After 3 months onboard I am disappointed with Bidville and have decided to throw my support behind MySpace and self support... Bidville is like most of these other supposed alternatives, NO BUYERS.. You can let the attacks come, I am used to it, but I have tried with Bidville, but not without throwing alot of time away on it.. Out of the 3 months I had 3 sales.. Sounds pretty decent right? WRONG!!! I never received emails from the buyers much less a payment.. All 3 of the members who bought items from me also had registered that very day.. Had these folks have paid I would have given a shot.. I might stillleave it open during the holidays just so I can see how the busy season fares.. Im not expecting alot, but I may just throw $30 away on it just so I can say that I did give it a fair shake..

Bidville does have some good qualities.. They are halfway decent with support.. Their bulk lister is REAL and it works after you get the format right, although I did have trouble with the auctions and never received support for those.. The price for the stores is fair.. Its just where are the BUYERS??

Now I'm sure that some will say, well it depends on what you sell.. Maybe your items werent right for Bidville, blah, blah, blah.. Thats a load of BS.. I dont have any trouble selling my items on my site or on Feebay.. When people are on your site and they are searching for things and they find my stuff, I get sales.. No traffic, no sales.. Thats the bottom line.. My Flag Pride website isnt even a quarter of the way full and I have sold 7 items in 6 days.. $30 will pay for 2 months of hosting (for both of my sites) or one month of credit card merchant fees..

Bottom line is I seriously doubt if there really are any real alternatives to Feebay other than running your own site and driving people to your own place.. A real alternative would not be a niche items only place.. A real alternative would not have more sellers than buyers.. A real alternative would be seen in advertisements all over the web from banner ads to video commercials.. Even though some places are free or really cheap, in the end you still have to work to make those listings or CSV files to bulk load.. For the amount of energy I can spend creating CSV files, copy & pasting, and maintenance on another site, I could put into attracting friends and real customers on My Space or other forums and groups.. IMO stop wasting your time looking for a real alternative from a canned wanna-be auction site and make your own waves.... Wouldnt you rather the work go towards results you can see now instead of possibly never?

I won't stab ya.. But I am going to post this link that kinda contradicts what you are saying.

A few of those getting results..

Not everyone selling has been adding thirr input of course.

It might also be the items you are selling, or the cost. But I do know that if folks like what you have. It will go quickly.

I've recently sold 2 Elmo TMX's there for MORE that the going price on that Hesgay place. And the best part of it is.. I didn't pay ANY fees. The money is all mine to keep!

That link didnt really prove your point too well.. To each his own, but I cant be knocked for not giving them a try.. Like I stated, a place that is a true alternative wont be a niche item or only certain things sell there.. It will be a place where pretty much any good products that sell on other places will sell at.. I listed 1,300 items.. The people from that link have alot of items listed for the most part as well, yet they only have a few sells , bids, or even watched items.. I'm sorry, but thats not impressive when by doing 45 minutes worth adding friends on myspace for a week I managed to sell 7 products and that was without any spam whatsoever... Like I said, I will stay a little while longer and maybe even boost my item # up to over 5,000, but you have to receive a little bit of something whether its REAL sells, hits, watchers, bids, or something, in order to keep putting work into a place..

Hey,

I've just joined BidVille and have started my store listings. Other than the no invoice at this time I am really liking what I see. The auction site count here on PSU shows BV and Yahoo are the only ones even close to E...in listing counts.

I believe you get out what you put in. This goes for anything (life, love, business, kids, etc) Some call that Karma...what kind is Meg and Bill and the others gonna have to contend with???

I feel like I'm rambling. Sorry bout that. I also wanted to say Thanks to Honest Joe, I've read a few of your posts here and there and have gathered some good information.

Carol aka bgnagn1

http://1finetreasure.ecrater.com

http://stores.bidville.com/1finetreasure

I'm with the OP on BV. I've been there for close to a year and BV is 1 of only 2 sites that I'm on where I have never had a sale.

Even some of the now dead sites or totally crash and burn sites have gotten me a few sales.

It's so useless I haven't bothered to renew my expired items for now. Maybe I will when it's closer to my selling time, but why waste the energy right now.

I also have a MySpace site, but haven't had the time to really get to promoting it yet. As my garden winds down, hopefully I'll do more with it.

Carol

I, too, have been very disappointed in Bidville. There just does not seem to be any buyers. Yet, they have quiet a few listings. I really think they need to advertise more. As long as they have been in business, more people should be buying from that site.

yellowrose

http://yellowrosedolls.com

It is unfortunate about Bidville's lack of activity, I am getting the same thing there also. I am moving more inventory through my own site (and it isn't even fully finished yet!).

The recent glut of online auctions has not put much of a dent into Ebay's market share. So many of the new sites I see popping up do next to nothing to promote their site or sellers(or more of the same in a best case scenario), they just don't have the marketing muscle to compete with the big "e". I am hoping the tide will turn soon, but I am not sitting around waiting for it to happen. Perhaps the holidays will turn the tides.

