eBay and Subito comparison | Selling on eBay

rafflesiana · 2021-11-18T17:31:40.896000Z

Hello everyone. In one of my previous posts in August, I had joined in the complaints of the many who for months now (since early 2021) have seen a collapse in sales on Ebay. Even then I was already looking around for alternatives. The site Subito was the top contender, but the downsides seemed to be many (see below) and I was still hoping for a recovery in Ebay. I also looked online for someone who had made a comparison between sales on the two sites, but everyone describes the differences in features, but never the differences experienced in sales. In the end I made up my mind. At the beginning of October, I put the 60 items I had for sale on Ebay onto Subito too. While on Ebay auctions have to be renewed every 10 days, on Subito listings last 60 days. In 10 days the canonical 60 days will be up. To start from the same level, since on Subito I only sell with local pickup (so at lower prices), for these 60 days I changed my Ebay listings and made them all for local pickup and therefore with prices cut by up to 50% (note that I live in greater Milan). I also ignored the Ebay fee issue: the item x for sale on Ebay at 10 euro, I put on Subito at 10 euro. Even though there are still 10 days left, I can report an experience that will be very useful for many of you. In these almost 60 days I sold 1 item on Ebay and 7 on Subito. Sales on Subito line up much better with the sales I was making on Ebay up until the end of 2020. So there is definitely an "Ebay problem". I can't continue the experiment because yesterday I made up my mind and removed all the items for sale on Ebay, because they only waste my time. Other factors to compare the two sites:-on Subito you pay nothing, you post the ad, you sell, nothing to pay. But day by day your ad goes to page two, ten, three hundred, and you can't remove it and put it back to make Subito put it on the front page again, because Subito won't let you do that. That's because Subito charges you to put your ad back on the front page 🙂 But it's not a huge problem. In the first few days the views are like 30-30-5-1-1-2-1-3... etc, but if someone is looking for items in price order and you have a very low price, or if you live in the city where the buyer lives, or if you're among the few people selling that object etc, inevitably your ad gets seen at the top of the list. It's not like buyers are blind and always only go by page order. In 60 days I didn't sell everything in the first 5, but very gradually, which says a lot.-messaging is smoother on Subito, where it works like on Facebook, whereas on Ebay it works more like an email account.-on Subito there is basically anarchy, in the sense that sellers and buyers are left to themselves, nobody is protected in anything, what you do is your own business. There is a feedback system from 1 to 5, but in practice it doesn't work because it doesn't say how many transactions a rating is based on, so a crook could have a feedback of 5 because he made only one transaction, and on the second he decides to scam you.-the risks, thanks to simplicity and anarchy, mainly concern those who buy and sell with shipping, but they disappear with local pickups. I do think, though, that one day I'll dare to ship something, just to try it.-I live in Milan and so I can count on 1-3 million neighbors ready to come by, while someone who lives in a village of 300 souls has to think twice.-I always have around sixty odds and ends for sale, I try to lighten up the house, but someone who has a real shop, a business, obviously has trouble putting 500 ads on Subito and talking with every buyer to decide on delivery and payment methods and timing. On Ebay everything is automatic.-the problem with Subito that I've read most often about: time-wasters. It's true, they're there, again thanks to simplicity and anarchy. But - maybe because I specify in the ad that I only sell in person and therefore have fewer buyers - it's not that bad. Since everything is more streamlined, it's more likely to get lots of the type "but is that thermometer mercury? Ah, ok. But does it have a brand? Ah, ok. But can you give me a discount? Ah, ok. But how wide are those kitchen molds anyway? Ah, ok. But they would still work for me anyway". And then they disappear forever. On Ebay it's almost impossible for that to happen because everything is harder and so the time-wasters get filtered out up front. At the very least, time-wasters make me feel that there is interest in my items. Out of 60 items, in 60 days, and 7 sales, add about 15 time-wasters (one of them immediately called me names when I told him I didn't ship), it's not a tragedy. Note: in Subito chat you just click "block" on the side of the dialog window and the pest will disappear from your life forever, easy and fast.-I read somewhere that Subito has 3-4 times as many users as Ebay. You can see it, but not always. Some of my listings - over 10 days of comparison - were viewed on Subito from 1 to more than 20 times more than the same listing on Ebay. It's very variable and honestly I don't understand what it depends on. I have a listing of used plastic pots that I sell as a lot; on Ebay they barely get any visits, on Subito I've gone past 200. I would say that, depending on the type of seller, Subito is either definitely to be avoided or absolutely to be recommended.If Ebay were to return to its former glory, I'll be happy to come back too, no hard feelings 😄

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