There have been several changes at eBay over the last week that haven’t made their users happy. First there was the announcement that they were lowing their listing fees but raising the final value fee, and then there was the announcement that sellers will no longer be able to leave negative feedback. As a result, there’s a group of people who are working on organizing a boycott of eBay for the week of February 18th through the 25th. They say that it means absolutely no buying, selling, or searching. With this boycott and the simple fact that people are upset over the changes, users are looking for eBay alternatives. A few days ago, CyberNet Reader Michael Dobrofsky asked about alternatives and we mentioned eCRATER. It’s one alternative worth taking a look at, and today we’ll be briefly explaining what they’re all about.
So what is eCRATER? Well, they describe themselves as a free web store builder and a free online marketplace. They say that sellers can create their own online store in a short time for free while buyers can shop for all kinds of products. Additionally, they’ve teamed with Google as an eCommerce partner to allow buyers and sellers to use Google Checkout for payments. They’ve been around since late 2004 and have been growing since then. Certainly they’re not as big as eBay, but that’s to their advantage. They’re definitely one of the places buyers and sellers turn to when they eventually determine they’ve had enough with eBay and their constant rising fees.
I haven’t used the site yet, but I just did several searches for different products and their selection seems to be good. The overall main theme I noticed on the site is simplicity. Everything is simple from setting up a store to a listing. Searching for “Apple iPhone” yielded 202 different results which isn’t bad at all. Of course I did come across a few fraudulent appearing listings (one said they only took Money Gram as a form of payment, big red flag there!), but I don’t think you’ll be able to stay away from fraud no matter where you go.
If you’re a seller on eBay and you’ve just about had enough, why don’t you checkout eCRATER and other sites like it? And for buyers, the next time you need something, instead of going to eBay right away, why don’t you checkout alternatives like eCRATER. There are options out there, it’s just a matter of finding and using them. Like I said, I haven’t used the site yet to vouch for it, but it is definitely a site I will be checking in the future when I need something. If you’ve used them, be sure to let us know how your experience was.
Nice find!
I like that they use Google Checkout. I have a client that is looking for an economical ecommerce option and this may be the way to go. I am going to be looking in to this some more.
Good site!
Welcome to my store to find your love fashion jewelry!
[wowostore.ecrater.com]
It’s a shame eBay is so damn big, but we just need these types of sites to catch on and give them some competition so they don’t have so much power cos power corrupts
Thanks, nice find.
You got that right! After 9 years I’m so sick of selling on ebay. If you looked at my auction results you’d be thinking I make a lot, but after ebay and paypal get done taking out their fees I’m lucky if I get to keep even half of what I make selling, and then of course you have to deduct what we paid for it in the first place and all the time involved.
I already opened a store at ecrater and am starting my own website.
If anyone’s interested in finding where their favorite ebay sellers are going – and viewing how much the feebay fees are taking out of sellers pockets – come on over to PowerSellersUnite.com. It’s a free, and great informative site.
Looks very good. With eBay cranking up their fees and screwing sellers, I’m sure eCRATER will grow.
@Ashley:
I liked the site which is cleaner and more intuitive than eBay. However, I was disappointed that two sellers that I selected were not offering their products outside the United States.
I’m sure a lot of business is out there, outside the U.S borders.
Regards,
Omar.-
Omar, if eCrater can reach critical mass, sellers will almost certainly _have_ to expand their customer base by selling/shipping ex-CONUS. I’d give it another several months to see how things shake out.
On a related note, I’ve been on eBay since ~1998, and don’t even like the “improvements” that they’ve made to the site, such as revisions of category structures. It seems that they continually change crap for…the sake of changing crap. Maybe all of those programming gazillionaires who work there have to justify their existence by tweaking features that already work fine. I don’t know. What I do know is that I no longer visit there as often as I used to, and selling a textbook on Half.com almost makes me feel as ripped off as selling it back to the bookstore, after I see the pittance that I get after fees are deducted.
Many sellers on eBay only sell within the United States as well simply because of the hassles that come with international shipping and customs. Just as eBay ended up opening up in other countries, if eCRATER catches on, I think they’ll end up in other countries as well.
Wow, 9 years! I did it full time for a little over a year and that was enough.
