When you think about alternative venues to eBay you will almost certainly consider Amazon. Amazon has been growing fast and year on year has apparently been outperforming eBay in many respects lately. However, while Amazon sellers have the benefit of free listings, they still pay a hefty final value fee to Amazon which often proves a turn off or encourages sellers to look at the cheaper, sometimes completely fee free, alternative venues like eBid, iOffer, CQout or Blujay. It is these sites that I believe need to be better understood by sellers. They need to understand what the service is they offer and, more crucially, what they don't offer sellers compared to eBay.

All too many website owners and sellers believe the process of listing items for sale and creating a categorised marketplace of items for sale is THE service eBay provides and, given the right software, it can easily be duplicated. As a result we regularly see enthusiastic individuals grab a copy of ProBid and set up their own "eBay killer" overnight. They have seen the forums and read all the blogs and know there are millions of unhappy eBayers just waiting to use their new cheap or even free website. It's a sure fire winner isn't it? Sadly, it can then prove quite painful to witness these same site owners spending weeks or even months trawling the very same forums and blogs touting for users and, at times, letting their frustration boil over when they find virtually nobody joins up or lists anything. Some seem to believe that a free listing must be better than an eBay listing and their forum pitches quite frequently say exactly that. Unfortunately they're way off the mark and, sadly, most will have to learn the hard way.

Anyone that intends to get involved in online auctions as a website owner or seller really must make sure they understand what it is that eBay do and what it is the alternatives do. Most of the time it is far from being a comparable service. If you believe eBay is simply providing sellers the ability to list items in a categorised database and then displaying these listings to browsing buyers then you need to think again as this is NOT why people pay eBay. They pay eBay to make sales.

Virtually all websites that interact with users will store information in a database. At Pheebay we store articles, news and peoples forum discussions in a database and then display them on request. We don't charge anyone any fees for this service or storage. So the input, storage and display of data by eBay is nothing at all special and it is certainly not the activity that merits sellers paying generous fees. Of course eBay is a large site owned by a big company and they offer some leading edge technology to enhance the listing and storage process, but basically they are just storing and displaying user data like millions of other websites do for free.

So if listing in their categorised database and having those listings shown to buyers is NOT the valuable service that eBay provide to earn fees then what is? The answer in one word is marketing.

As I sit at the keyboard writing I can instantly think of ten alternative venues for sellers other than eBay and Amazon. Not one of these sites offers any serious marketing effort on behalf of their sellers compared to eBay. In many cases this is fair enough as, if the sellers don't pay for any marketing, then why should a venue do any marketing? Indeed, how can a free venue do any serious marketing for sellers?

However, time and time again we see people launching repetitive, vicious attacks on eBay for their "greed". Nicknames like Feebay, Greedbay and WePay litter the internet and they are usually typed in anger by sellers annoyed by the latest changes. But is this entirely fair? I certainly criticise many of the things eBay do - including some of the less than subtle fee changes - but when it comes down to basics, I am a supporter of fees and how they can shape seller behaviour and I don't like the fee free model. However, as I flit around the various forums and blogs most days, it sometimes seems that hardly anyone really understands or values what it is sellers are getting for their eBay fees.

In many investment orientated forums and blogs you will see people raving about the eBay business model. No inventory needed, no storage space needed, no shipping costs. All of these expenses are met by the sellers and yet those same sellers then pay eBay on top! Wonderful. But in truth eBay deliver an exceptional marketing service to their sellers that no other site - Amazon aside - comes even close to matching.

In the past I've written many articles, blog and forum posts trying to help sellers use alternative sales channels and explain how they can market their own listings from the savings they make by switching from eBay. Alas it seems I may have been naively taking for granted that most sellers understand what marketing is and how it is an expense a regular business cannot avoid if it is to survive, never mind prosper. Yet I still see the same ridiculous complaints in forums and blogs that should have made me realise the vast majority of small home based sellers don't understand even the most basic elements of marketing a business. As a result some sellers, who claim they should be taken seriously, ignorantly criticise the cheap or free alternative venues for not generating them sales in any worthwhile volume. I guess they wont understand why I usually feel embarassed for them when I read these posts.

