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10 Best eBay Alternatives to Sell Online!

Written and researched by experts at AvadaLearn more about our methodology

By Sam Nguyen

CEO Avada Commerce

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Why should you be looking for eBay’s alternatives?

Looking for an online marketplace to sell goods but don’t know any eCommerce platforms except eBay, don’t worry. You will explore dozens of interesting places to do business online via this article.

Even when you are now having a shop on eBay and are satisfied with it, don’t miss this post. Perhaps after going through it, you will change your mind and decide to move to one of these eBay alternatives or extend the business by opening another store on them.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if there are some problems, and then eBay closes their marketplace? (It seems to be improbable now but, you know, nothing is impossible). One day, eBay announces that their policy will be changed, forcing you to pay much more money to sell items there? Or, your targeted customers are no longer available on eBay?

Only when you have a large or medium-sized business is eBay an ideal option. Thus, if your business scale is small (no more than £2,000,000 turnover annually), eBay will consider you an annoyed merchant rather than the loved one.

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So what is the reason for it?

One of the greatest roots for the likelihood that merchants and customers decide to stop using eBay and switch to another platform is its policy, particularly the “Time and positive feedback” one. It is obvious that this resolution favors buyers when there is a problem happening between them and the sellers. Whether the fault is yours, eBay’s, or customers’, eBay can give a helpful option, which is beneficial to both sides.

Finally, the buyers are often inclined, they will be satisfied with the result when their feedback is solved well and eager for their next order. Obviously, eBay is fulfilled with the result since they don’t lose any customers.

However, it can be easily seen that eBay is not on your side; they don’t pay much attention to your and any other sellers’ interests. It sometimes causes lots of disagreements but still be the best solution for eBay: it helps minimize the time, money, and the rate of trouble and legal issues. In some cases, even when you are right, your points can still decrease, which is unfair.

Your relationship between you and eBay, in fact, is not a win-win one: from multiple figures and analytics, eBay finds out that the likelihood you leaving it is really low despite how much you are discontented with it. You may lose your items when eBay policies don’t protect you, but you will blame this for unfortunate or lack of experience if it happens infrequently. You will persuade yourself that maybe you did something wrong, but you didn’t realize, and the losses result from it, you have no choice.

You are the only one to lose money. Additionally, there is no way for you to stop this loss since you cannot, and then, if the loss is too high, maintaining your store one eBay will be out of hand. Hence, closing your eBay shop is unavoidable.

Therefore, in this article, we would like to introduce the top 10 alternative platforms to eBay to you. Besides the similarity to eBay, these marketplaces offer sellers various benefits that eBay can give you. So, let’s start discovering, and leaving eBay will no longer be challenging for you.

Top 10 best alternatives to eBay for sellers:

Bonanza

Founded in 2008, Bonanza, which is also known as Bonanzle, is a quite new platform in the industry. However, it seems to work well and is now regarded as one of eBay’s biggest competitors. As a users-friendly platform, Bonanza has already been rated as the top platforms for communication and the most favorite marketplace in the Seller’s Choice awards in 2015 as well as appearing in the list of 360 best companies chosen by entrepreneurs.

Moreover, when creating an online shop on it, you will have the opportunity to participate in the marketplace with over 40,000 online stores. In this platform, you can sell nearly everything (more than 22 million products), including items in fashion, electronics, leisure articles, vehicles, and more. It is particularly suitable for merchants who own stores selling unique goods, which makes Bonanza outstanding among various selling online webs.

This web can give you many more benefits than eBay: you can save a large amount of money on listing your products on your eCommerce store since it is free on Bonanza. Hence, you can list out as many products as you want without worrying about the fee. Only when your products are sold, do you have to pay the fee for each transaction, which, on average, is around 3.5% (lower than eBay).

