Thursday, June 17, 2010

Amazon or eBay?

A few years ago Golf had used eBay a lot to bring in extra family income. He even became a power seller! EBay has radically changed in the three years since we've been sellers and many sellers have left and other online auction houses have started, taking on the monolith.

Then the other day a friend of mine was saying how her husband had sold a couple of extra new and valuable kitchen items he had but didn't need. I think they were like hood filters or something.

She went on to tell me that he sold them right away on Amazon! What struck me was that eBay is no longer the default choice for people looking to sell their stuff here and there. Apparently Amazon is now!

Amazon is more seller friendly, it seems. For my Pixar site, The Leaping Lamp, I had applied for the eBay affiliate program and was rejected. Twice! Look at my site, what is there about it that is inappropriate to sell eBay products? Amazon took me on right away and in less than a month, I've referred nearly $300 in business to them.

There's an interesting battle brewing between these two companies... who's going to dominate in the coming years? Which company will people think of using first? Probably a third party out of left field, totally unexpected. Another Google - that's what I think.

1 comment:

Kevin said...

Hi
Interesting comments regarding Ebay. Left Ebay a year ago and moved my bookstore to Amazon, just felt ebay were riding roughshod over their best customers (the sellers!)
Regards
Kevin