Here is more info:

Please go to your MY ACCOUNT page. Click on upgrade account to choose the membership account that is more appropriate for you. December 1st the system will generate invoices and will give you 5 days to pay your EWAEY bill.
So if you are BUYER or a Casual Seller; please upgrade to the buyer and casual seller account so you will not be charged the monthly fee.

You will have two kinds to choose from.

1) Ewaey Professional Business Builder ( $10.00 monthly fee )

2) Buyer and Casual Seller membership account. (pay as you list.)

(moderators have already been moved to your new membership account)

I don't think I can justify $10 amonth on zero results.

This is not about putting ewaey down but about a mismatch between cost and result, at least from my viewpoint.
If other sellers had some results, good for them. But I need to make decisions based on my situation.
When I dropped maybe 5 months ago at the spur of a moment some of my ads on ewaey I did suspect that there would be no results in terms of sales. Actually there was no response of any kind, no messages, no info request, nothing. Admittedly these are high $ items in a very special niche market. Obviously ewaey doesn't have neither, right customer base nor traffic.
Next, the balance between auction- and websites has moved and favors now very much having your own site. The cost of running a website is almost neglectable with hosting nearly nothing, domains dirt cheap, and free shopping carts. And the work per item is significantly less than with any auction site, more so if you have already the underlying database.
Even ebay does now look unattractive for many products I sold there a year or two ago. Consequently I did close two stores there. But it still does produce the occasional results on the same products I advertised on ewaey. And these are then high ticket sales that pay ebay store fees for many month. Same with ebid, occasional results pay easily for the work and the minor fees.

Collecting money from ewaey sellers to pay for Google and Yahoo PPC marketing will not yield the result ewaey management is hoping for. You need to have exactly the right product for that. I discovered that some 8 years ago when PPC cost did eat up all or most of the margin on resulting sales.
You need big ticket niche market products or a product everyone needs with the lowest price around resulting in some sales quantities to make it pay.
Any click-thru's ewaey gets will mostly result in buyers moving right off to the next site. There is not enough product selection to motivate buyers to snoop around when coming from a genereric ewaey ad. And ads for specific products will be cost prohibitive. Also, these kind of campaigns take time, sellers expect results inside the next 3 months.
These are the reasons why I don't see any small auction site doing click marketing, cost can't be justified if you don't have the size.
A casual visit some minutes ago showed some areas for site improvement. For example ads should match the categories they are placed in more closely.
Going through Google Base and creating some native search results and some smaller auction sides have good results this way.

Last not least there is the fact that ewaey changed direction too often, how can a seller put any trust in this latest change?

It appears that Ewaey is no longer. Looks to me they have gone belly-up.

Hello Ewaeyers.

Ewaey is a business. A business has to be profitable and provide a certain presence of profits and also money for its advertisement. We have made many many changes to ewaey.com's fee structure trying to get the SELLER's interest on our best
possible way and none of these factors helped. Ewaey continues to be a losing probability and now with the last try; even worst.

It is obvious to me that most of the members we have on EWAEY.COM cant pay for anything. Alot of these members
that cant pay have businesses on EBAY.COM. But they cant pay a very small fraction to support a site that would give
them its best to help them. Supporting the site you wish gave you enough sales is essential ! Without financial support no site in today's market can survive. I have spent thousands of dollars with ewaey.com. I never got one cent in return. All the money received has been put to its investiments.

EWAEY is a loosing probability. As you can all see; we've lost alot of members. The members we are gaining are not paying members. They are all choosing the FREE account.

We've lost about 20 eStores and continues to go dow fast. The site is loosing strengh and only a hand full have paid the amount we asked. Only a hand full have paid or donated some money. The rest are all free riders and once started charging; These free riders are all running away. This means that these people do not love EWAEY.COM. They were here only to suck the blood and once the cow was dry; they go to the next one.

This hurts me alot because as a business man I can't continue to invest on a loosing probability. So as of today I will proceed and shut down all EWAEY.COM's activities.

It is with sadness that I do this but I have no other choice. I have tried for almos 3 years now. EWAEY had its chance. I had many dreams for it but most of you stopped these dreams. It seems to me that YOU do not want an alternative site that could stand up to EBAY.COM. You dont because if you did EWAEY would have done it already.

So I see it as if this decision was yours. The members do not want to support EWAEY.COM therefore It cant continue.

EWAEY's Data base will be deleted. Erased. The site will be innactivated as soon as possible after this email is received by you.

I wish you all GOOD LUCK on you sales and future activities in the AUCTION WORLD. I am getting out of it for good.

Thank you all and many thanks for the ones that have supported and donated.

Alex/Aroldo
EWAEY.COM

Thanks for using Ewaey.com !

SOOOO nice of him to do that to his LOYAL few right at the holidays.. re:sales..How sad!(IMHO)

I feel very sorry for the people that had a lot of listings there. I hope they had them backed up. I wish them luck at any site that they move to. E-You,Later!

AGREED!!
ALSO..his much bragged about forum is even gone!!

UAF http://www.uafforums.com

First, I paid the $5.00 one-time verification fee for the original ewaey.com Then the site is changed to kongbiz.com Then the site is changed back to ewaey.com Because the site is unsuccessful, the members get insulted? If the site was hurting for money so bad then why didn't he at least charge a final value fee? Why should all the members felt obligated to put money into something that produced no sells for the vast majority of them? By sending an email to his members that he would be disabling all accounts that did not pay the monthly fee starting next month, he caused his own failure.

Its so sad this has happened, but the writing was on the wall for everyone to see. The guy was losing money and just couldnt decide which way to go, so he closed the doors.

It just goes to show unless you have a good backer free sites just cannot work or last for long, so maybe a lesson here for all??

Yup, Dep-T-Dawg, shades of WagglePop 2005. No surprise here, though.

For all the time, passion and intention, Ewaey was all over the map about everything from the meaning of its name to using a free or fee-based business model.

I echo the sentiments of others and feel badly for Ewaey's loyal group, knowing the work that lies ahead as they restructure their own businesses.

There are far too many sites vying for a very limited number of sellers. And too many have broken software, broken management and limited financial resources. Very, very few will survive and even less will thrive.

Ewaey's demise is part of the evolution.

Hello All ! I got my email today about the shutdown ... though I'm truly sorry for those who lost data, it could not have been a surprise to anyone that something had to give. I hope that lessons about saving html coding for all auctions was well learned from other site failures.

I had a tangle with Mr. Ewaey awhile back and that told me all I needed to know.

One should never engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed man.

One should never engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed man.

Since day 1 here (about 18 mts ago+-) Mr Ewaey showed he couldn't "keep his cool".

At that time a few of us that will "question" ALL the new sites that show up here, questioned him in a challenging way. He just "lost it". Later some of us actually gave his site a chance and reported back here about it.

But time and again, when things didn't go "just right", he would get upset and abruptly change something much like a little kid throws a tantrum.

This "alt auction site" world is so overloaded with eBay site wanabies that if you want to run any kind of site that depends on others to be a success, you have to have a "hard shell", "thick skin". You need to be able to respond to problems and questions in a very dispassionate way. "Just the facts".

If you can't deal with lots of complaints and criticism and people wanting you to go in every direction, you don't belong in in this business. I think all of us know more than just Alex that fits this story too. Personally I can think of at least 2 others but I would believe there are more out there on sites I haven't been on. I don't want you to name them here as that will just open up wounds again.

This "owner" of a site issue is common enough that it's yet another reason that having your own web site/store is more and more the best way to go. Sure try some alt sites, but without ALSO having your own site, you will always be at the mercy of someone else.

JMO,
Carol