I once made a suggestion that this section should be called EBay, TazBar, EBid and Amazon Help if only to encourage users to try out the latter three. I'll hopefully post any changes to the sites here if everyone is happy with that.

EBid and TazBar have definately come over as the poor relations of eBay and having a hard time getting visitors. But they seem to be trying to hit back. I recently posted that eBid had introduced a time limited half price offer (over now) on it's 'membership' and I have to say that the 'hit counters' appear to show a few more visitors than normal.

Put it this way, for about Ł1 I have a featured listing (it will run until sold) that is edging towards 100 hits after a couple of months, and the similar item in our eBay shop is barely past 30 in the same period. True, were the item in auction on eBay hits over 10 days would be about 30-50 but would cost at least 1.65 every 10 days. When we tried a Featured listing on eBay (9.95 + other fees) we had about 200 people look and sold 4 of the item in ten days. Oh, and we had about 5 stupid questions but that could be another post!

Now TazBar is about to change it's methods. It will still have a Basic level which is free listing but with a Final Fee of 3%, but you can also look at Basic, Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3 (someone at Tazbar needs to think up some good Level names!) where there is a monthly cost but no Final Fee.

We recently had a big sale on Tazbar and the total fee was a pound. After these changes it will be just under three pounds, but that is still far cheaper than eBay which would be about 4.49 + listing fee of about 1.65 (and that latter cost might have been repeated until it sold, whereas TazBar and eBid list the item until it goes for one fee or free depending on what you choose).

Full details on TazBar here:

http://www.tazbar.com/helpsection/fees2007.aspx

Worth noting that both TazBar and eBid allow full Google Checkout integration which eBay does not, and both also give PayPal integration and eBid also tie in with PPPay.

At worst sign up a free account just to register your user name. Nothing more annoying than going on to another site and finding someone has nicked your name!!!