For SEO purposes, you can also check out the free marketplaces. Blujay is for the UK. Oztion isn’t completely free, but is growing in popularity for Australians. Bonanzle is a growing lower fee alternative in the US that is open to international sellers.

Bottom line–do not count on eBay for 100% of your sales. Ever.

I have a real gripe with Amazon not allowing sellers globally to participaite. To quote one of their UK support staff, they said that they are perfectly happy for buyers worldwide to use the site, but they only want sellers resident in their assigned territories.

I’m seeing a similar form of protectionism building within eBay (and have done so for the last couple of years) through their various feedback and shipping policies, and in North America through the “PayPal-only by Proxy” medium of the paperless payments policy (ALL the alternatives on dot com are only available to sellers inside the US borders).

Unfortunately for both companies, as a scholar of history from a country with a rich and long history of colonialism, now expatriated in Asia, I identify the restrictive policies for overseas sellers as being both ecommerce protectionism and ecommerce colonialism – they want to plunder the finances outside their core regions, without allowing any return flow (i.e. 2-way trade) back to those regions.

It is exactly that type of approach that led to the formation of organisations such as the Fair Trade Organisation, various UN bodies, and several divisions within the World Bank and the IMF. Currently those organisations do not seem to have Amazon and eBay on their radars, hopefully that will change soon and eBay will again become a unified global marketplace with a level playing field internationally (as per 4-5 years ago), and Amazon will be forced into the same position.

I spent all last week working on my eBay listings. I spent yesterday evening tweaking the appearance of my website. Last night while I slept, following the revised visuals, my website sold more in those eight hours than I’ve sold on eBay since Easter this year.

eBay is either a dead channel, or so skewed against the non-favourites, and Amazon is a no-go zone for those outside of their core countries.

Final thought – in China alone, over 50,000,000 ecommerce websites added per year over the last 5 years – those who worry about “cheap Chinese imports” flooding eBay and Amazon should take the blinkers off. The Chinese, the longest established trading nation on the planet, really don’t like using eBay … and there’s wisdom in that stance – 5,000 years worth of accrued wisdom.

Gaz

Have you ever heard of this? I just had this problem with Amazon. I shipped an order which the customer received in 3 weeks. They filed an A-z guarantee claim and Amazon refunded the customer. The customer claimed we never emailed them which we did. Also Amazon sent us a questionaire asking about the order and the shipment. We filled it in the same day with the tracking number and 2 days later they take the money from our account. We keep going back and forth with them on emails and we recently got one that said since the order was received later than expected the customer can keep the merchandise and we don’t get paid. Unfortunately all we get are the same senseless emails from them. How can a customer receive the merchandise and we don’t get paid. The order was for $180.00. What happens if it was $2000.00? Its a scary situation. Can you give me any advice.
Regards,
Bill Curtis
JBK Trading

Enjoyed being with you in Las Vegas, in March at ASD, Steve. Your newsletters and presentations are always informative, helpful, and much appreciated!