Former #1 eBay Seller Glacier Bay DVD (Randy Smythe) Speaks

[thentavius]

Randy, you can use my quote as long as you keep it in the original tense. I do believe that eBay once represented all of those things to many people.

That's why it's been painful to watch as eBay creates a downward spiral and drags many of these people with it.

(of course, they could also help themselves and pull out of the spiral before they're stuck drinking from the fountain of decay).

[rksmythe]

thentavius  - Thanks! I will keep it in the proper tense (past tense) I'm finishing up 2 articles right now and will be doing an article  about "The Magic" of ebay. Of course it will be sarcastic in tone and I thought about using this quote in that article.  I'll post the link to the article when I post it.

Thanks!
Randy

[cranky_hippie]

Of course it will be sarcastic in tone

It's pretty hard to talk about Ebay these days without some sarcasm.


Unless you have pompoms. 

[mandy]

Part 2 of the Auctionbytes interview with Glacier Bay DVD:

AB: Were you selling exclusively on eBay?

RS: Yes.

AB: Up until the end?

RS: No, the last year we had the website up, we tried selling on Amazon and a little on Half. But I didn't like that, because basically in order to increase sales you had to be the lowest price. So again, if you don't pay fees, you have to be the lowest price, so you're cutting your margins somewhere.

Our website came into being in 2005. It took us quite a while because we did it ourselves. I probably paid a lot more money than I,... The tools that are available today, I could have gotten that website up and running very quickly.

It did pretty well. I think we did almost $200,000 in sales off the website in the first year, and that was from March to December. But because cash flow was tight, we couldn't invest in any kind of marketing for it, so we had to see if we could move our existing customers over.

And that became a problem. You can't really contact your own customers through the eBay system. They kind of slap your hand if you send them an email...

full article: http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m10/i02/s02
part 1 of the interview is here: http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m09/i29/s01

EDIT: an alternate link for the interview
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article...aydvd.html

[xppman]

And that became a problem. You can't really contact your own customers through the eBay system. They kind of slap your hand if you send them an email...

There you have it Randy.
Another BIG problem w eBay. Restraint of FREE trade.
From day one I saw this BS as nothing more than it is.
Another way to try and fleece
small business owners by restricting their activities on the eBay website.

I am proud to say that early on I was able to convert many
buyers over to my website for the sale...
cutting greedbay out of FVF's.

At one point I even had my own BUY NOW buttons that took them straight to my
own check out and bypassed feebay all together.
I'm so glad I did that.

Now you can't even harvest a bidders e mail before the auction ends.
These clowns have become so desperate in their tyrannical restrictive measures
that anyone with half a brain would never be loyal to eBay for obvious reasons.

[Anita]

Randy,
Just curious... as to why you didn't add a link to your website in your e-mails to eBay customers?  Or did you?

[BellisimaJ.]

Randy,

Great interview and kudos for encouraging sellers to move on.

Do you currently operate a website? Just a matter of curiosity and looking for common ground.

[rksmythe]

Anita - Yes, we did add our website address to evey email going out and we encouraged customers to check out our website for their next purchase but found that eBay buyers like getting more unique feedback and are comfortable shopping on eBay. The customers we were able to move over to the site seemed to be newbies.

BellisimaJ. - I no longer sell anywhere. If I could find a product category that still had margin I might reconsider that but Media is not the category to sell in.

[BellisimaJ.]

BellisimaJ. - I no longer sell anywhere. If I could find a product category that still had margin I might reconsider that but Media is not the category to sell in.

I hope you don't mind my asking, but are you planning an ebook, Randy?

[BellisimaJ.]

Btw, Randy, the Stores Board is tough. Be careful.

And, FYI, brainchemicals in the thread you are posting in, is a LIEWORLD troll.