I have been selling on eCrater.com since March 2005. Unlike eBay where you paid dearly and hope the eBay name brings you a buyer, on eCrater.com it’s up to the individual store owner to do their own promotions and get out there and find their customers. Comparing eBay and eCraters is like comparing apples and oranges. Sure, they are both places you can sell your products but that’s about the end of the comparison. One thing eCrater.com is not is an auction site! Everything is fixed price store listings – no best offers, no auctions.
One SUPER GREAT thing about eCrater.com is they do the feed to google of all the products on the site – 986,715 items at this time. The Google ranking on most stores is superb! This helps bring the shoppers to your items a great deal.
The forum community is full of great people willing to share ideas and help sellers get started.
Thanks for the clarification Pat. I definitely plan on selling on eCrater in the future, and seeing that they are on the Google product searches is definitely a nice incentive.
The thing with eCrater is that it is strictly a storefront. It makes a great alternative to eBay stores and Prostores, but not for the auction side of eBay. I’ve tried a few others, and my favorite so far is ebid. It’s got a great interface and really could be a great supplement if not a replacement to eBay eventually.
I assume you work for eBid?
Good article!
eCRATER is really a good alternative to ebay. In it you can post all your stuffs at no cost. A lot of ex-ebayer now are coming to ecrater as their new market place. Ebay sucks up all your earnings.
Good luck and more power!
I’m slmost up to 2 year anniversary on ecrater and 16 months exclusive. I don’t pay the rent with what I make but didn’t on eBay either except for a couple of months when they had stores in search. I rarely ran an auction on eBay so switching to an all fixed price format was easy for me.
It is a very nice and friendly place to do business. Real effort is made to discourage and toss fraudulent sellers and the price more than makes up for its limitations.
This is a great site for buyers and sellers of used/vintage/antique and artisans. With low profit margins, the 0 fees makes it worth it. They even offer bulk upload although since I have never used it I can’t speak for the specifics.
Ecrater is a great alternative to ebay even if its not an auction site… Look at it this way… You pay 8.75% to ebay and 2.7% to paypal so over 11% that you don’t get. With a 20% profit margin you only get 8%. With Ecrater on the other hand you can enjoy all of the 20%… One sell may not make a difference but if you are selling 10 items and paying even as less as 100 dollars to ebay you can spend less than that and get great advertisement with your site. Its your profit so keep it….
Also paying 11% to ebay forces you to sell at atleast 20 to 25% profit to make anything. Selling it at 25% will leave you with only 14%. Say you have $1000 dollar sales, $200 dollars should be your minimun profit because you going to pay ebay 11% so you are left with less than $100. Now if you sold only have as my items on ecrater with %20 profit you would make the same amount. If you sold all the items worth $1000 you get to keep $200 profit.
I found ecrater while looking for a few craft items for my wife. While I did like the layout and the ease of finding the items I was halted in my tracks by where the shipping page was located.
An effective site goes:
* Show item count and purchase price
* Gather personal info (shipping address)
* Calculate and post shipping
* Post new total cost
* Then ask for credit card info
Having a site gather your credit card info before you even know how much it will cost is not a good practice.
If they did it that way I would be more inclined to order through them.
Hello everyone. I was reading the article about Ecrater and I have been selling with them since Jan 2008. They are a very nice place to do business and I love that it is free and you don’t have to pay anything to set up a store with them. I set up my Ecrater store in late Dec 2007 and I had a customer in Jan 2008. I create and sell hand painted silks, mostly scarves and wraps, but also pillows and sarongs. I plan to add custom made silk camisole tops in 2009. I have gotten a few nice sales from Ecrater. I hope to do better next year. I do try to advertise my site on various places. I have never sold on ebay and don’t want to because of all the bad things that I heard about them.
If you have been getting frustrated with eBay, just take a look at eCrater, the fees could not be better (absolutely FREE); The site is very clean and bug free, you have control over how you run your own business… your customers are your customers… You can over a multitude of payment options including money orders or checks. And the community is helpful and active in promoting each other. I am thrilled to have found them
Hello everyone I agree the fees at ebay were insane and mounting year after year I liked the Traffic but that was it I opened up a store with Ecrater and was impressed it was free and I had hits to
my store within mins of posting my items
ecrater rocks!
I left the other site ages ago and now I’m on ecrater.