Let me repeat the earlier point. The reason eBay is successful and the reason why they can justify the fees they charge is because they do an enormous and highly efficient amount of marketing to attract huge volumes of ready, willing and able buyers to their website and the listings sellers have placed in their database. Without this level of buyers on eBay it would be virtually no different to any of the alternative venues and, as many of those are free, eBay could neither justify their fees or continue to earn them for very long.

So this is the difference. When you list with a company like eBay or Amazon you are employing one of the best online marketing machines in the world to help you connect buyers to your listings. Sellers must realise this quality of marketing costs money, lots of money. No fees means no income and means no marketing. Low fees means low income and means virtually no marketing.

This is the fundamental difference between all the cheap or free alternative venues and eBay. Once this is understood then my previous suggestions about switching some - or even all - of your online selling activity to alternative sites may make more sense.

I hope it's now obvious that I have little time for sellers who use alternative venues to avoid eBay's fees but then moan about low sales while thinking the only marketing they need to do is to post a few flattering comments in their chosen venues forum. Sellers must understand what eBay do to get traffic to their sites and go some way to replicate it well enough on a scale that will generate their desired level of sales. If they are capable of marketing their listings cheaper than the eBay fees they would otherwise have to pay then an alternative venue - or even an independent website - becomes a genuinely viable trading option to consider. But sitting back relying on a venues modest Adwords spend (which will usually revolve around their own domain identity rather than any specific products) and organic search engine traffic is not going to produce the viable numbers necessary to justify being called a business.

If sellers haven't studied eBays financial reports before they should make this a priority. If they do they will quickly see that a huge percentage of the fee income eBay receives goes straight back out again to market the site and all the sellers listings.

If sellers haven't studied the marketing and advertising that eBay do they should also make this a priority. Once you look past the obvious brand awareness promotions, look at the fortunes spent on advertising PRODUCTS. The actual things that people sell. Millions upon millions of dollars are spent every month to get the buyer traffic to eBay and a large percentage of the fees the sellers pay is used to fund this crucial activity. Without it eBay would be just as cluttered with tumbleweed as many of the alternative shopping venues are.

So there we have it. If you are looking for a hobby rather than an income, like a chatty forum and enjoy listing things for fun and will be satisfied with the odd sale here or there as a bonus then of course the cheap or free alternative sites are a great option. But if you want to list things to sell regularly and generate a viable income and profit then consistent, reliable and effective marketing of your inventory is a must. You can either pay eBay to do most of the work or you can keep control of the marketing budget and arrange things yourself to maybe save a little cash in exchange for the time you will need to invest instead. There is no free ride to viable, regular profitability for online sellers.

Don't get me wrong, hobby sellers do exist and I don't for a minute disrespect them. The alternative venues can indeed prove excellent sites for them to get what they want. Elderly or otherwise housebound folk who appreciate the social aspects and the odd sale as a bonus on top of their pension or benefits. Housewives or husbands looking for a little pin money and some online company. It's easy to see why this type of user wouldn't like the eBay model which isn't at all geared to them. eBay is about sellers doing sales and not about sellers counting listings. But sellers looking to generate regular sales and reliable profits must make a point of understanding the importance of marketing to their own business.

Now with that all said, if anyone is aware of a free to use eBay alternative that every month spends millions of dollars on Adwords, a bundle on Yahoo advertising, has 90,000 well incentivized affiliates including the likes of Google, regularly advertizes on TV, runs a radio station, has a network of thousands of independent developers actively marketing tools and solutions, loads of widgets displayed on blogs, billions of inbound links all over the internet, has a massive amount of product reviews available, has its own network of educators, has a huge article base indexed by the search engines, has a PR machine that guarantees widespread traditional and electronic media attention daily and will reliably keep buying traffic in huge volumes on behalf of its sellers month after month, year after year then I'd be very keen to hear about it in our forums.

Of course you can also mention the next free to list ProBid site you are about to launch from your back bedroom in our forums too but please don't be surprised or get frustrated and annoyed if I and many others don't sign up immediately.