I’ve had an ecrater store for a while now–see it over there on the left side of the page? Ecrater is a free service that allows you to sell your items in your own online store. Overall, I have been pleased with ecrater’s ease of use–and it’s tough to beat the price! I’ve had some success selling items with ecrater, but they certainly tend to hang around for a while (mainly due to my lack of promoting them).
I had a Masters of the Universe Castle Grayskull playset, with its original box, up in my ecrater store for two months at $75.00, which I thought was a pretty good price since I was looking for a quick sale. Unfortunately, the castle just wasn’t moving.
I got tired of tripping over the large box, and decided to list it on eBay with a starting price of $19.99 and no reserve. Within a day, the price had risen over $80. After the week-long auction ended, the final price ended up at $152.50–twice as much as I had been asking on ecrater.
Regardless of what you might think of eBay and its fees, it certainly has the biggest reach. I’ll still use ecrater for smaller items that I don’t mind sitting on the shelf for a while, but eBay is clearly the best option for selling items fast and you might be surprised with the final selling price!
On the other hand I unloaded a supergirl doll that was going for about 50 bucks on ebay for 100 on eCrater…
There are certainly exceptions. 😉 You have had much better success on the http://dinosaurtoyvault.ecrater.com/ than I have had so far, but I won’t be abandoning my ecrater store.
The amount of potential buyers for collectibles on eBay can’t be beat. It’s more than worth the cost of fees since I don’t have to do any marketing myself to attract that traffic.
As I have spoken to you recently about Brian, this is something I have been contemplating. I prefer to sell at shows, but I just came into a huge lot of g1 transformers that I am going to have to take an online market. While I have done a lot of stuff online, I have never sold. I am going to be trying my hand at both of these sites in the near future.
Good luck Ashley. I’ve sold a ton on eBay and if it weren’t for the ever-increasing fees, I’d have no problem with them at all. Each service has its advantages and disadvantages.
I think you have the right ideal with using them both Brian. : )
I use eBay for quick money on big ticket items that I don’t want sitting around. I’ve also used it to clear out a few things that have been sitting around the e-crater store. That said, I LOVE ecrater. No complaints. Don’t even have to market. When people do a Google search for an item, mine comes up if I have it. I’m amazed at where the people are coming from. Got a solid 5 sales per week so far, and the only fees i have to worry about are Paypal’s.
Wow, you are doing way better than me! I never could figure out the Google integration, so I ignored that portion. It looks like i should give it another look.
See, that’s the thing – as far as I know, you don’t have to do anything for it.
For example, I just did a search for “WWF Ricky the Dragon Steamboat Hasbro figure”, and yours came up in the search results. That’s what had been happening with me. A lot of buyers weren’t familiar with ecrater, but they saw that my price was lower than the Amazon and Ebay links presented along with mine, so they took the chance. So, it’s really about diversifying selection, as you never quite know what people are going to buy. I’ve been surprised by some of my sales myself!
I probably have enough “vintage” product to start my own eCrater store. I used to sell a lot of my old Transformers & GI Joe collection through fan boards. Within the last 6-8 months I’ve been selling more and more on eBay. It ranges from everything from comic books and action figures to Disney Vinylmation and my wife’s old Lia Sophia jewelry.
I’ll go on a two week tear, let eBay collect their fees and move along. I don’t get too wrapped up in it, sure it’s frustrating to see that 11% or more taken away from your listing, but that’s what happens when you use eBay.
It’s hard to beat eBay, because you know when you list an item, it’s going to sell. I do 90% of my buying and selling on eBay, but I do like having the ecrater shop as an alternative. It’s always a nice surprise when a sale comes through.
You are exactly right when you say that eBay would still be fine if it were not for the ever increasing fees.
I just sold an item for $1.99 + $2 shipping.
eBay charged me .18 for the FVF and Shipping for a total of .36. PayPal charged me .42 to accept payment. I know PayPal is separate but that is ridiculously high for such a low price item. I will have paid 40% of the sale price in fees. $0.78 on $1.99 is just wrong.
That is why ecrater will flourish