IARE YOU MAKING ANY SELLS
I have to say so far so good with eCrater. I like that it’s free. It will save me alot on fees each month.
hi everyone i have been selling on ebay for a few years and just want to know if ecrater keeps any fees when you sell something if you could let me know like if i sold a item for 30.00 would i get all 30.00 as ebay is a killer all i do is pay there fees. thanks
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I sold on e-Bay for about five years and when I first started selling it was O.K. I sell vegetable and flower seeds and the average price for pack is only about $1.89 with the average order being around $15.00. On e-Bay I had to pay a listing fee, that kept going up each year, 8% to sell the item and then another 6% to 8% for a sell through PayPal. I nearly forgot-I also paid a monthly fee for an e-Bay store. When I started it was $5.00 but I think it is now around $20.00 per month! I was basicly making money for e-Bay with VERY LITTLE left for me.
e-Crater has been a wonderful experience and the best part is that it is FREE. My business is seasonal but I can see better sales each month that I am on e-Crater. I would HIGHLY recommend e-Crater to anyone who has a small on-line business. It is GREAT!
I love eCRATER.
Bye eBay, Hello Ecrater. I sold on eBay for 6 months, with all the changes we left like many others. Found eCrater and I can’t be happier, now I have listed 5 times more line items then I did on eBay and all for free, all within the first month. If we listed this on eBay we would be paying about $300-350.00 just to list, then if we sold something add more $$$ to the fee, then there is PayPal, add more $$$$. Now all the $$$ goes back into the business for more product.
I am a powerseller on ebay and am really sick of the high fees I have to pay them every month and the same goes for paypal which ebay owns. On every sale I make on ebay I have to pay them at least 15%. I have been selling on ecrater which is great because it is free. However, it doesn’t get the traffic that ebay does. Some people have complained about the payment process. It would be nice if my sales would go up and then I could leave ebay completely as now they want to eliminate the insurance option for mailing packages and hold sellers responsible for articles until they are delivered to the buyer. How and why am I supposed to be able to control what the usps does with the package? It is this cavalier attitude toward sellers plus their high fees that really makes me want to leave ebay.
I used to have an ebay store for about a year but found I was really only making money to pay to ebay. There was never anything left over. I then sold on ebay auctions only but the fees were still to high to justify selling small ticket items like second hand clothes. I used ecrater as well. It is fabulous that there are no fees and the site itself it so easy to use. But as the last poster stated, there just isn’t enough traffic. You have to do all the advertising yourself. It can be VERY time consuming but worth the effort if you have the time to commit to it.
I saw ecrater, and i like it \ , i got heats but no sell. CAN ANYBODY TELL ME , IF YOU BUY IN ECRATER WILL YOU ACCEPTED THE PAYMENT OF PAYPAL OR GOOGLE CHECK OUT.. I HOPE THIS HELP ME CAUSE I DONT HAVE GOOGLE I PUT PAYPAL ONLY, TO HELP ME AND BUYERS. ALSO ITS HARD WHEN YOU DONT HAVE ANY FEEDBACK
It is totally free to list items on [ebsai.com] like ebay online auction,Auctions is an eBay Alternative Auction Site www ebsai com,It was designed with you in mind and as an alternative to Ebay! As an Ex Power seller on Ebay, ebsai was fed up with their excessive fees and lack of customer service. Better yet, ebay started a random rampage of account suspensions on small businesses and consumers.The site will allow you to list your items as Want Ad or Auction style, the best part is it is FREE and we want you to be part of this phenomenon. This is a private invite to test drive our site and see what we have to offer:
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I was an ebay business seller and had run 3 business accounts with shipping quantity at about six to eight hundred pieces everyday. About 1 year ago I was just so sick and tired of Ebay for a lot of reasons and so, I just stopped selling there. Ebay had rung me for a few times this year. I just told them they are just sux!
Now I have found this site and although I have not visited there yet, I wholeheartedly wish this Ecrater every success in the future!
And…..good luck to Ebay!
I just started a store on ecrater, and so far it’s great. Really easy and I’ve had hits. I think I have figured out what the problem is. it’s the shipping matrix. can anyone help me with it. I want to set it up so it charges shipping based on sale amount. I have my paypal settings set right, but can’t figure out how to get it to show up in checkout. Any help will be appreciated. I emailed ecrater about it but haven’t gotten a response to my question. Thanks.
I was searching for free store hosting and came across a site for auctions. It’s free to list on here I don’t know about final value fees, I didn’t see anything but I might have missed it. Might be worth checking out. [vstoreauction.com]