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vw-from-ebay



Posts: 5

PostPosted: Thu Mar 01, 2018 1:55 am    Post subject: This site is way to hard to understand! Reply with quote

No wonder no one sells here!
It's hard to navigate, it's hard to understand
It's hard to get anything done
It's confusing
I've been a eBay seller for 20 years
This site is a mess
I have so many questions and can find No answers!
How depressing
eBay is simple and easy to understand, eCrater is hard to find your way around
My log in and password don't work unless I copy and paste it from my email
Where do you even change any of this?
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express-dealsbay



Posts: 52

PostPosted: Thu Mar 01, 2018 4:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi,

I'm a newbie myself, but found lots of great advice in the FAQ thread in this forum. Please read through that thread as it gives great advice on essential elements such as Google attributes and the Shipping charges
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SheilaDeesPostcards
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Posts: 4614

PostPosted: Thu Mar 01, 2018 7:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

First of all, Welcome to eCrater and to the eCRATER community forum. When I read your post I had a good chuckle because I had a flash back 30+ years to the time my husband, who had spent most of his life in the great Plains, tried driving in the coastal deep south. He finally lost it when he knew we were traveling north, needed to go east and I told him to turn left toward the setting sun. We had to go left to get to the bridge approach to take us east bound across the river. Having spent most of my life in the deep south, I found it odd that a place would be so flat and feature-less that all the roads could be built on latitude and longitude lines. Through the years, we've both learned a real appreciation of the unique character of both regions.

After 20 years on eBay, you've moved to a different location that was built without any input from eBay. The answers to most of your questions can be found on the site, you just didn't know where to look. In the admin of your store, most actions will have a little box with a question mark that gives information. If you go to the home page of the eCrater Marketplace, www.ecrater.com, and click on the FAQ, then click on Selling and you'll find the answers to many of your questions. The last question contains a link to a Word document that answers many basic questions. It is dated, but it's a start. The rest of your questions can probably be found here in the community forum. If you've looked and can't find an answer, we have an active seller to seller help system here in the community.

You say your log-in doesn't work unless you copy and paste from your email. I'm not sure of that cause and I don't remember that problem being mentioned before. If it continues, there is a problem which would require you sending eCRATER an email from the contact link on the marketplace home page. If you go to the home page and click the login button, you are taken to a screen that asks for your store name and password. Your store name is vw-from-ebay, the name you gave when you created your store. Here on eCrater, we have stores and our items are also shown in the eCRATER Marketplace which is the exact opposite of eBay. Your "account name" is your store name. If you don't like your store name and want it changed, you have two choices. If you haven't entered any products or started a bulk upload of products from eBay, the simplest thing to do would be to go to log into your store Admin, scroll to the bottom of the page, and click on "Delete Account". Now you can create a new account using the store name you want and begin the process of creating your store. There may be a delay between closing your original store and being able to use the same email to create a new store. You could simply use a different email to create a new store. The email you use to create your store will be your contact from eCrater. You are able to change to a different email address as a location to receive your orders and Ask Seller a Question emails. There is also an option in your store admin to change your password.

If you've already started a bulk upload of your products from eBay, you'll need to contact eCrater to explain the problem and see if they can either stop the bulk upload or change the name of your store. There is a fee to change the name of your store and you'll need to ask the cost.

When you make that first sale that came directly to your store, you remember that you didn't pay anything to list your item, and discover that there is no FVF fee because the customer came directly to your store, I think you'll have a very positive feeling for eCRATER. Even if the customer found your item on the eCrater Marketplace, or Google Shopping, or from one of the many ads eCrater places on the internet, you'll still remember there was no listing fee and you are only charged 2.9% of the item for a FVF with no fee on the shipping.

Welcome to eCRATER! I hope you have a very successful store here.
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vw-from-ebay



Posts: 5

PostPosted: Thu Mar 01, 2018 8:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm still kind of lost.

On the main eCrater page I type in: Magpul Hand Guard and my item ISN'T showing up? Does eCrater HIDE listings like eBay does?
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SheilaDeesPostcards
moderator


Posts: 4614

PostPosted: Thu Mar 01, 2018 8:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

eCRATER does not "HIDE listings like eBay". It normally takes several hours after an item is listed in your store for it to be indexed in the eCrater Marketplace.