As for advertising on MySpace, I keep seeing people talking about advertising and posting there. That is a good way to get an additional backlink for your own website, but that is about it. The problem with MS is that the average age for a MS junkie is currently about 13-14 yrs. old. When I was 14, I didn't have a credit card, and market demographic research shows the same thing. Unless you're selling zit remover or teeth whitener or ringtones, don't expect too much business from MS referrals.
I read a recent article saying that MS sends more people to online stores now than MSN search does. But they also said that the actual amount of people buying from a MS click was a small fraction of what MSN search generates.

I don't mean to sound like a doomsayer, but the facts are the facts.

Well, it sounded really good and it looks good. It will take awhile or a BIG name to really hurt E. I think they are hurting themselves though with all the bad publicity and fakes and being sued etc...

I'm trying to not be discouraged about bidville because I just signed up yesterday and I want it to work really really good. I've sold a couple of things on ecrater and had quite a few hits considering I'm not on very many forums or advertising much yet.

I just hope we all can do as good as or better at St. Elsewhere.

Carol

http://1finetreasure.ecrater.com

http://stores.bidville.com/1finetreasure

axsstech wrote (View Post): › As for advertising on MySpace, I keep seeing people talking about advertising and posting there. That is a good way to get an additional backlink for your own website, but that is about it. The problem with MS is that the average age for a MS junkie is currently about 13-14 yrs. old.

According to this article on msnbc.com, half of MySpace users are 35 and over.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15147500/

No sales on BV, no watchers, no hits. Some of my stuff ended and I didn't bother to relist it. I had some hopes for BV but it just isn't to be.

To say that most of the MySpace users are 14-15 years old is not quite accurate.. I personally use the groups to get friends/customers.. I can go to groups that are specific or not to what I sell and then I only take the people who are 18 or over as friends.. Just going through ONE group I netted 300 over 18 friends and sold 7 items.. Thats not bad for just one group and 300 possible buyers is better IMO to camping out on bidville or most of these other sites. With over 114 million users on MySpace do you really think there isnt a possibility of cashing in on a few sales? Let alone asking the group moderators to post your banner.. That will also get you backlinks to your site and what does that do? It only helps your PR go up on Google so you can in turn net more traffic. Its a win-win situation and the best thing of is that its FREE besides the time it takes to ask so many people to be friends.. Where else can you go to attract so much business? To ignore the possibilities of MySpace is your loss.. Kind of like those folks who thought search engines were a waste of time and also thought AOL was the future of the web... You can say that it doesnt really get sales, but I am proof that it works.. I sold more in one week there than I have in 3 months on Bidville..

dlz4utoo2 wrote (View Post): › axsstech wrote (View Post): › As for advertising on MySpace, I keep seeing people talking about advertising and posting there. That is a good way to get an additional backlink for your own website, but that is about it. The problem with MS is that the average age for a MS junkie is currently about 13-14 yrs. old. According to this article on msnbc.com, half of MySpace users are 35 and over. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15147500/

After the publicity myspace had this year from one of the network tv news shows about myspace allowing underage members, many re-signed back up with false birthdates. My kids have teenage friends who ALL did that. Many adults have now signed up so they can keep an eye on their kids as well. They are members, but not very active there.

I agree that the demographic has edged upwards in age this year, but I don't think it has yet matured into a "mainstream buying crowd". A good friend of mine does google ad sense campaigns for some large clients, and only about 10% of them will commit to placing their ads on MS because it is not cost effective due to their older target market.

I found this on a forum recently and I think it sums up MS currently:

"So, while I understand the social aspect of it all - it just doesn't have a good reputation (with designers, developers, parents, and even some kids). Personally, as a professional web developer, I would never recommend a parent getting a MySpace account. Most will get it, not update it, and simply use it to watch their son/daughter. They may dabble - but they don't really do anything.

Also, with the negative publicity MySpace has had in the past, this also brings more concern to parents as well (though much of it is not the fault of the website). I find those adult age numbers on MySpace pathetic if true. Seriously, there is no reason for a 35 year old to be on a site who's target demographic, if we are looking at the thing it replaced (mtv), is 14-24.

So, again, while I understand the social aspect - I wouldn't recommend myspace to anyone. Now, if Yahoo buys facebook and it opens up more - I might suggest something like that."

Comscore(who announced the older age stats for MySpace that the msnbc article refers to) scores data just like Nielsen scores TV ratings (you consent to having their software on your PC, like Nielsen gives you a TV box to gauge viewership).

So much of their data is based on the age of the owner of the PC running their software, not the actual age of the user at any given time.
Read this blog post that has been making the rounds since that report, and has been echoed by others in the marketing industry:
http://www.johndemayo.com/johndemayocom/2006/10/comscore_media_.html

Again, I don't think being on MS is a bad thing, but when I see people thinking that it can their ONLY thing, they aren't being realistic. I have had a user profile there since just after it started, and when I used to sell on eBay, I had some clicks from MS. But the clicks from google and yahoo were the ones that sold.

I've only been there 3 weeks. Only a few hits but I don't have much listed either but I really like the turbo lister. The pictures show up huge in the listings so I thought I'd put up a few coin auctions to show the details. I have noticed that the site is very heavy in the sports cards department at 700,000+ which is great if you sell cards I guess. I found a couple of items to buy there at good prices and the community seems nice. I'm going to keep my listings up since I already did the work and will add a few auctions from time to time.

with bidville or any of those sites you have to promote yourself,go to the shameless plugs,wanted boards.