctions as they want, and they will not be charged any final value fees once their auctions ends.

to me, this is more fair while at the same time it will reduce spam/abuse. this makes more sense with what an ebay alternative should be.

back to ebay alternative main. go to the ebay alternative discussion thread. we are always looking for feedbacks about how to improve our auction service. we're here to help you. please join our discussion forum and give us any feedback.

nice site. but it needs a lot of work to be able to call it an ebay alternative.

good start here. but an ebay alternative should not have fees. it should be free. it's the only way to compete with them.