I took a look at your store and it appears you only have one item listed and I believe it is in violation of the eCrater terms of service. You need to review the eCrater Terms of Service to which you agreed when you opened your store. Go to the home page of eCrater and click on the "Terms" link located in the lower right corner. Under section 4.5 What is not allowed to post? you will find:
Quote:
- Firearms & ammunition, stun guns, bb guns, pellet guns, blowguns, dart guns and illegal knives
- Firearm parts, stun gun parts, bb gun parts, and pellet gun parts

I believe your item is a firearm part which is not allowed. If it is not a firearm part, you'll need to explain to the eCrater staff. There may be a delay for some categories for review before posting in the marketplace. I don't know that for a fact, just an educated guess.
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MoonwishesStore
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Posts: 17389

PostPosted: Thu Mar 01, 2018 9:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

vw-from-ebay wrote:
No wonder no one sells here!
It's hard to navigate, it's hard to understand
It's hard to get anything done
It's confusing
I've been a eBay seller for 20 years
This site is a mess
I have so many questions and can find No answers!
How depressing
eBay is simple and easy to understand, eCrater is hard to find your way around
My log in and password don't work unless I copy and paste it from my email
Where do you even change any of this?


Welcome to ecrater.

Who says that nothing sells here? As of 2-27-18 ecrater has had more than 4 million orders (almost 4,100,000) certainly not on the scale of ebay/Amazon but enough to show that folks are selling, and those just aren't always orders of one item. I once sold over 20 items at the same time! I love multi-item orders and they are much easier to get if you have promoted enough that they have come to your store alone. No interference from ebay of having a bunch of other seller's goods on your listings. If they find you in the ecrater marketplace, they may find some other sellers with the same product, but you do have a chance to sell to a buyer without venue interference. Currently I'm at 5100+ orders since I started here full time 9 years a go. I love ecrater.

Would I like more orders? Sure wouldn't we all and I would love it if all my orders came via ecrater, especially for the savings on fees. I just sold a craft instruction booklet this morning for $24.99 on Amazon. The fees I had to pay to Amazon was $5.55 and cleared $15.11 If I had sold it directly from my store here, even with ecrater's fee of 2.9%, I would have cleared $23.44! That is $8.33 more!!! Worth it to spend the time to learn how to use this site and learn how to promote your goods so that they sell.

When I first started on ecrater, I was also selling on Amazon and ebay AND I was on DIAL UP! Those other two sites had something like 5 pages each to have to load, so I could add in the information. Here, everything is on one page, plus one page to load photos 2-10 (free). I have found that ecrater is much faster to list on and much easier than other venues and I have tried a lot. You don't have to try to figure out font sizes and font colors, etc because there is NO HTML. So nice to shop on a place where there is no dancing raindeer or listings with a strobe effect that makes you feel like you are about to have a seizure. I know most sellers don't do that anymore, but in your store, a buyer will find everything in the same spot on the current page. No having to hunt for things.

In your title you may have 100 characters. Use them as they are valuable real estate and helpful to buyers that are searching for the item you have but they may be using different words. As mentioned you can have 10 photos, use as many as needed so a buyer feels confident of what they are buying. Your current product is marked as used, but nothing in the description to tell what kind of wear and just how used is used. Which brings me to another point. You description area can be extensive depending on what you are selling. You need to describe the product you are selling as if they can't see the photos and have photos that show what is needed as if there were no description. Since ebay is going to the catalog approach, listing there has meant sellers get a lot of information into their listings without lifting a finger. No so here, but then at the same time you don't have to waste time fixing all the other seller's listing mistakes in the catalog.

As Sheila mentioned, there are folks here that are willing to help newbies get themselves sorted out, but we need specifics. To say ecrater is confusing doesn't express what in particular you find confusing so we can help you. What about this site do you consider a mess? I've been selling here a long time and I don't notice any messes. Is ecrater different? Yes. A mess? Not in my eyes, so to help, we would need to know what in specific is bothering you. We are happy to help and you can post your help requests in the help thread. Don't forget other newbies have come here as at one point all of us were newbies. When you are new everything seems weird whether ebay or ecrater. Patience please and ask for help about what you don't understand and take some time to read through forum posts to get a better understanding of what is going on here. Personally, I took two weeks prior to signing up here so I knew what I was getting into and I am a fast reader.
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vw-from-ebay



Posts: 5

PostPosted: Thu Mar 01, 2018 10:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Looks like eCrater ISN'T for me!

When i saw that ammunition brass cases were for sale I figured gun parts were also allowed.

I was wrong, if I can't sell used gun parts I won't be listing my aircraft tools either.

If I'm not a seller here I will also not be a buyer. . .

So much for this site, it lasted 24 hours!
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vw-from-ebay



Posts: 5

PostPosted: Thu Mar 01, 2018 10:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Moonwishes, you post on auctionbytes?

