New (British) Marketplace

[KevinRockett]

OnBuy launched today.

A British run marketplace offering a monthly subscription based service for UK online sellers.

I am digesting at the moment but first-thoughts are positive and something I feel is definately needed in a space dominated by Amazon & eBay.

I am sure this thread will develop (I hope so..)

 

[silvermusic]

Sounds like eBid, take £50 a month and do nothing else. That's why I prefer eBay's pricing which is mainly pay by results. I've seen so many eBay/Amazon so called competitors come and disappear after a short period of time over the years I've lost count.

 

[KevinRockett]

Not much reaction here to this news but plenty over at TameBay from UK online sellers and most of it negative (the subscription model being the main focus of the criticism).

http://tamebay.com/2016/11/new-onbuy-marketplace-launches-for-seller-sign-up.html

Shame really as a new marketplace launch is quite a rare thing and an all-British one, even rarer.

I hope OnBuy suceed but it looks like they may have a difficult start getting sellers on-board for £50 per month in the early days with low or no sales anticipated to cover the monthly sub.

 

[fisicx]

It's been done many times before and none survive. They are all cheaply built with little thought given to the needs of buyer and seller and virtually no budget for marketing.

It doesn't even rank for its own business name.

 

[wayzgoose]

I've never understood why eBid has never taken off. It's certainly a survivor and is pretty easy to use with low fees compared to Ebay.

 

[Ian CRA]

all MADE in britain might be better. otherwise its the same chinese stuff as ebay. it will be hard getting a marketshare against that without a USP.

 

[Matt.WD]

I'd say anyone looking to take market share away from the big guys needs to start in a single categories first (like how eBay started). Otherwise it takes very deep pockets!

 

[Ian CRA]

Even ebay began as a niche auction site of the Beenie Bear craze in the late 90s. Thats what it got known for and being no other auction outlet at the time, greatly expanded.

 

[silvermusic]

eBay was born in a different time, it was a true online pioneer. The online world in 2016 is a very different place to start up nowadays.

 

[silvermusic]

I've never understood why eBid has never taken off. It's certainly a survivor and is pretty easy to use with low fees compared to Ebay.

For the very simple reason it spends next to nothing on driving buyers to the site compared to the millions eBay and Amazon spend. Sure if you're prepared to put in the time and effort driving your own traffic to your listing it may work. However, in my view you'd be better off driving traffic to your own site. I'm quite happy to plonk a new product on eBay and watch if fly with little to no effort from me and pay them a small percentage, my margins are still excellent. However, I do understand that those fighting competition on small margins may not be in the same boat.

eBid may work for some, and their business model of subscriptions obviously works for the site owners. However, it'll never be an ebay beating platform, it's been around for over a decade and still shows zero signs of ever challenging eBay.

 

[Matt.WD]

I don't think its quite as widespread now, but I remember a time when there wasn't much you could type into google that didn't show an eBay ad!

One thing I find interesting these days with eBay is the % of sales traffic that comes via a good Google organic position for listings vs visibility on eBay itself (which for most competitive niches seems quite low, at least to begin with). I've put most of my good performance down to the former.

 

[TotalWebSolutions]

They look to have launched with just a few sellers on board but it will be interesting to see how it does. I noticed that you cannot 'view sellers other products' from an item page even though it has the seller's name and logo.

 

[Ekim Saribardak]

The website looks nice, but they need advertisement and promotions to get sellers.

 

[antropy]

It doesn't even rank for its own business name.

Comes up first for me?

Site looks alright but it doesn't seem to explain what makes it "British"?

Also a search for "christmas lights" returns only 3 products, none of which are actually what I meant, so they've got a long way to go adding products.

 

[fisicx]

Comes up first for me?

And for me as well now (didn't the other day).

I agree thought that the product range is poor. And the site is rubbish on a phone (which is the device of choice for many people).

 

[Noldemann]

Amazon is gonna eat us all. Nothing can compite.

 

[19ninety]

Surely they would be better off offering a free period for sellers, to speed up the population of the site. I would of had a go at OnBuy ... but I'm not prepared to spend £49 pm basic or £89 pm for Managed Seller (£588 a year/£1068!!!!!) with the probability of not selling anything for many many months!!
I've been meaning to try eBid for a while now, just haven't had the time to do it.

 

[wayzgoose]

I've been meaning to try eBid for a while now, just haven't had the time to do it.

I once sold something on Ebid - just once !

 

[19ninety]

Just to follow up on this thread, got an email from OnBuy today, they now (sensibly) offer a free account - which however has a 6% fee, I'll take that until (if) it gets going and sales out way the equivalent £89p/m fee.

 

[Feet Warmer]

Just to follow up on this thread, got an email from OnBuy today, they now (sensibly) offer a free account - which however has a 6% fee, I'll take that until (if) it gets going and sales out way the equivalent £89p/m fee.

Hi, thank you very much for this update. Just signed up as well. Let's see how things are going.

 

[webprojectuk]

This would be great addition but Ebay and Amazon are not easy to demolish or compete against. For one Amazon is constantly developing and to be honest for buyers it's a great place. Ebay on the other hand is starting to catch up again but if another company could pick at it's weaknesses than they could have a chance.

 

[David P]

This doesn't seem to have anything going for it at the moment. From what I can see there is very little inventory and no obvious USP as to why a buyer might use it.

I did find one thing hidden in the How it works section that explained how they pay tax in the UK. If I was them I would be highlighting this a lot more prominently, as well as playing on the british factor more across the board.

 

[Deleted member 280420]

I once sold something on Ebid - just once !

I've had an eBid acount for some time now, premium account, but I got in on a special offer so it didn't cost me a lot - good thing with eBid is the pricing, bad thing is lack of footfall - you really have to promote your products to death on the internet to get them noticed, the only benefits over having your own website is you products get listed on Google Shopping. Not that that's helped me sell anything there...

 

[19ninety]

They do need to sort their SEO out, the onbuy search previews are pretty poor vs. ebay.

 

[14Steve14]

I have just been checking that my saved links are still all working and came across a link to this selling platform. I had totally forgotten about it, so had a look around the site. nearly every search I tried listed no products. I then started searching for products that I sell, and again no results found.

Now this could go two ways. Either the site has no interest to people that sell the same products as I do, or they need someone to be the first and hundreds of people are looking for my products.

Does anyone know a way of finding out what searches people on the site are looking for.