Making a Living from Your eBay Business (2nd Edition)

If you want to skip the auction format, there are a few sites let you sell your merchandise at a fixed pricekind of like selling an item with a Buy It Now price or in an eBay Store.

Amazon Marketplace

If you're tired of the auction grindand sell items that are more suitable to the fixed-price formatconsider selling at the Amazon Marketplace. This is a subset of the Amazon.com site that lets individuals and small businesses sell all manner of new and used items; it's particularly well suited to selling used books, CDs, videotapes, DVDs, and other fixed-priced items.

Marketplace items are listed as options on normal Amazon product listing pages (to the right of the main listing) and show up when customers search for specific products. Figure 29.7 shows a typical listing of Marketplace items for sale.

One nice thing about selling in the Amazon Marketplace is that customers can integrate their orders and payments with other Amazon merchandise. Customers place their orders with and pay Amazon; then Amazon informs you of the sale and transfers payment (less its fees and plus a reimbursement for shipping costs) to you. You ship the item to the customer.

You pay $0.99 to list an item in the Marketplace (although the fee isn't charged until the item sells) and then pay Amazon a percent of the final selling price. You pay a 6% fee for computers, 8% for electronics and cameras, 10% for office products, 12% for musical instruments, and 15% for all other items. Each listing lasts for 60 days. To learn more or place a listing, click the Marketplace link on the bottom-left side of the Amazon home page (www.amazon.com), in the Making Money section.

Craigslist

The dominant online classified advertising site on the Web is the venerable Craigslist. As you can see in Figure 29.8, Craiglist has local sites for all major cities and states, from Atlanta to Washington (DC). Posting a classified ad is completely free; there are no listing fees or sales commissions involved. And, in many categories, Craigslist is a major force, equal to eBay in terms of number of listings and sales. It's worth checking outespecially if you're selling something big or difficult to ship across the country.

Google Base

An up-and-coming competitor to Craigslist is Google Base (base.google.com), from the good folks at Google. As you can see in Figure 29.9, Google Base is a big database of product listings. Items you sell can be paid for via Google Checkout, which is Google's payment service that competes directly with PayPal.

The nice thing about Google Base is that it's a totally free service, for both buyers and sellers. Not only can you post items for sale, you can also choose howor, more precisely, whereyou sell or distribute your items. If you want to use Google Base as a classified advertising services to sell items for local pickup or delivery, you can. If you want to offer items online for shipment anywhere in the country (or the world), you can. It's your choice.

While Google Base is starting small, it never pays to underestimate Google. It's possible that Google Base could become a true competitor to eBayor, at the very least, a viable alternative to Craiglist. Only time will tell.

LiveDeal.com

If you're interested in selling your goods locally, consider LiveDeal.com (www.livedeal.com). As you can see in Figure 29.10, this site lets you market goods locally or regionally, on a fixed-price basis. LiveDeal.com was founded by one of the original members of the eBay development team, so it works and feels quite a bit like the eBay sitebut without the auction process. The site doesn't charge any listing or final value fees; the only charges are for various listing enhancements and for the use of PayPal. It's worth checking out if you have large or heavy items that would be difficult to ship nationwide, or if you want to supplement your eBay business with more local sales.