eCrater.com – Just Another eBay Substitute?

‘eBay’ is in no doubt by far the best place to bid on new and used PCs, gadgets, and electronic components. It is also one of the best places to auction off your older equipment and bring in some money to finance your new purchases. But a number of critics of the on-line auction house argue that it has become too big for its own good. Luckily, alternatives are out there.

For buyers, because the marketplace is so large, scoring a genuine deal is tough. So many products are listed that finding just what you’re looking for can be overpowering.

Also, eBay’s user feedback system is weak: The website allows users to place only 80 characters of feedback for a seller. That’s not nearly enough room for a frustrated customer to speak out about how they got ripped off or why the product was unsatisfactory.

The Trade-Off: Slower Traffic

These days a common goal is diversification in selling. Business owners are seeking more places where they can broaden their market opportunities at a lower price.

Fortunately, different auction sites address some of the problems, but be aware of trade-offs when going the non-eBay route. The big one is that traffic is a lot slower: Less people will see your items, and merchandising something could take weeks.

eCrater provides free tools to help you craft your own Web store. It has no listing fees, and you can simply import your eBay products into your storefront. All wares are monitored by Google’s Product Search Marketplace, which provides up-to-date data about your offerings to potential buyers.

What is eCrater?

eCrater began on September 28, 2004 in California. It started as an idea that Dimitri Slavov had of a marketplace with no fees. This was a revolutionary concept in 2004. He really envisioned an easy to navigate site with no costs to sellers as being an ideal however attainable marketplace. His vision succeeded since as of February 2010, there were three million items listed on eCRATER. For More Information on this subject, take a look at the relevant page on the authors website.

‘eCrater’ is a market place similar to ‘ebay’, or ‘i-offer’, or ‘craigslist’. ‘eCrater’ is somewhere between ‘craigslist’ and ‘eBay’ in that its a more open system, but it also goes further than ‘craigslist’ to provide buyers and traders with support systems.

You, as the consumer, have to still do your homework and check the seller rep, just as you do on eBay. If you use Google Checkout, or Paypal for all your payments you will have no problems if the seller doesn’t follow through, the payment system deals with you and refunds immediately if the seller doesn’t respond, or doesn’t follow through with the sale.

From the sellers perspective, if you accept Google Checkout, they have protection services that in fact protect you.

With eCrater you can create your web store for free as well as join a thriving, free on-line marketplace. When sellers sign up with eCrater they get fully customizable online stores that hold an unrestricted amount of products for free! Also, it is possible to upload a link from your own site to eCrater.

A number of of the featured categories of products include art, antiques, collectibles, cameras and photo, books and magazines, computers and electronics. They also have movies, crafts, home and garden, music, sports and outdoors, toys and a baby category. eCrater doesn’t give any products to members to put on the market.

Other than those already listed, what are the Pro’s of being with eCrater?

The first benefit of eCrater is very obvious – its price!

Since it is a free marketplace, that automatically cuts down on fees that are incurred when you sell your products elsewhere. There is nothing worse than listing your product, have no one be interested and then you get hit with all those fees at the end anyway. That is simply so depressing when it occurs in other marketplaces and it is sooner or later harmful to sellers.

How can a marketplace flourish when sellers are being hit that way? Luckily, and thanks to the brainchild of Dimitri Slavov, that does not happen on eCrater because it is an excellent free marketplace that supports sellers as well as buyers.

eCrater is a free market place that goes above and beyond to help uphold their initial belief of free enterprise for everyone. That is something very uncommon in this money greedy world.

Due to the lack of fees, eCrater is an excellent place for a new business owner or start up to start out. Many times, when a business is in that start up stage, there is not a great deal of extra cash. That is why eCrater is a good choice for new businesses, because they won’t get hit with fees that could take a new business under in the early stages.

As an additional benefit, the online forum should be mentioned. The eCrater community has an extremely active online forum. One of the things that is included that really seems to be a terrific idea is that everybody who has an eCrater store and also has a Squidoo lens is listed in one place. Thus, it is possible to view everyone’s Squidoo lenses and aid in promoting each other.

This shows a good deal of respect for each other’s businesses and is mutually beneficial which is what is desirable in any online community, not merely selling communities. Squidoo has a very high reputation for driving up everybody’s traffic and it seems a clever and mutually cooperative system to list links to all the store owner’s squidoo lenses this way.

If you have been struggling to generate a good income from eBay – why not give ‘eCrater’ a tryout for a few weeks or so.

If you’re struggling with just getting started with a structured website for advertising take a look at this software package that may help you speed things up and automatically assist with niche finding, keyword search and web building, try ‘Above-the-Matrix’.

For Further Information on ebay, ecrater, craigslist etc go to the authors website.