At 1 time in my life, I used to sell on eBay and only on eBay for many years.
It wasn’t until 1 day when I woke up and found my account suspended.
I can’t remember the reason for it but all I know is, I was freaking out that whole day and did not know what will happened to me as far as income.
They tell you that you have the option to appeal the decision, but this will ultimately take at least 2 weeks for them to unsuspend your account back to normal.
I was really nervous that day and wondered what will I do for the next 2 weeks to bring in some income, after all , we all have bills to pay and need food to eat. Well, while I faxed over my appeal sheet over to eBay requesting to un-suspend my account, I started to search online for help. I then spoke with a friend of mine, who just so happens to do web development and build websites for a living.
I spoke to him about my problem, and he told me I should know better than to use eBay as my only source to sell online. He offered to build me my own website and told me I would need to stay away from eBay. The problem was, eBay was addictive at the time and I just couldn’t imagine myself without using eBay to move my products since I was doing really good at the time.
I decided to pay for the website and get myself a logo to go with the website. After 2 weeks, my website was ready and my eBay account had been lifted off of suspension. I was soooo happy when I got that email from eBay telling me congratulations, my account has been restored. I quickly started to post all of my auctions back on eBay and started selling again.
This time, as I sold on eBay, I started listing products on my website and quickly filled up the store with everything I had in stock. Now, another issue I had was, I never have had marketing experience so I did not know where to go and how to attract visitors to my new website. In addition, my website url was no where on google search at all. I asked around, read blogs, ready books, and decided to start using Shopping Comparion websites to promote my website.
I continued selling on eBay but with caution since I learned that they will quickly suspend you for any reason that they feel is against their policies. They won’t even send you an email with a warning, just an email with a suspension notice, now how fair is that? By this time, I already had more than 15,000 feedbacks and was paying roughly around $3,000 – $3,500 a month in eBay fees. I thought I was invincible and eBay will have my back if anything goes bad again.
As my website started to take off, I learned more and more ways of getting traffic to my website, although I was always more focused on eBay selling at the time. I would spend 80% of my time on eBay and 20% on my website. At least 90% of my sales came through eBay and the rest, on my website. My main goal was to shift flip that percentage over to my website and less on eBay as I really wanted to become independent of eBay.
As the christmas holidays came , I started focusing even more on eBay than my website, due to the fact I was selling so much and fast on eBay at the time. The holidays kept my so busy on eBay that I completely ignored my website and stopped marketing on my website and devoted all of my time to eBay.
After the holidays, I decided to open an Amazon sellers account and started to sell on their website as well as eBay. I found amazon to be a bit more better than eBay in terms of service and the fact that they don’t charge you fees to list an item, but their fees were high once an item sold. Another great thing is that you don’t have to use paypal with Amazon. The bad thing is, you have to wait every 2 weeks to get a deposit into your bank account.
As time went by, eventually I got a few negative reviews in my Amazon account and Amazon quickly terminated my account with no chance of every selling again with them. This was as harsh as eBay because at least with eBay, they give you a chance to appeal and get reinstated again, while on Amazon, once you are gone, you are completely gone.
By August 2008, I really felt the reality of everything when eBay had suspended my account per their new policies at this time and this time they told me I may not be able to get reinstated. This had happened in the summer where sales were already slow , so I was once again worried how I would get money . The main thing that really disturbed me was the fact that I had accumulated over 18K feedbacks and was paying over $10,000 in eBay fees at this time, they still went and permanently suspended my account. I was very disappointed with eBay and realized that all they care about is their company and not the sellers who have built their company from the beggining.
I was grateful I had my website to fall back on, so I quickly devoted 100% of my time and energy to marketing and continue sleling my products on my own website. After 2 months, I saw the sales increased, the money flowing in even faster and the return rate on customers were also increasing as well. I was so happy ebay had suspended me, which forced me to dedicated to my own site. I learned google adwords, yahoo search marketing, shopping comparison websites, and other method of driving traffic to my own site. The best part was that I knew I would not have to worry about waking up in the morning only to find me shut down.
I had full control of my business and and I had so much potential to grow. With eBay, you can always sell more things, and get easy traffic, but you are always under eBay and there is always the possibility of getting suspended or shut down.
