There may be many reasons why you would like to consider an alternative to eBay. You may have been banned or had your account suspended. This usually amounts to the same unhappy ending because they will make it extremely difficult for you to reinstate your account and even if you do succeed in removing a suspension you will be required to give further banking details and personal information, and you will probably face limitations on your selling ability in the future.
Personally I don’t think it is worthwhile to try to reinstate your account. Because they ask you to resolve issues on the telephone to people who have since sold the items, won’t remember you, won’t appreciate being contacted, and will be unable to say you have paid since you never bought the item (since sold)! Bearing in mind how much eBay tell you not to contact anyone privately I find it surprising they then expect you to telephone sellers outside of the site.
My opinion is, once your account has been suspended, find another way to sell your items. Even if you were suspended for non payment of fees and you pay the fees, you still have to provide many more details and will face limitations so consider trying an alternative. It’s a free market so no one site should have the monopoly of trade.
Decide what it is you want to sell and why. I say this because if you were mainly decluttering your house, then making money may not be your main purpose, so you could give away your items to charity or friends: or trash the items! Job done. Move on. We devote so much energy to caring for useless items that we no longer have any use or even affection for! Bin it and live another day!
If you are selling new items then there are lots of options open to you and you may combine these to good effect. Here are some ideas.
Joint venture with a local store to sell your items from their shelf space: they pay you nothing but take a commission from the sale price. Set up your own market stall. If your town has market day on a Thursday find four other towns with different market days to make this a full time business. Myself, I have never fancied standing out in all weathers and drinking coffee from a flask!
If you don’t like the all weather aspect of a market stall, consider an indoor market or flea stall. You’ll keep warm, drink coffee from a vending machine, and suffer few passers by. Not my ideal livelihood! Of course you could pay someone else to stand there all day. Or take this one step further and rent shop space. Not for me!
How about classified ads or Craigslist? These are both online options: there are plenty of free classified ads websites. I don’t know if anyone ever sells anything from them? Your local paper will provide the best option: they will also have a website to display your ad. To be fair, I have bought and sold many items over the years through local newspapers, but it’s not a great option for a steady income stream. Some items, such as furniture and bicycles will sell well.
How about your local auction house? Not all auctions are about antiques! Many are about shifting liquidated stock, lost property or general clutter. I have sold many items in these local auctions that I couldn’t sell online or through the newspaper. The bidding is good fun and it makes an evening out! You might even make a living out of a combination of these auctions and classified ads.
Here in the UK during the short summer we hold boot fair sales outdoors in fields. Also yard sales, garage sales and street sales. You can sell old items but you’ll probably make the most money purchasing here to sell elsewhere. It’s time consuming though! Many people in this town love boot sales and would never consider online auctions! It’s all down to taste and custom.
The next thing to try is to develop your own website or to joint venture with someone who already has a successful site selling your range of items. There are some quality comic websites which you may be able to arrange to sell your comics on, or sell your comics to! If you sell books there are more options: Abebooks is a site where the books are sold by individual sellers. This is a great marketplace!
You might open a seller account with Amazon: you can sell more than just books, plus you can sell new or old items. It is very possible to make a good income selling here with 24/7 access and no standing around! This is the most viable way forwards for store owners and ‘mail order from home’ business operations. You can also become an affiliate and gain a commission on the sale of each item you recommend plus other items the same buyer purchases! Free to join, you must check Amazon’s affiliate program out!
I highly recommend getting out of the market for three dimensional items altogether and going into selling downloads. Software, officeware, ringtones, ebooks and PDF reports, video training, and audio mp3 all offer you a hassle free selling opportunity! You require no products of your own – simply sign up as an affiliate and promote other people’s! ClickBank, Commission Junction and Associate Programs all offer myriad choices over a full range of niche markets.
The latest exciting opportunity online is to promote CPA offers from companies such as Max Bounty or Never Blue. You generate traffic to a landing page where the visitor fills in details for a company such as a mobile provider or health supplement firm. You are paid for each lead, often ten dollars or more! You don’t even have a product to sell, you are simply generating leads! This is such a powerful opportunity, well worth researching for yourself. Awesome!
This brings me to my final tip which is alternative auctions to the big bro! I have checked out a good many online auctions and joined a few; basically they are all using the same template set up, lacking the raw professionalism of eBay. However you may want to research these for yourself. The search engines will lead you to these: bid-2-go, qextra, lggauctions, totalbids, ukbidsaway, 121bid, auction1, zolanta, winnit, flogitall.
That leaves two main contenders for the crown! CQout has over a million listings. Check it out. Good site to purchase from. And the best of the alternative auctions is ebid.net so if you want to seriously take your selling elsewhere I recommend considering Amazon first and then ebid.net which is very professional and even offers more checkout options you will like! And the fees are far cheaper: 3%!
Again, think carefully about how much a part of your life selling physical items really is: I have only ever sold my collections and general household clutter so for me a viable alternative is to trash it and move on! You will definitely live an easier life and make far more money selling downloads and being an affiliate, no two ways about it. But if you want the extra cash and miss auctions then classified ads, boot fairs, joint venturing with store owners and setting up your own website are all possible, or you may be far happier long term doing repairs, making crafts or teaching locally.
It’s awful finding your auction account has been suspended or you’ve been banned, but never think it’s the end of the world! It’s a door closing so another can open for you. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and move on, stronger and wiser, and freer, too!
