Ebay, to ebay or not to ebay, or even Etsy...

Frankly, eBay doesn’t want your business anymore and is primarily interested in becoming Amazon.com and catering to large sellers. The small sellers are being priced out of the market with all the eBay and PayPal fees.

You’re also right about people looking for the best price on eBay. Not the best place to sell distinctive works of real value.

Rich, you may do better with craigslist. People there are also looking for deals, but I’ve found that the problem with Ebay and Etsy is the shipping cost for larger items. At least with craigslist, you’ve got people that are close enough to you to come pick it up. If I ever get ahead some, I plan on posting a piece that is shippable by DHL, on Ebay and Etsy to see how it goes. You should be in a good place to be selling your rocking chairs at local shows and fairs. When I lived in Maine, I use to go to the shows and craft fairs throughout Maine, and I always had several customers from NY and CT. Good luck and let us know how it goes.

-- Tim -- http://tmuli.com

Yeah, the problem with the craft shows is I have not been able to build up any kind of inventory, nor do I really have a place to store them once I do.

I use craigslist a lot as well. Mostly for the big items too big or heavy to ship. All good points and ideas.

Thanks.

-- Rich, WNY, www.nyrockingchairs.com

yeah – as you mentioned , eBay, and also Craigslist are mostly populated by people that are looking to get things at a lower price than market price… so If you’re talking high-end furniture, I wouldn’t plan on those two as my showroom, if you know what I mean.

-- My Drinking Club has a Woodworking Problem...

Most of the furniture I have seen on ebay goes pretty cheap or gets no bids. Even some of the antiques get sold at alot lower price then I would think. Yes, I noticed alot were “for local pick up only” so that could be a good reason.
I subscribe to Charles Neals theory of finding a place to display one or two large pieces, that people can place orders for. And also have some smaller items that people can buy and take with them.

-- MISSION FURNITURE-My mission is to build furniture

I like that theory Dave and it is one I am working towards. I have chairs in a few local galleries, but again that limits me to the local area. I am working on getting some smaller stuff in the galleries, some pens are there and have sold, but trying to get bigger than a pen and smaller than a chair…

-- Rich, WNY, www.nyrockingchairs.com

Rich,

I bet you could sell some of those boxes if the materials are cheap enough. Remember, when you have unsold time, anything above the cost of the materials is profit. When you have a waiting list, you only pick the highest profit jobs.

-- Jim

Jim,

And when the wife gets her projects on the list, there is no profit and they take all the time :) J/K I like doing the projects for our house more than anything, it is always nice to get up and see the fruits of your labor and know it is still going to be there for your kids to inherit. I cannot even stomach looking at the “furniture” they sell in the stores these days. The last “solid oak” piece we bought means they trimmed the particle board veneered pieces in 1” pieces of oak so you get a solid edge, whoohoo.

-- Rich, WNY, www.nyrockingchairs.com

LOL. I’m still trying to get my wife more involved in woodworking because I really enjoy hearing her advice and encouragement. You’re a lucky man. Sometimes I search Craigslist for free furniture in case someone is getting rid of some real wood and I’ve noticed that the heavier a piece of furniture is, the more likely the person is to conclude it’s real wood. In fact unless it’s made out of some kind of exotic hard wood, the heavier it is, the more likely it’s made out of Chinese MDF. LOL.

-- Jim

I feel, from experience marketing online and offline, that selling
high end furniture online is a losing battle for the small shop.

Furniture is a tactile experience and in order to sell it you are best
off getting the customer to touch it and get hot under the caller,
desperate to possess it – with no thought of bargain shopping.

The one company that comes to mind as a successful marketer of
high-end furniture through direct mail is Thomas Moser. They
have showrooms now and have successfully established a powerful
brand – they get chosen by architects for large public projects and
also by wealthy people to do whole house-fulls of furniture.

If you have a line of smaller items like lamps, boxes, and pens you
might be well-advised to aggressively build a mailing list with emails
as well in order to market those items heavily in the gift-buying season -
a time when people are definitely ready to buy.

The more you portray yourself as an organized, but quaint workshop
with a pleasant range of products the more you’ll capture the
hearts and imagination of women – who control a great deal of money
in terms of spending on home furnishings and gifts.

-- http://amherstcabinets.com - also a marketing consultant with expertise in direct response marketing for woodworking and online businesses - http://COPYMATCH.COM

Thanks Loren…. Well said.

-- Chris

Plus we all know the sort of people at craft shows, the women with the money and the men who want to be anywhere but there, but get stuck holding the bags of stuff the women bought.

