goWholesale

I just went to overstock.com and saw that they now have auctions. Has anyone tried selling anything over there??
I havent signed up yet , I thought I'd jump over to the boards to see if anyone knew.

I know they wont be able to compete with Ebay, but I think they may be a good alternative for additional income. They should have decent traffic, I only looked at some of the auctions in the clothing section but looks like they are getting bids, well at least a lot more than what I usually see on Yahoo. I'm gonna sign up now and list a few things and see how it goes.

I just found out they were launched September 24th, just a few days ago and already they have a decent amount of bids. I'm impressed. They say they are looking to challenge Ebay. Here's a news release on their launch.

I like what they are saying about building a better auction site with the sellers in mind.
http://auctions.overstock.com/cgi-bin/m ... opicID=122

Mason. I do not think it will work but I DO think it has potential to work because they are already positioned in the deep discount/cheapskate market. I believe this is at least one of 2 of ebay's largetst market. The other one being antiues/collectibles/unique (which oversock will have a hard time competing with).

But the things you pointed out are obvious. No one is doubting that ebay is well-known and well-established. The question is why is that so hard for other large companies who have the money to hire the proper and adequate mgmnt, marketing, and customer service departments.

I am looking for the reason why others have failed stealing even 1/100th of a persent of marketshare from ebay (ie, amazon, yahoo, ubid, etc.)

The only one I know of that did not seem to deviate from the auction busines to stay afloat is bidz.com. They seem to hold their own very well. Not sure if they ever started with the goal to be the other big auction site, though. htey definitely are not a big ebay rival but they have survived at what they are doing for a good while now. And as far as I know bidz was started as a pretty small operation.

But did you notice? If you go directly to their home page
( http://www.overstock.com ) you'll see they decided to go all out make their auction section the homepage instead of their regular shopping section. This is a pretty bold move in my opinion. Brand new customers to their site may get the impression that they are mainly an auction site. Given a lot of circumstances, this could be a very good thing or a really bad thing. They have balls, I must say.

Such a move makes it seem that they have a plan that they are confident in. The only question is do they really have a good plan and the resources to roll it out or are they just setting themselves up for exceptance into the "Ebay's Failed Competitors Hall of Fame"?

This is really exciting now that I think about it! I'll never sell there but I am always looking forward to seeing ebay having a major competitor someday. The antiques/collectibles market will be hard to steal but overstocks may be able to position themselves well in the discount auctions market.

We'll have to wait and see.

I dont think they will make much of a dent in Ebay's business but I think they may be able to a better job than Yahoo. Personally I've bought a few things on Overstock before.Thats usally the first place I look when i'm in the market for home furnishings.

One of my first wholesale purchases was from there BtoB site, i dont even know if they have that anymore. When I used to work in a law office I hate to admit it but myself and the other paralegals and secretaries spent a lot of time online at Overstock.com or Smartbargains.com. They get a lot of press all the time, Every time I read something in magazines or see it on tv about the best places to shop online their name has almost always been mentioned. Mind you this is just for Overstock itself.
I noticed a few weeks ago that I was seeing their tv ads a lot more, They have a catchy lttle ad themselves about the Big O. I usually see them on Lifetime TV, I guess they were trying to target women shoppers, I guess thats no coincidence that the majority of auctions with bids are in women's apparel. Thats right up my alley.
Its too early to tell but I dont think they'll ever really be able to compete with Ebay but I think maybe they have a chance at being a better auction site than Yahoo or Amazon.

There's one thing I noticed when I signed up, everyone must put a credit card on file. I am fift fifty on this, well maybe 70/30. I like it that it may deter those who want to just bid just for the fun of it. There's too much of that on ebay already. On the other hand some genuine bidders may be put off by this. But I should also say that I read on the Ebay boards a while back that Ebay was thinking about doing this sometime in the future, currently they only ask sellers and people with free email accts like yahoo and hotmail to put a credit card on file when they sign up.

Its too early to tell but I dont think they'll ever really be able to compete with Ebay but I think maybe they have a chance at being a better auction site than Yahoo or Amazon.

Well it won;t take much to surpass Amazon's Auctions because they are virtually non-exostennt at thei point. In fact, I have no idea why they don't just take the auctions section down.

