Hi all,
Like many of you, I moved over from the other side last year and have been putting serious energy into building my Ebid shop, Lucky Target Comics. It does still seem to be the best available option at the moment for online comic selling - there is no profit in having a feebay store, Comic Collector Live did not work out for UK dealers, it would be a lot more hassle to set up a website than to use the Ebid shop as a website in itself.
However, in terms of comic selling it is proving to be an uphill struggle at the moment. To start with LTC and its listings were not showing up through any search engines. With a bit of help from my friends, LTC is now showing up in Google search, though not in other search engines.
Virtually everyone who I have mentioned Ebid to, has said they have never heard of it. I know it is a hard battle when feebay seems to get casually mentioned in half the TV shows and films we see every day. But, still...I am sure that Ebid could do more to increase its visibilty, online at least, without have to spend a huge amount.
I am willing at some point to invest some money into advertising Lucky Target Comics, which in turn will help draw people over to Ebid. Surely Ebid should be able to manage a bit of pay-per-click advertising? If Ebid has hired PR/Marketing people at some point shouldn't they have achieved something by now? Their job is to get newspaper cuttings and just one well written piece in a national would have a huge effect.
Anyway, COMICS! I don't currently have a real-world shop (though I hope to in the future) so I am stuck with selling here (where I expect to potentially face a year of no sales until I can get the right advertising going for LTC) and selling at the marts and any conventions that I can get to. It looks like we are going to have to do some auctions on feebay just to get some sales, unfortunately (though any buyers will get an Ebid flyer).
The big problem with the comic section on Ebid is that most of it is of a low quality. The people that I have convinced to take a look on Ebid have come back to me and said "there is nothing there worth buying". I have had the same problem myself just looking for a few items to buy in order to build up my feedback - in nearly 20,000 listings there is pretty much nothing I want!!
This is not meant to be an insult to the other dealers on Ebid as everyone probably has a few nice items (and thank you to Batfreak for having more than a few as well as excellent service) but it does look a lot like everyone has emptied out their 50p boxes and started listing it all here. We have to remember that there is absolutely no incentive for buyers to switch to Ebid. The only way to get them over is give them something worth looking at and some good value, exciting items to buy.
First impressions count and if we don't catch buyers interest the first time they come and browse, they probably wont be back.
I am listing a lot of scarce sets and high value items on my shop regularly, as well as some cheap stuff. At the same time I have decided to commit to putting some 14 days auctions on and to spending money on having some of those of those listings in the featured or frontpage. So far, this is lost money for me and judging by the current state of Ebid it will continue to be lost money for a good while. However, I consider this to be investment into making Ebid better.
I strongly urge all the other comic sellers to stop filling the comic auctions pages with cheapo items and get some exciting stuff in there if they have it. We really need to work together to make Ebid look like a serious competitor and an interesting place to shop.
Thanks for reading
Sumyra @ LTC
http://uk.ebid.net/stores/Lucky-Target-Comics