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Has Ebay outgrown the average seller? I would have to say the answer is yes. The fees keep getting higher and the power sellers keep posting more and more items and using features like "Feature Plus" to be higher up on the listing pages, thus pushing the average seller farther and farther to the dreaded back pages, the pages that most buyers never even get to.

There are literally millions of sellers on Ebay. Even if you have a niche item to sell you can bet there are a hundred if not hundreds of people selling that same item. Unless you have a good marketing campaign or you're already a well-known seller with an established customer base, you can be buried in pages of what you thought was your niche item and never get a bid. Even if you could afford to use Ebay's "Feature Plus" feature, which places you closer to the front pages, there are so many people using it you may still only be found ten or twelve pages back. It is my opinion that most people won't go any farther then five or six pages on an item.

There are lots of other auction sites out there, but even with all the trouble the average seller would have being found on Ebay, you still have a better chance of selling something there then the other auction sites. Buyers know Ebay, buyers are comfortable with Ebay, and buyers know they are protected on Ebay. So even with all the other auction sites out there that don't charge fees to sellers or buyers, that give sellers less competition and allows them charge less for there items because there are no fees, Ebay is still your best bet to sell your items. To sell your items on the other auction sites would entail a lot of work advertising and getting the word out about where your items are. If you're going to do that you might as well build your own web site and put all of your efforts on advertising it. At least there there's no competition.

I sell art on Ebay and I do okay. The reason being is that even though there are a lot of artist selling on Ebay, I do a couple styles of art that very few artist are doing. I do surreal art and comic book superhero paintings. If you do a search for these keywords very few pages come up. Two, three, four at the most so that makes my art very easy to find. The one downside is that not a whole lot of people are looking for this kind of art. That being the case, my sells fluctuate a lot.

In closing, I think in order for the average seller to make any money on Ebay, they most find that rare item that very few if any other sellers are selling. However you most also realize that the reason few sellers are selling it may be because few buyers want it.

Learn more about this author, Michael Bridges.
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