There a few kinks on Overstock that I think they should have worked out before they launched. The main problem is they dont have a bulk lister.
They have something called the O Lister that is in beta testing that was released to some people. The help page said the OLister is supposed to be on my home page but I cant find it anywhere. I found out on the message boards that it is in beta testing. They need to get this straightened out in a hurry. I cant imagine anyone sitting there and listing tons of auctions. I did 5 and it seemed like it took forever. I am used to listing the same thing automatically with a click of the button. Hopefully they will have this worked out in the near future but I have to cut them a little slack I guess for a 5 day old auction site. They actually have customer service by phone, I wonder how long that will last if they ever take off. Well there seems to be some buzz about them, I went to a coulple of other auction boards and people are talking about them. Albeit sellers, but they are talking.

Here is a question, Ebay doesnt allow for outside sales but how about promoting another auction site?

Oh, and the few electronic items I bought there turned out to be refurbished junk that was awkward to use and had poorly designed features. Like a phone/answering machine I paid $100 for. What do you bet they start having lots of "house" auctions of all their refurbished electronic junk?

Well, I cant complain, I have been happy with the purchases that I have made from Overstock. I have bought miostly home furnishings not electronics. As a rule I never buy electronics online. These things have too many potential problems, I want to know that if there is a problem, I can take it back immediatedly, get someting else or my money back immediately. I have been a happy Overstock customer. I guess eveyone has theit own definition of whata good deal is. If its less than the retail prices in my neck of the woods then its a good deal to me.

The item I listed on Overstock I also listed on Ebay.I have one bid on the item on Overstock, no bids yet on Ebay.
This is going to be a an experimental phase, I think its way to early to start bashing them. I mean they are hardly a week old in the auction business.

And lets not start talking abouot fakes, as most of us already know Ebay is Fake City Heaven. I know of more than a few Ebay power sellers sell counterfeit goods. Most of the electronics on Ebay is refurbished goods as well.

personally I think it will work out for them, I bet you in another 2 years or so Ebay will be trying to buy them out of the auction business.

I just browsed the Overstocks.com auction site. Saw lots of dropship junk and lots of LV fakes, complete with hundreds of lines of keyword spamming. Enjoy! LOL

<<< There's no secret to taobao.com. They have the same service as eBay China, but it's totally free of charge. The conclusion is: eBay is not unbeatable, you just need to try really hard. >>>

If it's free of charge, how do they make money?

mspacman wrote:<<< There's no secret to taobao.com. They have the same service as eBay China, but it's totally free of charge. The conclusion is: eBay is not unbeatable, you just need to try really hard. >>>

If it's free of charge, how do they make money?

They're owned by alibaba.com, which is a B2B platform. The founder and owner of alibaba.com has said that they don't plan to make money with taobao.com in the first 3 years. Basically they just want to kick eBay China out of the market.

Another thing, they post ads on taobao.com, tell sellers to go look for products on alibaba.com, which I think works perfectly well since alibaba.com is the largest B2B web site it's owned by the same company.

mspacman wrote:Reputation with whom? I've bought household furnishings and bedding from Overstocks.com and didn't think they were particularly good deals. I stopped even browsing their website a year ago. It was mostly junk at slightly-below retail prices.

Well, that may be true that you do not like them but the fact is that overstocks has a positive OVERALL reputaion with online buyers.

There are TONS of people who hate ebay but overall, eBay has a positive reputation with online auction lovers.

IOW. it does not matter what your perception is of them, it matters only what the majority of their other buyers think of them. Given their success with the straight selling part of the site, I would venture to guess that most people who did business with them do not have the same perception you have.

<< HOWVER, I must say that the act atht they say that they plan on advertising heavily for xmas yet they only have a beta version of a bulk lister that is hard to find is not a good start. >>>

What's also not a good start is the way their search engine can't filter out keyword spamming. I've tried to find several different things there and came up with the same worthless hits each time. Dropsellers of Chinese trinkets with dozens of keywords like Pamela Anderson in an auction of cheesy teacups.

I would like to see someone take a peice of Ebays pie, I agree with the earlier post that the reason they are most successful is their customer service for the buyer.

In my opinion Ebay does not treat sellers very well. I have only sold a few items on EBay mainly because it is difficult to profit.

Ebay needs to crack down on the sellers who are selling bootleg dvd. I see people on here complaining all the time about Vero for clothing. I never see bootleg dvd sellers on here whining.

They also need to crack down on the rediculous shipping rates being charged. I saw one auction in which a person is chargin $379.00 shipping on 200 public domain movies. That is rediculous. This is what destroys the market for EBay.

If you read the last topic I posted it is very telling. Many wholesalers and manufacturers do not like Ebay mainly because of the deceptive tactics being used to sell there products.

Yes I did post that. That is from a buyers perspective. I mainly buy on Ebay.

I have given it a little more thought though after reading the info that I posted about manufacturers concerns. I do think it hurts the image of the product and retailers in general.