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Whilst the seller community still reels at the changes introduced by eBay this week, competitor sites have not been slow to react.  Many are directly marketing to eBay’s paying and non-paying customers in the hope of cashing in on the predictable upset and anxiety caused by some of the most radical policy shifts to ever come out of San Jose.

In the UK, where sellers have displayed not just angst, but anger, exasperation, and despair, several established home-grown sites have been quick off the mark.

eBid Auction Site” height=”53″ style=”width: 63px; height: 53px” title=”eBid Auction Site” /> eBid.tv are traditionally the biggest UK winners whenever eBay upsets its sellers.  The site received huge membership boosts every summer between 2003 and last year, and in 2007 introduced the facility for each seller ID to have up to five shops without charge, directly in response to seller requests.  eBid have long been regarded as the site most responsive to member requests and the fact that their founders and CEO regularly participate in the community forums demonstrates a hands-on and open-door approach to management often said to be lacking at eBay.

For eBid to be the biggest winners is strange, as they rarely conduct any off-internet marketing.  Instead they concentrate on on-internet finadability, and encourage their members to market the site for them.  Although often accused of generating too little traffic, it is a formula that seems to work, and frequently the traffic levels are masked by a high level of Buy Now bids, due to that feature being free to add to auction listings. 

Their January newsletter stated that from mid-2007 to late-2007, they saw an increase of sold item value (eBay calls it GMV) of over 50% in the UK (their largest market) and over 220% in the USA (their second oldest market).  They have also recently expanded to now possess 14 country-specific sites around the world, and introduced a business seller programme, which does not invade home-based seller’s privacy, in the way that eBay’s new rules changes do.  I can’t wait to see what their February newsletter has to say about eBay machine-gunning their own feet, particularly as their community forums are already seeing an influx of new buyers and sellers equally feeling disenfranchised by last month’s policy shifts.

 Meanwhile, new kid on the block, Tazbar have been quick to react.  Their scheduled Feb 1st newsletter, originally intended to reinforce the handover of ownership back to the original development team (of disheartened former eBay PowerSellers) and leads with a statement to that purpose.  It also continues with a multiple point comparison between TazBar as an online auction site of traditional methodology, and how thay have not deviated from a known-good system in the way that eBay has.  Further, it also reminds readers of the new TazBar Fundraisers (charities) program that we blogged about here.

It’s going to be interesting to watch these two sites battle for the eBay disaffected, and it is to be hoped that they do not lose out to Amazon and other larger sites that are rumoured to have gone on the offensive since the announcements in Washington DC.  We’d like to hear your thoughts and news about them, in our forums.

Over in the USA, Auctionbytes have been in the thick of reporting and analysing the announcements and the fall out from them.  Ina Steiner, the editor at AuctionBytes has also been monitoring the competition circling the eBay wagons, picked up on the TazBar news above, and blogged about epier.com’s initial manoeuvres. 

ePier? They’re a new one on me.  Their announcements board goes back as far as March 2005, and includes mention of newsletter #28 - it would therefore seem they’ve been around for at least 4-5 years.  Their site has the good old traditional look that eBid threw out about 18 months back - lots of stuff on the front page, that makes it a little confusing to the novices, but is “quaint and intriguing” to old-hands at the online auction game. 

When looking at an online venue for the first time, I like the costs to be upfront and in my face.  If it takes me more than six clicks to find them, regardless of the viability of the site, it gets ditched.  ePier’s fees are not quite where I’d expect them to be - in the main FAQ’s or root of the Help pages - they’re in the ambiguously titled “Sellers” section.  That name, at first had me thinking it would be some sort of mySpace, or eBay myWorld, gallery of members, maybe something for them to think about?  I then had to click another two times before finding the fees.  Basically, they are free insertion fees, and tiered final value fees, and a very short list of enhancement fees.  ePier is intriguing enough that I’ll go back and have another look, then blog more, once the dust has settled on the eBay changes.

Craigslist has been getting more and more mentions around the online selling world this winter.  If you’ve never heard of it, it’s now a global phenomenon and a charitable foundation that’s free to use for classifieds style listings (listing duration is from 7-30 days in major US cities, 45 days elsewhere, or until event expires for events listings).  The site appearance is effectively “plain text” and some have described it as “godawful on the eye”, but it works, is free of the graphics-led slowness (except within adverts, which can include pictures), and is truly global.  It’s extremely popular with people on the move due to the plethora of cities within the short-term and holiday accomodation categories.  I rate it as an essential side-channel to other marketing channels, and a primary additional line for any accomodation, real estate, or vacation type selling.

Amongst specialist sites anticipated to make a move to capture user and market share from eBay’s latest news are the likes of delcampe.com Delcampe are philately and memorabilia niche specialists with auction/buy now sites localised for 10 European countries in addition to the main US home site and a Canadian local site.  A quick nosy revealed 250,000+ members on dot com with over 13 million listings.  They have a slightly unusual fee structure, in that there are no insertion fees, and rather than an FVF per sale, they total all sales in a month and apply a 2%-4% fee (tiered and based on total volume).  They also offer “club memberships” which affect the cost of listing enhancement fees, including the interesting “last minute extension” option.  The delcampe site has a fresh, clean, and crisp visual appeal, that is not graphics intensive, and responds quickly to clicks - a refreshing change compared to others.

CQout are another veteran multi-national site, at least 5 years old and with 5 localised sites flagged in their page headers.  They’re running the no insertion fee model (in exchange for a once only GBP 2.00 sign-up fee) with the home page of the dot com site showing 600,000+ listings active.  They do have final value and listing enhancement fees, with FVFs ranging from 1.5% to 5.5%.  It’s been a while since I visited them, but I seem to remember they had quite a small allowance for number of characters in the listing description (text plus html counting towards the total), but the listing interface was quite fast for “list similar” repeat entries, and the overall site layout is another crisp and clean format.  

In common with eBay and eBid, they run an affiliate program.  CQout’s is run completely within site and is currently paying GBP 0.50 per click-through that registers and becomes an active user.  They also have quite a nice collection of animated and static artwork for affiliates (visible only after registration).

I’ll back regularly, for most of this month, with looks at more alternatives to eBay, and will soon be adding a comprehensive series of daily articles for those wanting to build their own websites, but who have never done so before.

Ed