Sneaky's Alternative Auction Site Sales (GMV - Gross Merchandise Value) Guide

[amy]

Add this sales stat--I think Milbid has set a new world record for lowest sell through rate.  ;D

Here is one stat not posted. We have 128 items sold since the start of MilBid.

128 sales in 3 months :. That's an average of 42 sales per month. : The average member sells 1 item every 3 months. :blinkie:  If I had to estimate the site's monthly GMV based on 42 sales per month it would be under $300

The site has a whopping 131 members.  They've been running a listing contest in order to pad the listing count so they can be added to PSU's chart.  The listing count has been rising by hundreds daily this week (600 yesterday, 800 the day before) and is now 9800...the membership count has shown little growth (32 new members in May).  The site also has no traffic -Compete.com shows 760 unique visitors in April.

Though it was a great contest, you also set a huge milestone for MilBid. Your listing will show the world we are a viable venue for auctions, stores, and members. If we can cross 10,000 then we have hit the ultimate goal for any new auction site. Everything is pointing to us to become successful. In a year we should be playing with the big boys of the auction world

Umm no, the ultimate goal for any auction site from a seller's perspective is buyers boinktard--something which your beyond pathetic site sales numbers prove you don't have. Boinktard.

more on this boinktard and his site, including some choice quotes, here:
http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...l#msg68114

EDIT: Sneaky you need to adjust Plunderhere's GMV.  It's fallen from $8100 to $6000 monthly since you started this thread.

[maggie777]

128 sales in 3 months

I shipped close to 8000 orders during that time period. Why? Because I wasn't wasting my time listing at Milbid or any of the other rinky dink hellholes that OAI forum users gravitate towards.

Why do sellers bother with these godforsaken shi.tholes?  Open up your front door and walk outside if you're desperate for 'community', 'family', and human interaction.  Better yet, if you want to call yourself a business owner,  write a fuc.king business plan and run your business like a business instead of putzing around pretending that listing a few pieces of shi.t from the garage on an 'alternative' site run out of someone's basement makes you a business owner.  It doesn't.

If I offended anyone with this post, too fuc.king bad  , I've watched sellers fall into the same trap with these 'alternative' sites since Gold's 9 years ago.  They weren't the answer to escaping eBay then, they aren't now, they never will be.

[sneakymagenta]

[quote author=maggie777 link=topic=17692.msg70287#msg70287 date=1211661455]

128 sales in 3 months

I shipped close to 8000 orders during that time period. Why? Because I wasn't wasting my time listing at Milbid or any of the other rinky dink hellholes that OAI forum users gravitate towards.

Why do sellers bother with these godforsaken shi.tholes?  Open up your front door and walk outside if you're desperate for 'community', 'family', and human interaction.  Better yet, if you want to call yourself a business owner,  write a fuc.king business plan and run your business like a business instead of putzing around pretending that listing a few pieces of shi.t from the garage on an 'alternative' site run out of someone's basement makes you a business owner.  It doesn't.

If I offended anyone with this post, too fuc.king bad  , I've watched sellers fall into the same trap with these 'alternative' sites since Gold's 9 years ago.  They weren't the answer to escaping eBay then, they aren't now, they never will be.

[/quote]



[quote author=bargainbloodhound link=topic=99.msg308#msg308 date=1122921923]
Every year, the same story happens with sellers being led to message board hyped auction sites that don't have a chance while they completely ignore the sites which could provide a viable alternative (i.e. sales)...and every year the failure of this forum hype to become reality causes many sellers to return to eBay with the mistaken belief that there is no life (i.e. sales) anywhere but on eBay.

The moral of the story: forum spamming auction site owners over the years have done more to drive sellers back to eBay and help eBay keep its monopoly of the US auction market than any advertising eBay could possible buy.[/quote]



[quote author=amy link=topic=5129.msg54849#msg54849 date=1180139834]

Auction sites are like people...they all have their own good and bad points. I choose to look for the good in something than look for the bad in all

The only reason I list on any auction site is to make money.  If the total monthly sales on a site are less than my monthly gross sales then the site sucks as far as I'm concerned because the only good point of any auction site to me is sales. I really don't give a crap if a site's community/forums are warm, fuzzy, and fun when I list on a site because warm, fuzzy, and fun does't pay the bills. HiBidder and 90% of the other small auction sites that are advertised on OAI forums fall into this "sales too low to waste my time listing at" category.

I'm not going to recommend any site whose total sales are as low as HB's.  Sellers have wasted too much time over the years listing on places that were heavily promoted on forums--and most of those sellers have ultimately ended up back at eBay (or quit selling entirely) due to the lack of sales at these sites.  If the sellers had avoided places like HiBidder, SellYourItem, LunarBid, BidChaser,  etc and instead focused on building their own websites (or listing on sites with sales like Amazon, Etsy, etc.) they probably could have broken free of eBay.
[/quote]

[bargainbloodhound]

Better yet, if you want to call yourself a business owner,  write a fuc.king business plan and run your business like a business instead of putzing around pretending that listing a few pieces of shi.t from the garage on an 'alternative' site run out of someone's basement makes you a business owner.  It doesn't.

