Our top 4 Alternatives to eBay

If you are looking to get away from evil eBay and their ridiculous policies & fees, I have some alternatives you can try out for your niche. I’ve been in your shoes before and I have found these alternate sites to help me move my electronics .

Although they do not have the type of traffic eBay has, but if you combine them all into 1 , then you will have something that is even better than selling on eBay itself and you are not putting all of your eggs into 1 basket.

#4 – Pricegrabber.com

I will vote this as the #4 eBay alternative . You can sign up free with them and create your own storefront. Their main website is a shopping comparison site, where a specific product is compared by price from several other websites along with your storefront as well. There is no listing fees , only a fee once an item sells. They accept paypal, money orders, credit cards and google checkout as your payment option for customers. The traffic is ok, you may sell a few things a day, but no where as high as eBay traffic.

#3- Ubid.com

uBid.com would be my #3 alternate to eBay, but you will need to provide a bit more details about yourself upon opening an account. It’s worth it and you’ll have your own account manager from the category you are selling in. Mine happens to have AIM (Aol Messenger) so I can always ask any questions about anything and he usually is fast to answer and help me out.

They also have a very good customer support line to answer any questions you may have. All payments are usually by Check in the mail every 14 days, and all payments from customers are all verified by Ubid, so there is no worrying about any scam customers. I have been selling with them for 2 years now and I have no regrets about it.

My products move fairly well, and I often ask my account manager to place my products on the featured top of the category for free as long as the duration of the listing is not more than 1 week. No listing fees, only fees when something sells.

#2 – Amazon.com

Amazon.com is eBays biggest rival. This is my #2 alternative to eBay. I’ve had a sellers account with Amazon and sold alot of products at a very nice rate. I remember around valentines day, I had some mp4 players listed on their website, and I had sold them like hotcakes. I sold them more faster than I had sold them over at eBay. There are no listing fees but there is a pretty high final fee when something is purchased. Depending on your category, the final fees can be as high as 15% of the total.

Their payment system is pretty decent, since they don’t force you to accept paypal. They don’t even allow paypal, but only check by mail or Wire transfer. I personally used the Wire Transfer method and often received my funds within 14 days. The only downside is they are very strict when it comes to feedback from customers.

I stopped using amazon for a while so my feedback percentage started to drop as a month passed without selling. Since I had 2 negative feedbacks, this made my percentage drop below 80%, which forced Amazon to terminate my account.

#1- eCommerce Website

I will have to vote “Ecommerce Website” as the #1 eBay Alternative. There is nothing like having your own ecommerce website to sell your items at. You have complete freedom, control an stability over your business, and never have to answer to anyone. Amazon and eBay are the giants today in the market place, but they also have their own rules and guidelines to follow. If you break any of them, you are risking your business and can easily have your business shut down overnight. By having your own website, you are in the driver seat ready to expand your business.

All it takes is a domain name and a hosting plan. These are really cheap, as a domain can cost $7.50 per year at GoDaddy

You can start with a shared hosting plan from $4.25 per month at GoDaddy.com!
. Once you have these 2 things, all you will need is a shopping cart software to list your products. A good one and free is Zencart.

After this you might already have a paypal account which most shopping carts will already have built into their system to use. You may also consider getting a merchant account to accept direct credit card payments for those who don’t have or don’t like to use Paypal as a payment method. I recommend Authorize.net as your merchant account, as I used them for the entire lifespan of my ecommerce business and they are the best I have tried yet.

Remember to never leave yourself dependant from any website that allows you to sell your products, as you will always have someone over you that runs the show.

Mark Dorsey says:

April 17, 2009 at 8:31 am

Hi Stevo,

Great options there but the sites you list (with the exception of your own eCommerce site) cater to a certain segment of products. I would like to cast my vote for Bonanzle.com as the site where you can buy and sell unique, one of a kind items.

Stevoblog says:

April 17, 2009 at 1:14 pm

Thanks, that’s great, these were the alternatives for me, and my niche was electronics, and accessories, which is a competitive market. With these 4 top sites, you can definitely do pretty decent outside of eBay.

DoneWithEbay&Paypal says:

April 17, 2009 at 1:28 pm

Oh, and don’t forget that vendio.com offers a free service to organize, manage and compile your sales from all of your selling venues onto one unified platform.

Let’s hear it for ALL of ebay’s competitors! Here a just a few:

Bonanzle
Etsy
Epier
Ebid
Artfire
Amazon
Bluejay
Onlineauction
Wensy
Wigix
Ioffer
Ecrater
Webidz
Atomicmall
Goantiques
Upperbid
Silkfair
Ubid
Hibidder
Hoobly
Biddersite
Auctions8
Yourhighbid
Neoloch
Ziing
Onlineauctionexchange
Alsoshop