-- Rich, WNY, www.nyrockingchairs.com

Craft shows.

Crapft shows really.

If there is a blue tarp for carpet and infield grass below or maybe even in the more “ornate” show rooms an” easy up” canopy above to keep the searing sun off your thinning pate then you my friend are in crapft show territory.

If you sell the products of your labors indoors, with permanent flooring and (gasp) overhead or at least “not completely ambient” lighting, and it’s of decent quality, you will probably do O.K.

The idea of She Who Must Be Obeyed holding all the money is, while a reality for some, pretty sexist, obsolete, and probably a “red state” thing, for the most part.

Did I step on everyones toes?

“Act like you have a pair, buy your own chair.”

End of Rant.

If you are serious about online selling, then look into your own website with a shopping cart program of some sort. You really would serve yourself well by opening a Yahoo store. It allows you to price your item and include the shipping rates. There is a final value fee like ebay, but the nice thing about yahoo stores is that you don’t pay for items listed until you sell them. With ebay, you pay for that item to be listed either every 3 days, 7 days, or monthly. There is a yahoo store fee monthly, but there are some really inexpensive options. If you or someone you know can set you up a basic website then you can link straight to the yahoo store.
The search engines like the store links …. that’s why you see the big guys adverstising their websites so hard.

I agree with PurpLev. Ebay, in my limited experience is best for selling products where the value is pretty easy to discern, like a book or an event ticket. We tried to sell some overstock hardwood flooring on Ebay at about 50 cents on the dollar of our manufactured cost and had no luck. For example, we had a lot of 1500 square feet of 3/4” x 5” Select Unfinished Solid American Cherry that garnered a bid of $200. That’s $.13/SqFt. I got the feeling that if we listed it for $0, someone would asked if we could deliver it for free, too.

MrDude probably has the right idea about getting your own site. That would allow you to showcase your own products without 3000 competing products.

-- www.atlaslumber.com/current-news.asp

Thanks, I do run my own site and have been getting more and more traffic in the last year, in the last 6 months alone my business has grown by 400%. That means from 1 chair in a year to 4 chairs in the last 6 months :) So I guess that could be 800%. Damnit Jim I am an engineer, not a statistician.

-- Rich, WNY, www.nyrockingchairs.com

I found with ebay it was more of an advertising tool then anything. I haven’t used ebay in well over a year now but when i did i just put up the cheap little things and barley made enough to pay the stupid ebay costs. What i did notice is i got many custom orders they would see something and send me an email with “i like this but could you make it bigger, smaller, different color,” blah blah blah. This really factors into the ebay experience (which we all know is a lot of work LOL) but if you are willing to put up with it you can get some really cool jobs out of it. I don’t seem to have the time anymore since i had to go back to a desk job but i would do it again when my hours are able to be cut down at the desk.

As far as ETSY goes i just use them as my shopping cart type thing, i have a link on my web site that redirects them to the etsy shop for checkout and sales. Not that i do much biz over there either but i’m kinda lazy lately and haven’t kept up on it. If you really keep up with it and dedicate the time the internet can be a great marketing tool, but you really have to make it work for you. Kind of a loaded statement but its very true.

If you have any questions about my theorys don’t hesitate to send me a message and i can give you my 2cents worth hee hee. Not that i really have a clue but at least its another angle..

The other side of the coin is that Loren also make a great point so you just have to decide how you want to play the game of selling

-- Wood and Glass they kick (well you know) Have a great day all Dug

I have used E-bay over the years and learned some tips and tricks. If you want to try E-bay, but don’t won’t to risk letting a great piece of work go for little of nothing, try this. List the item on E-bay, start the bid out low. I mean low as .01, but put a reserve place on it. The reserve can be what you think it should sell for or the cost of the time and materials. This way you can see what it gets up to and if it reaches the reserve you sell and make your money. If it didn’t reach the reserve, you don’t have to sell it and your not losing anything except for the listing price. Happy E-baying.

-- Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didin't do then by the ones you did. - Mark Twain

I’m a small time woodworker. I sell pieces occassionally on ebay or craigslist.
On ebay, I only sell the cheap and easy stuff made of plywood/mdf/veneer.
Most people on ebay don’t appreciate fine furniture.
My strategy is to start off low ($0.01) and usually I come out ahead. I don’t set a reserve price anymore. I used to set a reserve price and then lower it. When you lower the reserve price, anyone watching it gets a notification so its’ like free marketing.
Craigslist works much better because sometimes, they come back and ask you to build other stuff. The only downside is that 1 out of 3 people or sometimes half the people don’t show up. Maybe its’ just my area. I don’t know.