I'm toolguy
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SheilaDeesPostcards
moderator


Posts: 4614

PostPosted: Thu Mar 01, 2018 11:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well hello toolguy! I don't post on AuctionBytes, but I've been a regular reader for years! Are you sure we can't change your mind? Your profit margin would be better here than on the bay for your aircraft tools. Very Happy

The staff here is small and the owner is very hands on, no stockholders to please or stock market to answer to. It really shows that the owner values the sellers. I have some left-over NOS from a B&M store I owned that I can't sell here due to the TOS, but I just list them on the bay. Maybe you would consider just moving part of your inventory.

I should let Moonwishes answer for herself, but yes it's one and the same Moonwishes.
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vw-from-ebay



Posts: 5

PostPosted: Thu Mar 01, 2018 11:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

We'll see how it goes.
I only have 1 gun part listed and it isn't being shown.
I ported all my eBay listings from my vw account, we'll how they show up here.

If it works out I might port over all my listings from my z50com account

I'll give eCrater a chance and see if I can work with it. . .
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thelivesandlovesofmaggiethecat



Posts: 10158

PostPosted: Thu Mar 01, 2018 7:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

vw-from-ebay wrote:
We'll see how it goes.
I only have 1 gun part listed and it isn't being shown.
.


Check the terms and conditions but I don't think you can sell anything to do with guns on eCRATER. Maybe they have changed the rules but I doubt it.

Welcome.

Bookmark your store login. Then it is one click. I have two bookmarks, one for eCRATER home page and community. The other is for my store admin page.

I find this the easiest site ever. I sold on eBay in its early days. I can't even figure out an eBay listing now when I am shopping for a specific item.
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rktoys



Posts: 2

PostPosted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 1:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The biggest problem that I have with the site is that it's so needlessly difficult to update multiple listings.

Selecting a list of items and hiding or moving them all at once is basic functionality and it's still missing in 2018.

So I was about to start over with a bulk text import when I read the dire warnings amidst a long list of suggestions from Donny Don't. Apparently, it's only expected to be used once? Because it says if you reimport a batch a products, they'll consider that editing (somehow) and refuse future imports. Then a few lines down it says you can use it to update (edit) previous imports from eBay. It doesn't tell you _how_ it matches items, so you risk running afoul of the editing police (because you were editing instead of editing) and having the feed cut off.

If the argument behind this limiting an already very limited tool is resource consumption, that's absurd. It wastes more computing and bandwidth resources to individually open 500 separate pages and post back to each one than to open a single page that can handle some checkboxes and be done with it. Oh, and it's also a major pain for the end user. I just put my store on hold for months, depriving you of any commission fees during that entire time, because I didn't have a few hours to click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click.

No, the global editor is not suitable. It's completely useless. Can't filter on _anything_ but category. On what planet would anybody make most of these changes on an entire category? Can't set a price (not add or subtract or multiply or divide, set). Even text replace is useless if the words you're trying to replace are part of another word (turning "classic" into "clbuttic"). It's like a demo that somebody started and just got bored with shortly thereafter.

When I was looking for info on bulk editing, I found a forum post from 2010 suggesting somebody offer to help in the suggestions forum. There doesn't seem to be a suggestions forum anymore though. Is eCrater abandoned from a development standpoint?
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broadwaycomicsandcards



Posts: 3

PostPosted: Tue Mar 06, 2018 7:30 pm    Post subject: @moonwishes Reply with quote

@moonwishes.....I am impressed you have that many sales! There is hope for me then!!
Thank you for sharing!
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MoonwishesStore
moderator


Posts: 17389

PostPosted: Tue Mar 06, 2018 8:29 pm    Post subject: Re: @moonwishes Reply with quote

broadwaycomicsandcards wrote:
@moonwishes.....I am impressed you have that many sales! There is hope for me then!!
Thank you for sharing!


You are welcome! Just remember that I don't sit and wait for the search engines to find me or to be up on Google shopping by uploads from ecrater. I actively promote my inventory in many ways, plus constantly listing. As a point of interest, I usually have around 8000 items listed here and I have had 5000+ orders some of which were large multi orders, so ~13,000 listings over the last 10 years. ALL were listed manually here! One of the reasons I get a little puzzled by sellers with only a couple hundred or less items to list and monitor and for some reason they consider it difficult to maintain inventory here. But then all of us 'oldies' here at ecrater had to manually list as when we came, there was no bulk download tool from ebay and no global editor at the time either. I have always found ecrater the easiest and quickest place to list. When I sold on ebay I spent two years constantly trying to play catch up with the newest rule change so I wasn't listing new stuff, just constantly fixing things and I sure don't recall any easy way to do it there!

