Selling Online - EBay Alternatives

Selling online is a popular way to make money. eBay is the most popular venue and works well. However, there are many other sites. In fact, depending on what you sell, some of these alternatives may work better than eBay.

All selling venues charge a variety of fees or commissions. Some also charge a monthly fee. Unless a higher-priced service offers something that you know you need or must have, seriously consider the free or lower-priced options. You can always upgrade.

Selling Books or General Goods
Amazon

Everybody has some extra books collecting dust on the bookcase or tightly packed in boxes in the attic. They may be college textbooks that you kept (because you thought you might need them later, but don't), books you meant to read but never will, or the coffee table books that your "favorite" relative buys for you each year for Christmas, your birthday, and so on. Why not sell them on Amazon!

The nice thing about Amazon is that listing books is free. You only pay seller fees when your product is sold.

Amazon lists books for 60 days. If it doesn't sell the listing is dropped. However, you can list the books again for another 60 days free of charge.

Once an item sells, Amazon takes a $0.99 transaction fee, a $1.20 closing fee, and 15% of the selling price.

Yahoo Auctions
Yahoo Auctions are completely free. There are no fees whatsoever. There are no charges to list an item and Yahoo doesn't collect any commissions.

Why are they free? They are trying to compete against eBay. Free is nice but keep in mind that Yahoo Auctions does not generate the traffic that eBay generates. However, whatever you sell is pure profit.

Yahoo Small Business
Yahoo can provide you an online store. Yahoo Small Business offers 3 packages: Starter, Standard, and Professional. Each charges a monthly fee and a variety of benefits. If you are just starting to sell online, the Starter package is fine for you.

Yahoo takes 1.5% of the sales price for their commission (plus the monthly fee).

What does Yahoo Small Business offer for the monthly fee? Here are some of the features.

A Web-based storefront that you create from their templates. They are PHP, PERL, and MySQL compatible.

You get 2GB for data storage and 500GB data transfer per month.

Your domain name (www.mystore.com) is free. Check the fine print though. Because it is free, they may own your domain name. This may or may not be an issue for you. Actually, be careful of any service that offers you free domain name registrations. Many times they claim ownership of that name. Not reading the fine print is not a legal defense.

Automatic submission to Yahoo and Google search engines.

A $50 dollar credit for AdWords. These are Google's text advertisements. You bid for AdWords. For example, if you sell Croatian Jazz CDs, you may want to bid on the AdWord, Croatian Jazz. The higher your bid, the better placement you get.

Sales and page view reports.

Application integration into QuickBooks.

1,000 email address capability with 2GB email storage for each email account.

Yahoo Small Business is a nice option if you need an online store but don't want to worry about the technical issues. Keep in mind that while being part of this program will get your store some visibility, you still need to do the marketing. The build it they will come philosophy does not apply. If you do not have time for marketing, your best bet is a site like Amazon or an auction site.

Selling Computer Software and Computer Graphics
Are you a talented software developer? Maybe you created a program that your family uses and you figure other people may also find it useful. Maybe you are a talented game designer. Like musicians, it is hard to get the major distributors interested in your work. The following sites are useful if you want to sell software you designed, scenery for games, computer generated characters (monsters, gnomes, etc.), and other related products.

You will need to market your product and your site. However, some of these sites attract the clientele specific to these types of products.

pluginz
Pluginz is a great site if you write plug-ins or small programs that provide addition functionality to programs like Adobe PhotoShop, Maya, etc. The people that frequent this site are artists, game designers, and other digital artists. Pluginz's commission is high - 35 to 35 percent. However, since this clientele is specialized and are more likely to buy the types of products that you offer, it may be worth it.

TurboSquid
TurboSquid is similar to Pluginz. It is a popular site for artists and modelers. They extract a high commission - up to 47%. Like Pluginz, they attract a specialized clientele. While the commission is high, if they attract the customers that buy your products, it's worth it.

esellerate
Esellerate is an interesting service for software developers. There are no startup fees and no monthly fees. They take a 10% commission on all sales until you reach $15,000 in sales. At that point the commission rate rises to 15% but then lowers itself in increments based on your annual sales (www.esellerate.net/pricing.asp).

This is a service worth looking into. However, like other storefronts, be prepared to do your own marketing.

Upload from C/NET
Upload from C/NET is the backbone of the popular download.com site. They have a three-tiered program: premium, basic, and free. The premium system is for companies that have many products to sell. The basic program is $9.00 per month or $79 per year. Let's review the difference between the basic and free options.

1. The Basic plan takes a 10% commission for each unit sold and the Free plan takes a 12% commission for each unit soled.
   
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3. The Basic plan allows you to place a Buy It Now button on your web page (if you also have your own web site) that brings the customer to the product page on C/NET. The Free plan only allows a Buy It Now button on the download.com page.
   
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5. The Basic plan provides customer support within 3 days and the Free plan within 5 days.
   
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The following 2 issues may justify the $9 monthly fee.

Processing - C/NET scans all uploads to ensure they are virus free. On their comparison page table it lists a 3-day processing time for the Basic plan and a 5-day processing time for the Free plan. Here's the caveat in their own words,

"Due to overwhelming demand, Free Listings may take an additional 2-3 weeks to process on top of the normal 15-day processing time. We realize that this might have a significant impact on your business plans. In these instances, we recommend upgrading to a Basic Listing (5-day processing) or purchasing One-Business Day Processing for next business day service."

Reporting Center - The Basic plan provides you with some reporting features.

In Conclusion
There are a variety of online venues for selling. Consider a few before making a choice. You can market your products on a variety of sites. There is no reason to have an exclusive agreement and one selling solution can help you market another selling venue. Here is an example.

List some books on Amazon. When a book sells, you send the customer a thank you email and tell them that you are shipping their book. You can also tell them that you offer many other books on your on site at (www.mybooks.com).

Online selling is a great way to make extra money and to learn how to start and run a business. eBay is an excellent service but it is not the only game in town.