In conclusion, selling on eBay is the same as working for eBay. You wont have all of the opportunities to grow, and you will always have to go by their rules, if not , then they will fire you. I admit, eBay is a great way to start your business, but it should not be your main source for selling online. Please take my advice, I’ve been through hell with eBay and I dont want you to go through what I’ve been through. Start your own website, make it your primary source for opporating your buisness online, and then use eBay, Amazon, etc… as your side sources, or extra sources.
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Great article and story, you are right on the money with your story.
Jerry Whitney Founder of http://www.efleaa.com the new old ebay auction site.
Gtreat post and so true. i followed the same path. Like you I spent too much time on Ebay and not enough on my website. I’ve reversed this trend. Ebay behaves like a tyrant. They can pull the rug under your business anytime. My stratergy is to use ebay but cautiously. It’s a freat marketing tool for getting customers to your website.
Same here paul, although I stopped using them all together since I decided not to invest any more of my products and money into them. I’m glad you also did the same, I hope your website business has surpassed eBay that way you don’t have to be fully dependent on them.
I fail to understand as to why eBay suspended your account and then terminated it.
What exactly did you do or were alleged to do to bring this about.
I have just under a 1600 100% rating on eBay and am not happy with the way the site is going, I would love to try something else and even had my own site for two years, but it did not work out.
I have tried many other sites and been ripped off by a couple of them, so am leery of expanding into areas which leave me vulnerable.
I make and sell my own stuff, and offer unique items for model railroaders, but the fees are the killer for me.
I am going to research the methods you suggest and try and build myself up to pulling the plug on eBay as they really out to lunch.
I was suspended on eBay because I had a few customers who received defective merchandise and instead if emailing me to fix the issue, they jumped right on the negative feedback wagon. At this moment eBay had just changed their policy and suspended me per their new customer satisfaction policy. There are lots of buyers who leave negative feedback without even contacting the seller first.
I agree that the new feedback system is no good; it leaves sellers open to blackmail by unscrupulous buyers and is one sided in the extreme.
I think that with mass market items you run a higher risk of meeting intolerant demanding people. I have had opportunities to sell mass market electronics on eBay as I have excellent contacts in China and Taiwan; but I shied away from it, as when I checked the feedback of sellers of similar goods the amount of whining neg feedback was astonishing and for the most petty of reasons as well.
Ebay makes me nervous, their new star rating system, the new rubbish high school designed selling page is a disaster, reserve fees are no longer refunded when an item sells, listing fees that are stratospheric,
more bad ideas than you can shake a stick at and yet; they have the “eyes”.
I have tried every competing alternative and they are ultimately useless.
The only real option, is as you suggest; the development of my own website and learn the tricks of driving traffic there, but where I am going to find the time to still build items for sale and manage a web site is a galling prospect.
My own site will free me from working for eBay, your comment in that regard hit home.
I will maintain eBay as a side source and for buying but in general respects it is time for an ebayectomy and to promote myself and not eBay.
You frame some great ideas in that article, but at first when I read it, it was a bit crushing as I knew that my first very nice website was a dismal commercial failure. Hey, I’m an old guy trying to stay ahead of stuff entirely outside of my expertise, and this article of yours turned on some lights and I figure that I must try again but now with a bit better insight and encouragement.
At least i’ll know that any hard work put into promotion or search placement will accrue me benefits and no one else.
Alright I’m stoked, I’ll get to work on it right now.
Sounds like you have all had some problems with selling on ebay. It’s great that you have your own sites now but if you are ever looking for another place to sell you can try http://www.netspray.com. It is 100% free if you so choose.
eBay allows you to “opt out” of selling to a winning bidder; the winning bidder can elect to “opt out” of buying, yet a transaction that has never been consummated, has technically never taken place, the non-buyer can still leave negative feedback – not sure I like that policy!
There is a forum I found on the internet that is free, and helps with Ebay, PayPal, business and the law. Just post any question, the experts will answer it if it has not already been answered!
The forum has a lot of expert advice on it. http://www.modeeworld.com/forums I found advice there about how to avoid EBAY suspensions, get past PayPal limitations, also lots of detailed help on creating your own business, getting past trademark violations, VERO and lots more. Plus general advice on how best to sell on EBAY, what sells the best, how to get the best price for your product, really everything related to EBAY and internet business.
Also advice about how EBAY really works and how PayPal really works. The inside scoop.
Beautiful forum. I was made a moderator of the forum and I love it!