I havn't seen eBid on TV here in U.S. but would like to....

[SAJagminMusicCo]

My 2 cents, if you don't mind.

First of all, a commercial or 2 will do no good it will have to be a lot of commercials. Stats prove that the prospective customer must hear your message a min. of 3 times in a short time (a week or so) to even remember your message, let alone act on it. When you consider that probably half or more of the TV viewers don't shop or sell online (either don't have internet or are scared of online shopping) your cost per prospect just got a lot higher. Then you consider that of your "less than half" left most prospects have no reason to change from the shopping channels that they already trust and use. Then consider that the handful of people left may all hear, remember, and be interested in your message, but the majority still won't ACT on it. You're talking about spending millions of dollars on just a few prospective customers. THEN consider that eBid will not be paying for this - you and I will, and isn't the reason that most of us are here is that we are tired of the other places taking the majority of our profit. To me it seems like we would be just as well to stand on the street corner handing out $100 bills to people to start using eBid.

Another thought on this is, right now the buyers have no reason to use anything other than eBay, Amazon, and the like only the sellers have a reason to try eBid. So all that money spent on commercials is only going to grab the attention of the sellers. I don't know about you but I would have a hard time paying to add sellers to the site - at least on eBay I would be paying for buyers.

To get buyers eBid needs something that nobody else has. Think about it, if, for example, Dell listed on eBid and no where else, buyers would come. And if eBid landed an exclusive deal with Dell, that would get the attention of the media. There's your TV commercial, only now instead of a tacky commercial that everyone is ignoring you've got Brian Whateverhislastnameis on the 6:00 news telling America about eBid, and you've got a reason for buyers to come, and you've got print media on the coattails of the TV news, and then you've got the websites of the print media with links to eBid, and those websites are sending RSS feeds to thousands of other websites with that same info and links - all of this is free. I would put my millions of dollars into working out a deal with Dell.

[ropegg]

Well Jagmin,

I think you might have a point there. I am a seller and I am very happy about the fee structure here on eBid like paying for selling instead of paying for showing and I would like to see it stay that way.

I agree with you on trying to get free advertising and I would say an exclusive with Dell or a comparable company would sure get the attention of the media and they sure do like to spread the word.

Merry Christmas and God Bless

[paintinglemonjane]

I made this point in an earlier posting elsewhere. To keep ebid free we really should be doing our own advertising. I usually put a plug on large parcel for delivery. Put a huge label with the delivery address. Then a plug for your site in the top left hand corner. The rest of the spaces are used up by plugging your payment option ie PPPay link and so on. You would be surprised at the amount of people who see your parcel before it is actually delivered. I just got into the habit of it and have a template made up. All I do now is add the buyers address every time. If everybody even did that it would make a difference. I have a template for my envelope labels as well.

[maggiethecat]

I made this point in an earlier posting elsewhere. To keep ebid free we really should be doing our own advertising. I usually put a plug on large parcel for delivery. Put a huge label with the delivery address. Then a plug for your site in the top left hand corner. The rest of the spaces are used up by plugging your payment option ie PPPay link and so on. You would be surprised at the amount of people who see your parcel before it is actually delivered. I just got into the habit of it and have a template made up. All I do now is add the buyers address every time. If everybody even did that it would make a difference. I have a template for my envelope labels as well.

Hi Jane, I think that's a great idea. I'm not too clever with a PC, design and all that. Would you consider sharing your template?

[Pete27]

To be honest, the way feebay makes the tv news here AND the newspapers is when something utterly ridiculous is sold for a stupid price. The sprout that was sold after Christmas made over £1000 pounds for charity and was such a silly story it had a half page news article with follow ups about the buyer and his plans to preserve the legendary sprout AND it made the local news here. Dont know about anywhere else, but everyone was talking about it around here.

We should all make a small donation to someone, someone else sell the most ridiculous thing you can think of and say its for charity then buy it with our money going to charity.. then an anonymous tip off to the press etc etc. Of course you would have to remove this post since its public lol

Hey its an idea

[cccgem]

hahahahaha Hilarious...might give someone an idea though. Let's hope!

[BruKat16]

I have not seen anything at all in Canada regarding e-bid. The only way I found it was I googled auction sites, and this one came up. Advertising on TV, NEWSPAPERS, and Internet (since almost EVERYONE is online these days) would definitely increase traffic. I haven't even seen ads online...hopefully we are onto something here....I will have to put on my thinking cap.

[gazlannathai]

Perhaps one of you should contact G&M about creating an official download point for templates like the parcel label?

Afterall, even eBay has a seller support point where you can download templates for that sort of thing, including their Trading Assistant program, where you can download advert poster templates to advertise that you'll sell stuff on behalf of other people.

It's worth thinking about, and would have the benefit of being "officially sanctioned" advertising.

Gaz