It also enables you to add items from plenty of platforms so that you can work from anywhere, with any devices. Instead of haggling as in eBay auction’s style listing, you will offer a fixed price, so the only thing your customers have to do is to click to the items, add to the shopping cart, and then rapidly pay the bill. Although the traffic driven to Bonanza is less than the one of eBay, the rate between sellers and buyers is much lower (1:1,300 compared to 1:10 of eBay).

More customers, fewer competitors means that the ability to sell goods will be higher and consequently you will gain more revenue. More than that, Bonanza automatically sends all the product rosters to both Google and Bing; advertising your product lists will be easier than ever.

Vinted

Created in 2008 with approximately 21 million members, Vinted is considered an attractive selling place for merchants in the fashion industry. Unlike eBay, Vinted is an online market created for selling second-hand products. Both males and females can buy items here, but it seems more useful for females since most items here are fashion, accessories, and beauty products.

In addition to the ability to sell items, people can exchange with others or give them to the one that needs it. Thus, based on your desire, you can effortlessly choose the suitable options.

To sell goods here is extremely easy; you only need to post your product images from all the angles to help visitors have a comprehensive overview and write a short description of your items. It can be about the size, width, length, quality, producers, etc. These images and information will help them know clearly about your product and increase their trust as well.

And when a person is keen on an item, they will express it by favoring the post. After that, they may ask some questions to clarify their wonder and in the process of waiting. Vinted will turn them to the immediate buy, so they can buy it right away if they like it.

Moreover, Vinted also runs as a social media platform: when a browser follows you on Vinted, they will see your posts on their feed, which helps you increase the ratio of successfully selling. Also, by the feature named “Best matches,” you are empowered to advertise your products to your target audience who have the search history relevant to your products.

The shipment and payment are also supported well on this marketplace: even when the sellers don’t offer the payment system fitting your need, buyers can still use it by turning on the secure payment system. Nevertheless, they have to pay a small amount of money to guarantee each sale, and they can only get the credit when they receive the items, approve them, and not complain about anything.

Furthermore, Vinted also gives you the ability to generate a package that consists of multiple products to save time and money used for packaging and shipping.

Ruby Lane

Ruby Lane, which was generated in 1998, is a wonderful place for selling products with vintage style. Possessing about one million users per month and nearly 2,500 shops offering over 15,000 vintage items, it is a top priority when people want to purchase vintage goods like art, jewelry, antiques, glass, and so on.

The buyers of Ruby Lane spread all over the world, but they mostly live in Australia, The UK, Germany, and Canada and their average age is over 40 and the majority of them is women (this is eBay to understand since these kinds of products on Ruby Lane seems too much more suitable for female).

Instead of paying commission as on other platforms, sellers on Ruby Lane will have to pay for the listing fee (19%/ listing) and $100 for the establishment. Perhaps someone will think it is extremely expensive. Nevertheless, things are different. If you aim to do business for a long time, this policy will be a good deal: you only have to pay for Ruby Lane at the time, and after that, the money you get from selling goods will all go to your wallet.

Unlike eBay Ruby Lane, merchants focus on more specific targets interested in vintage products and often over 40. As a result, it will be much easier for you to be determined whether the items are suitable or not and generate excellent content living up to your targets’ requirements. Moreover, because the targeted buyers of Ruby Lane are over 40, it is necessary to pay more attention to the quality of products and posts than quantity.

Mercari

Another marketplace we would like to introduce to you is Mercari which appeared in the market from 2013. Despite being a fresher in this field, Mercari has gradually generated a stable status for itself when concentrating on creating an online platform for second-hand selling on mobile devices.

Up to now, there are more than 100 million downloads, and 100,000 items are uploaded to Mercari every day, which allows browsers to order everything ranging from clothes, phones to jewelry. Thus, with your mobile phone, you will be able to buy everything you want without switching to a desktop or laptop whenever you want to buy a product.

Besides, it is really easy to start using and selling goods on this marketplace: what you need to do is get the app from Apple Store or Google Play store and then upload your products with images, price, and description. When a buyer chooses it, it will be delivered to their address, and eventually, you will receive the money.

