Does anyone make money on eBid?

Last week eBid sent us a press release claiming that they were saving sellers thousands of dollars compared to eBay. They claim over “*6 million daily listings” and then went on to make multiple comparisons of themselves to eBay.

Some of the claims were pretty impressive and scary sounding for eBay sellers, for instance they point out that “Because of the substantial fees that eBay applies, it can cost over $250 (depending on the final sales price) for a single sale on eBay” and “when adding in monthly subscription prices for virtual storefronts it leaves minimal profit for the effort of selling”. I have to say that’s not my experience of eBay, I’ve always managed to turn a pretty penny in eBay sales profits when I set my mind to it.

eBid they say is much better than eBay and “charges ZERO insertion fees” and “final value fees range from 0% to a max of only 3%”. They quote Mark Wilkinson, co-founder of eBid as saying “Once you compare our fees to ‘the other auction site’ it becomes clear that eBid is a better alternative for anyone looking to really make a living, or at least a fair income, with online auctions”. In fact if you read the whole press release it makes you wonder why anyone bothers selling on eBay in the first place.

We have two issues with the press release. Firstly why do eBid insist upon comparing themselves to eBay? Calling yourself the “#2 Online Auction Site” and constant references to eBay really doesn’t work. After 10 years it’s high time eBid found their own niche and stopped trying to out-eBay eBay.

More importantly we asked the PR guy who sent us the press release for sales numbers, growth in sales, seller success stories and examples of great eBid human interest stories. We practically begged them asking “eBid is a decade old after all! Give us selling numbers”.

We also asked specifically for an example of a seller who “makes their living on the site with a regular minimum of £1000 per month in sales” and offered to feature their success story on Tamebay along with how they mananged their eBid sales. After we sent that email we stopped receiving replies!

We don’t believe anyone on eBid is making significant sales or any sort of liveable income. We’ve never found an eBid seller willing to share their sales figures with us and it looks like eBid don’t have a single example of a successful seller either. They’re very proud of their “$49.49 gives the seller a lifetime of zero listing fees and zero final value fees” offer but to us it looks like an expensive club with no prospect of ever recouping your $49.49 in profits.

We’d love to be proved wrong on our opinion of eBid. We’d love to know that there’s a vibrant site producing profitable sales in large quantities that we could recommend you take advantage of. Currently we can’t.

* By the way, it’s not 6 million daily listings, it’s 6 million total listings and most of them are good til sold and have languished unsold on the site for years. In comparison eBay have around 165 million listings to choose from, of which around 40% or 66 million are auctions and are therefore less than 10 days old!