Well, I am pretty dense.


Yes, I completely agree, Carol! No 1 site will be the answer. I am still looking for a free site that might be a good place to list collectibe glass, pottery, etc. But I am beginning to feel that the collecting bubble might have burst.

I am learning. Someone on another thread mentioned etsy. Well, I didn't know what that was either. But I did find it.............and it is one of the most tasteful, beautiful venues I have seen. Etsy carries handmade items. Very beautiful. I am not an artisan, but I did very much love looking at the site. Good luck to those of you who have those beautiful handmades/custom-mades to sell.

Etsy reminds me of Ruby Lane (which reminds me of the Beatles in the good ole days). Very nice look. I'm not promoting; I don't list there. Right now, I am listing at BluJay (my genealogy service only), eCrater, and iOffer.

Warmest Regards,

Donna


Anyone tried 1and1 hosting?

the wings of change. we are not sure after years of research , what it is that ebay intends to come to be. we tried all other sites, half futile tries at most. thru frustration, trial and error, we figured we were stuck at ebay and then the BIG bang occurred. ebay booted us at a very critical time in our life. SILVER powersellers...yes 100% positive feedback ....yes. ebay in my opinion is evolving the market, self perpetuated, but I do tend to agree to the analysis that has already been posted here. 60% of ebay sales is buy it now electronics, the auction is dieng. a shame, it used to be fun. now it has so many folks relying on it to make a living and I watch seller after seller being crushed. well quite frankly ebay did us a favor. it forced us to get back to the real world, the wings of change. we learned the hardway how to develop and promote our own site... most large companies now have their own sites many have auction sites such as goodwill. we are still learning the site optimization stuff , one of the best if not the very best help we have had thus far is http://www.seodiamond.com/ ( thanx ross) I am still in the first chapter. it has helped us to understand and evolve. PSU has an ecellent hosting program and we are looking at joining that. Yes some of our products ( about 40%) we subsell for other wholesalers, they also sell our products!yes we offer smc catalogs on our site. virtually impossible to sell their products as they have really whored the market on line, but they do well in catalog sales. we offer them at 10% over cost to folks who do not want to pay all the fees and want to try them. we do not sell smc on line , just the catalogs. 60% of our line is direct buys, closeouts , shelf pulls, we used to run and sell antiques and collectibles, currently we are blowing out all of our old colectible inventory and closed our brick and mortar, just no longer profitable for us. we shifted gears online, slowly worked away from on line auctions and have leaned more towards the buy it now options. blujay has done well for us, not alot listed there yet , but plan on increasing as sales drive us. if you havent already... self promote, dmoz, craigslist, my space, yes my space. our first run at my space blew me away. we are now having a professional my space site done, the exposure is astronomical. we feed google base daily,adverise in all the free classifieds, it pays off! subscribe to webmaster pro optimization, they do all the search engine stuff for us. we have went with Simpova the most reliable , helpful hosting and design company we found. we have delegated most of the tedious work out and focus primarily on marketing. tis a cold tuff world out there, but for us the fun and games were over when ebay changed the mold. a tuff transition , but we will survive. we are sticking with blujay ( i hope to have time to list hundreds of items soon) as they too submit to search engines and almost instantaneously our listings pop up along with our google listings. we have become present on most search engines, thru all this trial and error with little expense, not outrageous and not even close to what we were paying in auction fees. it was painful yes, change always is. shopzilla is a new venture for us that has already paid off, not huge yet, i took our listings down last week and sales dropped signifigantly. i have reposted and will be back on shopzilla full force, it was well worth the modest investment. the free auction listing is great but the immediate results and sales do not warrant a huge amount of my time being spent there, but they are free exposure. we are also looking strongly at amazon. thebuy it now seems to be the going trend in my opinion. we have joined bizrate and are revamping our site to reflect their rating system to gain credibility. yes we are joing the bbb so we can have their logo on our site. to me that is a huge expenditure but neccessary in todays online market ..working with other sites for links, important in the search engine game. a bit off topic I have found links to our site from other sites but you are not appearing as a link back on our site, if you read this please contact us so we can get you listed.. it is all beginng to pay off big. Dont get me wrong i do believe one of the auction sites will become an option as the market evolves. Unite is the key, help each other, brainstorming such as we do here in psu, get out of the self mold and forget about the obstacles now presented and work around them. I am a single parent of 2 recovering from a broken neck and take care of my aging parents as well. this is my lively hood. we refused to be left behind. as a psych major I always said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. ebay forced us to live by that. the best thing that ever happened to us. I have faith as stated earlier one of these hard working and dedicated auction sites will gain the insight neccessary to do what needs to be done to bring the auction world back to life. alot of specialtiy auction sites are popping up...good luck I hope they become a viable altrnative. we just was introduced to lowbid by beckythisnthat when we bought a gorgeous piece from her wIth the last little paypal money we had. a fitting hand carved wood eagle. it now sits on my mantel of trophies reminding me daily of our changes. Thankyou becky! Never give up the market is therE , go get it, I work right now from 7am to sometimes 2 or 3 in the morning, not always productive but gaining insight. the whole internet world is ours if we can collectively make the auction impoRtant again. I wish we could all unite and at least list 10 items on one auction site. I have seen this petitioned time and time again. If i can get just ten people to start that is willing to make that committment lets get started, lets make a difference, small numbers started the revolution and that is what it is going to take. right now it seems most are heading in every which direction, dazed and confused. I need ten good solid folks who are willing to brainstorm and join forces and post at one agreed upon site. they are free , what do we have to loose. contact us PM if interested. our Guns are loaded and we are ready to unite. if ten of us can agree on one area many will follow..ITS REVOLUTION TIME! Hardwork yeppers, worth it? I think so. JUST MY OPINION

Thanks for all the information, worldofwholesale -----a must read for all of us, I think.

I too am getting rid of my collectibles, although it will take time, and I do enjoy finding them and researching them.

I like eCrater so very much---easy listing, free, Google checkout, and very easy listing. Tasteful site also. But sales are rare.

iOffer is okay, but sales are almost non-existent.

Dear Lord in Heaven, in wink moments I think about just going back to eBay. Is there a rehab for this?

Donna

iOffer - Zelda's Emporium
eCrater - Zelda's Emporium
BluJay - Genealogy Research Service

I wrote:
in wink moments

Oh dear, must have been a Freudian slip.

Donna

iOffer - Zelda's Emporium
eCrater - Zelda's Emporium
BluJay - Genealogy Research Service[/quote]

I just joined and hope noone minds if I jump in. I also am trying to find a reliable site. I right now list on about 8 different places with no luck. I give them a couple of months to see what happens. I sold on Hibidder but it went no where, bidville no views at all, overstock the same no views, etc. Had a couple small sales on ecrater. I have had sales on Ebay also bu don't put very much on there only 3 or 4. I have had them sell though for more than I listed them. I really like Blujay as it is so easy to list there. I will probably stay with them. I have tried a couple of new ones Biddersnsellers.com and Biduptoday.com to see how they go. I hope we soon have a site that will take on the E and put them 6 ft. under.

welcome, dreamweaver! do you use dreamweaver?

My name is Joyce - Thanks for the welcome.