Mercari also offers such rules related to the cheap commission and money-back guarantee policy to attract more sellers. When sales are made, it will take you a 10% commission for each sale, which is pretty low compared to others like eBay.

Thanks to categorizing and branding arrangement, the time you spend on finding your wanted items will decrease by 70%, and you can exploit this time for another useful purpose. With high rates on both Appstore and Google Play Store, Mercari deserves to be your option for eBay’s alternatives.

Amazon

Famous as the most visited website in the world, it is unbelievable to know that Amazon used to be an online book store - the biggest online book store globally. Things change rapidly and after several years, Amazon becomes the platform having the highest traffic driven, which is the dream of every online marketplace including eBay.

Like eBay, Amazon is trusted by people worldwide, and you can find anything on Amazon, so every day, there are millions of visitors accessing this website. Also, relevant products are displayed to you based on your data in the search history, which helps increase this platform’s personalization.

However, there still exist some differences between Amazon and eBay: While eBay works as an online auction house that empowers buyers to bid for a suitable price, Amazon is like a supermarket where every product has its fixed price. Hence, it can take a week to sell a product on eBay since only when a person chooses the “Buy It Now” is the product sold, but your products on Amazon can be sold in a couple of minutes.

What is more, you don’t have to pay the listing fees for each time adding new items to your Amazon shops; the only fee you are compulsory to pay is just the commission ones. Amazon also has Amazon’s supply chain, which doesn’t exist on eBay. With this supply chain, items will be stored in various locations, nearer to customers’ addresses so that they will receive their products sooner. So, if you want to do business effectively on Amazon, you need to offer a competitive price, which is the most crucial reason buyers select your store.

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Etsy

With more than 1.6 million active merchants and 26.1 million active customers, Etsy deserves to appear in your eBay alternative lists. This platform was introduced in 2005 and has been chosen as top Seller’s Choice for ease of use in 2016 as well as ranked third in terms of the ability to make profits in the world (preceded by Amazon and eBay).

Located in an apartment in Brooklyn, New York, Etsy started as an online place to sell beautiful things like handmade and vintage items, craft supplies. After that, the types of products are extended that enable businesses to sell such things as jewelry, accessories, home decor of gifts, etc.

Nevertheless, it is still famous for vintage and craft items so that it will be much better if you are also selling these kinds of goods.

In general, there are multiple similarities and dissimilarities between Etsy and eBay. They both require sellers to pay for the listing fees. However, eBay’s money is higher than the one of Etsy, which is only $0.2 listing fee/ item and 3.5% for commission. Etsy’s price also lasts longer than on eBay: On eBay, the fixed price lasts only 10 or 30 days. Meanwhile, they are four months - 4 times higher, and after every four months, the prices for each product need to add new prices to help their buyers keep up with the latest news.

Besides the similarity, there are numerous things that make Etsy and Amazon different. Firstly, eBay focuses equally on every product, Etsy specializes in handmade and vintage products, while eBay prefers big brands, handmade/ vintage and boutique are the most favorite items supported. Although the traffic driven to eBay is much higher, Etsy is regarded as the perfect place for specific groups of buyers. eBay runs as a popular online auction platform, Etsy gives users the ability to sell and purchase directly.

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Craigslist

Via Craigslist you are able to sell everything, even yourself (which can be done in the section named “personals”). It takes no charge for every item you update: no listing fee, no commission, so that you can freely upload as many products as you want without worrying about the fee. Craigslist is only a forum where you can upload your post and others comment, reply, or do something else to interact with you.

Due to no charge, the interface and purchasing procedure of this platform is really simple. You can post items with the price, image, and description. And as usual, if a buyer selects them, you can gain money from your products.

However, since you don’t need to pay for anything, there are both advantages and disadvantages of Craigslist when you put eBay in front of this web. You can post any products on eBay, but it is impossible on Craigslist; what you are allowed to post are much smaller such as jobs, vehicles, and more. When there is any problem or even dispute, Craigslist will not participate and let you and your buyer’s deal with each other.

