October 8th, 2010 by Skip McGrath

We know that a lot of small sellers feel they are no longer welcome at eBay.  Here is the experience of one such seller who found a home at iOffer.com

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by Maria Stanton

In Feb 2010 I was trying to find an alternative to selling on eBay since I was not making enough to pay listing fees for 900+ store listings. So I signed up on Bonanzle and eCrater. While I was looking up what other sellers were doing to avoid eBay’s new terms, ioffer.com appeared stating that I could transfer my eBay listings and list for free. So I signed up and clicked on to transfer my eBay listings. Within 20 minutes most of my entire eBay store of 900+ listings of vintage silver-plate flatware was listed on ioffer.com.

What really surprised me was I started to get sales within a couple of days. On Bonanzle and eCrater, I still have not had any sales.

There are some good features about ioffer.com that I really like:

• No listing fees
• Easy to transfer from eBay including feedback score
• Several checkout options including PayPal, Google Checkout and personal checks
• Site changes are minimal
• All photos are free
• Listings do not expire

With vintage silver-plate flatware I just need to update inventory quantity as I get more of a particular pattern.

Successful online selling requires that you list inventory every day or at least every week. What I have noticed about relisting an item on iOffer is that the original listing date appears instead of the date it was relisted. So instead of relisting I list a similar feature hoping to get better exposure in search engines. I should probably being doing this for my other sites too … goantiques.com, ecrater.com and bonzale.com.

On iOffer, Sellers have an option to set a firm price, make an offer or list a price with offers also accepted. All offers and counteroffers are posted on the listing. Seller can check private message option to keep message from posting to listing. Most buyers make fair offers and even accept counter offers.

No one selling site is perfect and like eBay and the other sites, iOffer has some issues too, but they are fairly minor in comparison.

Checkout for buyers has some issues. Several buyers said they received an error but they probably did not realize that a sale is not complete until processed by seller. Google Checkout is like Amazon.com in that a seller has 7 days to process the order before a sale is complete and buyer’s credit card is charged. PayPal charges buyers immediately. Whatever checkout option is used seller also has to update their iOffer account with payment and shipping updates.

Response by email to ioffer.com with seller questions can be slow … but it is about the same as other sites like goantiques.com and even Amazon.com.

My ioffer.com sales amount to a couple hundred each month with sales coming at the very end of the month or very beginning. My thought is buyers by at the end of the month if they have some extra cash or they buyer at the beginning before paying bills. Most silver-plate buyers have been replacing missing pieces to their sets or adding extra place settings or serving pieces over a long time and buy only when they can afford it.

Maria Stanton, Long Beach NY … http://whispersltd.ioffer.com/

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