Case in point. I had a bunch of new inventory to list and hubby hadn't done any scans for me yet so I couldn't make a listing for here, so I listed what I could on Amazon. Of the about 30 patterns I listed probably about 6-8 of the listings for them, were in the category chidlren's toys, with an age range of 10, and titles that were not only incorrect, you couldn't tell what the item selling was. Since the only way I could list my products was use that page (where on ecrater you always make your own correct page) and then go back and make case file reports to Amazon to fix the categories and titles. I had been listing speedily until I got into that mess and probably each item when it was all said and done took about 15-20 minutes if not more to fix. Now maybe some of them might sell, including mine. Up to the point of me fixing the page, the pages had no ranking or purchases. I have to spend a lot of time helping others have a listing that they may be able to sell their goods better, but I must have just enough OCD in me that I can't let things go. If a listing is so lousy that it doesn't give buyers enough info when they see the title out on the internet, they aren't going to click through to a store to see it.

Some 'sellers' just don't have any idea on how to make up titles at one point I saw a seller that listed their item as Rose 1, the next was Rose 2, and so on for about 40 items. What were they selling? Who knows. With 100 characters in the title possible, they had not used 94 characters from the most valuable real estate on the internet!

Anyhow there is a lot of work to making sales and hence making money on line. It isn't easy, but it is doable Smile For me, it is my occupational therapy. I get up in the mornings sometimes with my hands so stiff I can't use them, but working up to exercising them by keyboarding, moving to collect sold items, and then in decent weather a walk out to the mailbox, keeps me from turning into a couch potatoe and all my docs are happy to know I am doing something that is physically challenging as well as some that makes me happy to do it.
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broadwaycomicsandcards



Posts: 3

PostPosted: Tue Mar 06, 2018 8:53 pm    Post subject: Re: @moonwishes Reply with quote

MoonwishesStore wrote:
broadwaycomicsandcards wrote:
@moonwishes.....I am impressed you have that many sales! There is hope for me then!!
Thank you for sharing!


You are welcome! Just remember that I don't sit and wait for the search engines to find me or to be up on Google shopping by uploads from ecrater. I actively promote my inventory in many ways, plus constantly listing. As a point of interest, I usually have around 8000 items listed here and I have had 5000+ orders some of which were large multi orders, so ~13,000 listings over the last 10 years. ALL were listed manually here! One of the reasons I get a little puzzled by sellers with only a couple hundred or less items to list and monitor and for some reason they consider it difficult to maintain inventory here. But then all of us 'oldies' here at ecrater had to manually list as when we came, there was no bulk download tool from ebay and no global editor at the time either. I have always found ecrater the easiest and quickest place to list. When I sold on ebay I spent two years constantly trying to play catch up with the newest rule change so I wasn't listing new stuff, just constantly fixing things and I sure don't recall any easy way to do it there!

Case in point. I had a bunch of new inventory to list and hubby hadn't done any scans for me yet so I couldn't make a listing for here, so I listed what I could on Amazon. Of the about 30 patterns I listed probably about 6-8 of the listings for them, were in the category chidlren's toys, with an age range of 10, and titles that were not only incorrect, you couldn't tell what the item selling was. Since the only way I could list my products was use that page (where on ecrater you always make your own correct page) and then go back and make case file reports to Amazon to fix the categories and titles. I had been listing speedily until I got into that mess and probably each item when it was all said and done took about 15-20 minutes if not more to fix. Now maybe some of them might sell, including mine. Up to the point of me fixing the page, the pages had no ranking or purchases. I have to spend a lot of time helping others have a listing that they may be able to sell their goods better, but I must have just enough OCD in me that I can't let things go. If a listing is so lousy that it doesn't give buyers enough info when they see the title out on the internet, they aren't going to click through to a store to see it.

Some 'sellers' just don't have any idea on how to make up titles at one point I saw a seller that listed their item as Rose 1, the next was Rose 2, and so on for about 40 items. What were they selling? Who knows. With 100 characters in the title possible, they had not used 94 characters from the most valuable real estate on the internet!

Anyhow there is a lot of work to making sales and hence making money on line. It isn't easy, but it is doable Smile For me, it is my occupational therapy. I get up in the mornings sometimes with my hands so stiff I can't use them, but working up to exercising them by keyboarding, moving to collect sold items, and then in decent weather a walk out to the mailbox, keeps me from turning into a couch potatoe and all my docs are happy to know I am doing something that is physically challenging as well as some that makes me happy to do it.



Do you sell on ebay also? I do sell on ebay but it seems business is very slow and lacking in buyers. And all this i just rack up more cost.
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