This, indeed, is pretty troublesome if you have no experience. You can also not to your products globally; instead, you only can sell your merchandise to people living near you. Otherwise, you will find it difficult to seek a carrier provider because Craigslist doesn’t involve this step. Particularly, there is a unique place in Craigslist called “free.” In this section, people don’t sell their items, they just want to throw them away. It is useless to many people, but if you are skilled at fixing things, it will be a great bargain.

Thus, Craigslist will be ideal for small stores that only sell locally and want to control all their eCommerce stores’ activities on their own. It seems like it would be a great idea to have a shop on this marketplace if you are running a store that sells too big or expensive products since you and your customers can connect to each other and then encourage them to go to your store try and buy it. By doing this way, you can immediately receive the money and save a large amount of money for shipment.

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eBid

eBid link is the following option for you if you are looking for a platform that sellers can sell anything with not too high a price. Like eBay, it is a platform that is trusted by many customers, and you can sell everything here but on a smaller scale. When using eBid, you will have to pay much less money than eBay: 3% commission per sale and $.99 to 99.98% registration fee. It can be easily seen that these prices are much lower than the one of eBay, which helps you reduce the likelihood of risks.

Nevertheless, the lower price means that the quality is also low. The traffic driven to this website is much lower, so that the number of transactions is likely to lower and lower if you don’t have a clear plan to solve this challenge.

With all these benefits and drawbacks, eBid will be your ideal choice if you don’t want to take risk, invest too much money on different types of fees before getting approval from the marketplace. Or, if you have your fans and know how to make traffic for yourself, eBid is definitely your wise option. In addition, to balance out the difficulties and benefits from eBid, it is necessary for you to be aware of many other ways to promote your online stores like social networks or forums.

Rakuten

Considered as the Amazon of Japan, Rakuten will be suitable for you if your targeted customers mainly live in Japan. In Japan, a country with more than 126.8 million (2019), the rate of people using Rakuten accounts for over 90% of internet users, such an appealing market for any businesses.

In Rakuten, you are given various tools to assist you in designing your store according to your wish, which is impossible on many other marketplaces. Moreover, Rakuten doesn’t possess any brands. Hence, you will never have to compete with the brand of the marketplace itself. In fact, this website is trusted by multiple companies such as Office, Dyason, Dell, Lenovo, and so on.

Frankly, Rakuten seems to have more things in common with Amazon than eBay since it is a website for selling virtually, but not for bidding online. It pays much attention to increasing each shop’s personalization by allowing them to design, change, and edit their products, content, blog, and biome closer to their customers via pricing, marketing, and advertising right inside the platform.

On the other hand, Rakuten takes you a little bit more money than eBay. When using Rakuten, you need $33.00 for the seller fee per month, 8% - 10% for category fee, and $0.99 for commission. From those mentioned above, Rakuten will be for you if you want to switch to a similar platform to eBay and Amazon or change your market toward the east, especially Japan.

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What is Rakuten and how does it work?

Walmart

The tenth marketplace in our roster today is Walmart. As we know, Walmart is the biggest company in the field of retailing globally. To keep up with the development of the age, Walmart introduces a namesake online marketplace where sellers can upload and sell their products.

With the largest retail company’s background, Walmart can easily spread its market to the world, especially since this corporation tends to concentrate on the eCommerce industry. Like Amazon, Walmart is a competitor of itself, but it is still a worthy choice to replace your eBay shop.

Also, you can exploit the enormous reach and customer base of Walmart to support your business. Statistically, Walmart’s online sales are now not as high as eBay, but Walmart has just taken part in the race, and it is quite hard to say how things will be changed in the future.

When comparing and contrasting eBay and Walmart, it is explicit that there are fewer types of Walmart fees than eBay: no fee for setting up, no fee for maintaining your store but only 8 -20% for each successful transaction. Sellers are unable to create an auction in Walmart but only a product list with a fixed price. The items with competitive prices will receive more priority on Walmart, so you will be affected and trapped in the race if you are not conscious.