The days of being able to throw any item up on any auction site and instantly have a steady stream of income are long gone due to increased competition (or in WP Ray's words: a dynamic increase in participation rates).  In today's ecommerce environment you need to know how to run a business in order to succeed. You need to have a business plan and you need to (quoting Maggie)  "run your business like a business".  A large percentage of OAI sellers don't run their selling operations like businesses (the large number of auction sellers who think they're exempt from basic things like charging sales tax is one indication of that). 95% of all new businesses fail within 3 years and that also applies now to online selling businesses due to the dynamic increase in participation rates in recent years  (in the early days of eBay the 95% rule didn't apply but that was then and this is now).  If you're an online seller in 2008 you can't run your business the same way you did in 2003 and expect to have the same success rates...you need to adopt your business plan to a changed market environment (and adopting means more than just changing venues- i.e. running off to PH or WP and making the same mistakes you were making at eBay isn't adopting).

I've watched sellers fall into the same trap with these 'alternative' sites since Gold's 9 years ago.  They weren't the answer to escaping eBay then, they aren't now, they never will be.

:ditto: The sellers who look to these boinktard run sites as the solution aren't going to escape.  There is an alternative to eBay but its not the alt sites (whether they be auction sites, fixed price, or malls) that are being promoting on OAI related forums by their owners.  A general rule of thumb: if a site's owner is promoting the site on a forum run like hell because that site doesn't have the resources to build an effective multi-seller site that will be competitive in today's ecommerce world and be able to provide enough buyer traffic to make it worthwhile for serious sellers.

[mandy]

Updates on Wensy and Milbid:

$126,112.13 worth of items sold since 06/03/07

$9700 monthly GMV.  In eBay equivalents: the site's monthly GMV is less than one Gold Powerseller's monthly gross.

FYI, Wensy uses Rainworx - the software made infamous by Wagglepop One

$1249

$249 monthly GMV.  In eBay equivalents: the site's monthly GMV is less than one eBay hobby seller's monthly gross.  In offline equivalents: a 16-year-old part-time McDonald's cashier who works 20 hours per week grosses more in 2 weeks than Milbid's monthly GMV. That same 16-year-old grosses more in one hour than the average Milbid seller's monthly gross sales.  :blinkie:

[sneakymagenta]

Alsoshop sales

50 something sales in 11 days... with 3900 items

33 stores = an average of 4 monthly sales per store
95 members = an average of 4 monthly seller to seller sales per store

[sneakymagenta]

YourHighBid.com

            1 Year Site Totals / Monthly Average
Total Items Sold  1,818 / 152
Total Gross Sales  $5,285.85 /$441

Sitewide ASP (Average Sales Price) $2.91

Per store averages (85 stores)
Average store owner's yearly gross $62.12
Average store owner's monthly gross $5.18
Number of yearly sales 21
Sales per month 1 or 2

[mandy]

[quote author=sneakymagenta link=topic=17692.msg71232#msg71232 date=1215666375]
YourHighBid.com

            1 Year Site Totals / Monthly Average
Total Items Sold  1,818 / 152
Total Gross Sales  $5,285.85 /$441

Sitewide ASP (Average Sales Price) $2.91

Per store averages (85 stores)
Average store owner's yearly gross $62.12
Average store owner's monthly gross $5.18
Number of yearly sales 21
Sales per month 1 or 2


[/quote]

An update to Sneaky's YHB stats.  The number of listings increased from 17,000 to 20,358 during the past week.  Sales did not increase.

July 9-16 YHB Site Totals
32 items sold
$97 total gross sales

[bargainbloodhound]

Why are the ASP's on all of these sites around $3?

[amy]

[quote author=mandy link=topic=17692.msg71388#msg71388 date=1216219807]
[quote author=sneakymagenta link=topic=17692.msg71232#msg71232 date=1215666375]
YourHighBid.com

            1 Year Site Totals / Monthly Average
Total Items Sold  1,818 / 152
Total Gross Sales  $5,285.85 /$441

Sitewide ASP (Average Sales Price) $2.91

Per store averages (85 stores)
Average store owner's yearly gross $62.12
Average store owner's monthly gross $5.18
Number of yearly sales 21
Sales per month 1 or 2


[/quote]

An update to Sneaky's YHB stats.  The number of listings increased from 17,000 to 20,358 during the past week.  Sales did not increase.

July 9-16 YHB Site Totals
32 items sold
$97 total gross sales

[/quote]

YHB had 2 sales totaling $8 in the 14 hours since you posted--about 9 cents per store owner.  :