Many Pheebay members already use eBid as a lower cost alternative to eBay. While eBid obviously still have a long way to go before they ever threaten eBay's dominance of english speaking online P2P trading, there's still a lot of features to like about their site and, in a recent newsletter, eBid made three notable claims about their recent record breaking performance:

• 3,125,929 Live Auction Listings
• 10,523 eBid Stores Active
• A 16% Month on Month Rise in Sales

While the month on month sales increase is likely due as much to the lead up toward Christmas as anything else, there's no doubting the steady progress eBid have made since originally launching back in 1999. Still privately owned - and therfore governed by tight budgets due to limited resources and investment - eBid now offer one of the few reliable alternatives to eBay that can boast actual sales happening in volume and a history that nearly rivals eBay's in longevity too.

Having managed the switch of the eBid website servers from the UK to the US earlier this year it seems the time is now considered right for another major step forward. On the 5th January 2010 at 6am GMT (1am EST) the eBid website will briefly go down in order to reveal a new look and some new service enhancements. For now, most of the changes are tightly under wraps, but existing users are apparently expecting something exciting.

The owners and management at eBid are sounding confident about the impact the new changes will have as they've also announced that the long running promotional price of their popular Seller+ lifetime membership account will end the same day as the revamp takes place. The Seller + lifetime deal effectively allows a seller to list unlimited basic auctions entirely fee free for life so I assume eBid are expecting the planned revamp to make this offer look somewhat too generous!

Is this going to be the moment eBid emerges as a truly viable contender to eBay?