GBStamp.co.uk

For me the strength of eBid.net is their stores. For a very modest lifetime membership joining fee you can run up to FIVE separate branded stores on eBid without any charges. As a lifetime member of eBid you will even benefit from free individual basic auction listings and only pay small charges for any of the listing extras you want. Compared to eBay the fees are negligible.

Having five stores at your disposal makes it easy to compartmentalise your business and allow each store to focus its marketing. For example you may have a GB stamps store, a First Day Cover store, Postal History store, a British Commomwealth stamps store and a foreign stamps store all operating under different brand names and separate URLs but all serviced by the one eBid seller account.

This amazing affordability makes eBid a real alternative to eBay as a venue to host stores for budding stamp dealers looking to keep costs under control. However, the savings do have a hitch attached to them. eBid doesn't attract the same volume of casual buyers and searchers browsing around their site as eBay does. You will need to work at getting your philatelic stores listed by Google, Yahoo and Bing etc. Many eBid sellers report success because they promote themselves via blogs and directories to point both people and the search engine crawlers to their stores.

So, I look at eBid as a great venue for a store if you have a natural mailing list, blog or information website that can channel customers toward your offers. If the aim is to open a store and wait for customers just to 'show up' then you are almost certainly better off paying the eBay fees and benefiting from the marketing they will do on your behalf.

In many respects eBid reminds me of eBay many years ago. They still use a simple two way feedback system and you can choose to use auctions or instant sales. They also offer a few extras that eBay never have such as 'first bid starts auction' and 'auto extending auctions' when a bid arrives in the last few seconds.

eBid actually operate on a global level meaning you can easily market your stamps and covers to most english speaking countries. Checking their landing page will confirm to you they have specific sites in eighteen countries including the UK, US, Canada and Australia.

So, if you are starting to consider actively trading stamps, first day covers, postal history or any other philatelic items to make a profit or simply to help subsidise your hobby, it's worth a few minutes to check eBid out to see if the fee savings available will prove good for you.

Stamps  Philately

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