Unhappt campers

[Chaslie]

There seams to be a lot of unhappy eBay users (campers) at present due to:
1. Increased 'store' fees
2. Skype introduction

Here is the announcement regarding increased store fees. This is one of the biggest issues I have seen regarding eBay for some time: http://www2.ebay.com/aw/au/200607.sh...06-07-20085624

Here is the responce from eBay sellers: http://forums.ebay.com.au/thread.jsp...=1153395330727

I predict eBay is heading toward some 'very rough' ground shortly due to user discontent over the past 12 months.

Whilst we can acknowledge, "The bigger they get, the hungrier they get", the point is we still all need to appreciate the customer dictates the future of our own business - no matter what size it is.

[gregbatch]

I have never even blinked at Ebay. As huge as they are, they still have a small part of the classifieds market. The only segment to ever surpass the print classifieds is employment, but it took all the big national sites and big regional sites combined to do it. Sure, Ebay has alot of traffic, craigslist, yahoo, etc., but people like local, especially after hearing all the stories of scams. And Ebay is so user friendly that drop shops are popping up all over to handle getting things online for people because they haven't a clue. One thing is for sure, the bigger they get the more out of touch they get. I really don't find anything worth a crap on Ebay anymore. If anything good is there I can't find it wading through all the garbage ads and people trying to get rich. If you have a carton of golf balls, do you need a listing for each individual ball?! That's what some of their advertisers do.

68 is a totally different model. If someone has the ability to write and send an email message, they have the abilty to use 68Classifieds. It's simple. There isn't any percentages, reserves, or other red tape for them to wade through. Just set a price and advertise. And they don't have to wait days for an auction to end, in fact, I've had advertisers sell items and have cash in hand within an hour of listing.

One thing I have thought about though that would benefit every one of us here is developing a links page to every 68classifieds site. Perhaps it could be hosted and updated in one spot and we could just pull it to our sites with an include on a page, rather than just linking to it, so it would pick up as content in search engines on all the sites. People who are surfing and find one site, may find a site close to home, PLUS everyone linking to everyone else could boost search position considerably. I don't know how many licenses are out there, but think what just 100 sites linking to you could do. Then there are the specialty sites that would benefit from being linked to all markets. By linking we could build a very large network and give the likes of craigslist a run for their money. Just a thought. Any thoughts? Any interest?