Selling on Ebid

[AutomotiveSolution]

Hello everyone,
I've been a member for nearly 2 months and I still haven't managed to sell anything. Is there something I'm missing? I don't quite understand the buddy point system (converted Ebayite) either so a bit of guidance would be fantastic!!

Thanks very much
Kineholmecars

[bykimbo]

If you look here: http://helpdesk.ebid.net/forumdisplay.php?f=54 at the selling forum, you'll see that the difficulties of selling here are a common topic. Mind you, the difficulty of selling anywhere at the moment is a common topic! So have a paddle through there, and you should pick up a few tips, and have a better understanding of how selling here works. But be aware, there aren't any snappy solutions, or we'd all be sunning ourselves on the beach by now.

[westlondoncarparts]

One of the reasons why your sales might be slow to take off is your prices. If you do some test checking on eBid and other similar sites you will see that your prices are much higher than most of your competition are charging. For example, in one of your auctions you are charging nearly 26 pounds for the replacement glass for a car door mirror. Another piece of car door mirror glass is on sale in a different listing for 19 Pounds. Not wishing to appear rude or disrespectful to you but I cannot ever see you selling either piece of glass on any site on the internet at those prices because they are so overpriced. You are trying to sell brake pad sets for between 20 Pounds and 30 Pounds a set. As a general indicator, these go for between 5 Pounds to 10 Pounds on other auction sites on the internet. There is no guarantee that you will suddenly see a lot of sales activity if you reduce your prices down to the market levels but it is almost certain that some of your items will never sell unless you do something about your prices.

[AutomotiveSolution]

One of the reasons why your sales might be slow to take off is your prices. If you do some test checking on eBid and other similar sites you will see that your prices are much higher than most of your competition are charging. For example, in one of your auctions you are charging nearly 26 pounds for the replacement glass for a car door mirror. Another piece of car door mirror glass is on sale in a different listing for 19 Pounds. Not wishing to appear rude or disrespectful to you but I cannot ever see you selling either piece of glass on any site on the internet at those prices because they are so overpriced. You are trying to sell brake pad sets for between 20 Pounds and 30 Pounds a set. As a general indicator, these go for between 5 Pounds to 10 Pounds on other auction sites on the internet. There is no guarantee that you will suddenly see a lot of sales activity if you reduce your prices down to the market levels but it is almost certain that some of your items will never sell unless you do something about your prices.

Hiya Westlondoncarparts,
Thanks very much for the reply. All feedback is more than welcome! At the moment we are selling mainly Genuine Renault parts. The RRP on these items can be as much as £50 for a set of brake pads. We can't source genuine parts for any where near £5.00 so we need a little mark up. We have a successful Ebay shop but fees mean we can't sell them as economically as we can on here. Do you have an ebay shop as well?

[westlondoncarparts]

Hello again, To clarify further on what I posted, most of your competition will not be selling main manufacturer brand items but copy (pattern) parts. However, customers are not always prepared to pay the extra for main brand items and their better quality. I know that the main dealership prices for branded Renault parts is high but unfortunately I think that it is very difficult to achieve anything near dealership prices on sites like eBid. As I said before it is a good idea to check prices generally on a number of different internet sites to get an idea of general market price levels so you can see what might be commercially viable for you to try to do. I am trading profitably elsewhere. However, I think that is because although I have a lot of branded Renault, MG Rover, Nissan, Merecedes, Vauxhall, etc., stock, I obtained it all at good prices as job lots from dealership closures, stock clearances, etc., and probably paid less for it all than the dealerships did. I usually try to list at around 40% to 50% of the dealership prices before VAT but have to drop the prices significantly if there are other sellers listing at much lower prices. Selling car parts on the internet is quite a tough business because there is a lot of competition so I do not think that there are any quick fixes for the likes of us! One of the reasons why I am building up my shops on eBid is that the lower cost structure makes commercially viable that which might not be possible on other more expensive sites. Also, here I have nearly finished migrating all my listings from PayPal to Google Checkout because of the lower commission structure that Google offer.

[AutomotiveSolution]

Good afternoon Robert,
I know what you mean about parts. We also have access to OE parts but not a large variety currently. We also have some penny stock available so I might try that for a while.
What's the commission rate on Google? I've only ever been with Paypal because they were 'easy' I suppose.
I'm getting sick of Ebay and paypal fees becuse it's currently absorbing over a third of our profits. That's why I thought I would give this site and Tazbar a try.
Have you tried Tazbar?

How do you know which parts are suitable for which vehicles?

I look forward to your response
Phil

[westlondoncarparts]

Hello again Phil, The starting PayPal charge is 20p per transaction plus a charge of 3.4% on the overall value of the transaction including postage charge. The starting Google Checkout charge is 15p per transaction plus a charge of 1.8% on the overall value of the transaction including postage charge. The starting % charges might come down a bit if you have a high level of transactions and you qualify for a volume discount. The Power Sellers Unite scoreboard is showing Tazbar as having around 66,000 listings today compared to eBid at around 2.45 million so I would suspect that visitor traffic to Tazbar is not very high at present. I use parts catalogues to identify vehicle applications for parts. I think the more parts sellers we can get on to eBid the better because it will help to attract visitors to the site. Anyway, I hope that you will be able to build up a successful presence here!

[tonyreddevil]

no we need 500,000 buyers

[moonwitch]

no we need 500,000 buyers

You might like to go some place else if you want to find that many more buyers, Tony......

Do you sell ear plugs by any chance

[CarnoustieCats]

no we need 500,000 buyers

well away and find them instead of repeating it here on every thread you can find ...