What is more, Walmart owns several brands, which means that you are likely to compete with them. It doesn’t sound good, since these brands, obviously, will be prioritized much more on itself marketplace. Thus, it can be said that Walmart will be the top priority for the store who both want to sell online and put their product on the Walmart supermarket. By owning a shop on their website, you can easily impress them and then persuade them to cooperate with you both virtually and physically.

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How to Sell on Walmart?

How to find the best marketplace to sell stuff on?

How to find suitable alternative to eBay for you?

It is evident that you have dozens of options for eBay alternatives on the Internet but based on your own desire, some platforms will be more suitable than others. So let’s consider your desire and the marketplace’s features to know which one will be for you.

Amazon, eBid, and Bonanza: similar to eBay but cheaper

In terms of size and number of items, Amazon is a wise replacement for eBay. However, Amazon doesn’t offer sellers the ability to hold an online auction. Hence, if you are looking for a platform with this feature, eBid should be taken into consideration. Although the traffic driven to eBid is not as high as the one of eBay, it is still a great place for you and provides you multiple ways to promote your products.

Eventually, if your top priority is the range of your items, your suitable marketplace will definitely be Bonanza - the direct competitor of Bay. On Bonanza, you will never have to be anxious about the limit of products as well as how to communicate with your buyers easily and efficiently.

Vinted, Etsy, and Ruby Lane: perfect places to sell crafts and uncommon things.

Beside eBay, these two platforms are really interesting places for your business due to their creativity from the items sold there. In 2016 Seller Choice, Etsy was rated on top that ranked right after eBay. Perhaps they are not fit for what you are seeing, but if you want to come out of your comfort zone and try something novel, Etsy and Ruby Lane will be valuable options.

Bonanza: list product with no fee

In comparison to eBay, Bonanza will help you save more money spent for the fee. In it, there is no need to pay for product listing so that you can add as many items as you want. In fact, Amazon, another alternative of eBay, also has this policy but Bonanza still is better in the issues related to fee since its commission is also lower than the one of Amazon, of course, also lower than eBay.

Even though eBay with a large number of buyers accessing everyday can help you balance out this problem, things are not always running as you wish. So be careful and think over the competitors and the demand for your product, and its return policy as well. And if you want a safe choice, there is no way to deny Bonanza. Finally, don’t forget to read the guideline before establishing your own Bonanza store.

Craigslist: sell products to people near you.

If you have just started your online business and want to sell your products to the local, Craigslist will be your good choice. To many people, this marketplace is cheap but quite annoying and unsafe since Craigslist doesn’t offer any secure policy for payment and support sellers and buyers in dispute.

But if you intend to sell your goods to such places as local markets, it will be more helpful than others. Particularly, through Craigslist, you will have opportunities to meet your customers and introduce to them more products to boost your sales.

Rakuten and Walmart: wise options for Japan and America market

Although Rakuten and Walmart enable people to sell their merchandise globally, the main market of them are Japan and America. Rakuten, which is used by 90% internet users in Japan, is the most popular marketplace in this country of cherry blossoms. Meanwhile, Walmart with the base of its corporation that owns the biggest system supermarket in America, will be a worthy option for your American market. Walmart, although, has just appeared in the eCommerce industry, it is predicted to develop rapidly in the future.

Not satisfied with all platforms above? Let’s explore the comment

These online marketplaces above are not all the eBay alternatives, so let’s see which platforms other sellers recommend in the comment below.

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Conclusion

eBay is a mighty marketplace for selling online but it is not a perfect option. Hence, the 10 websites above are the alternatives for eBay we would like to introduce to you. They all have their own good and bad sides compared to eBay so remember to consider your requirements before deciding which one is suitable for you. We hope that after reading this article, you can select for yourself a platform to replace your eBay shop as well as discover more about these websites.

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