Selling Venue - Need Opinions

[bestgear]

OK, the time has come to use the World Wide Web to market and sell my pocket knives. As I see it I have 3 choices:
(1) eBay
(2) AAPK Store
(3) a Wix store that I setup and maintain
and while I could use all of them I'm trying to minimize my time investment and maximize my sell rate.

I won't influence your opinions with mine but I'm genuinely interested in hearing what fellow knifers have to say.

[terryl308]

I use ebay but be prepared to pay them about 10% if the final value. You will need a fairly good camera to take in focus photos and will have to spend some time writing up a accurate description. And you probably will want to set up a paypal account if you don't already have one. I don't have a seller store on AAPK but have tried the advertisement forum with "zero" results. I am not familiar with your 'wix" selling thing, so I can't comment on that. Good luck, Terry

[orvet]

I have an AAPK store, but I have never sold on eBay and most likely never will.
AAPK makes it so easy with only a 3% cost of doing business you can't beat it in my opinion!

[bestgear]

Thank you Terry and Dale. I've sold on eBay before with good success but much consternation so that's out for me. I've pondered this question for some time now and my gut tells me that having your own ecommerce site allows you to have more control over your brand, products, pricing and promotions but at the end of the day, it's more important to be visible where my customer is likely to look for my product, so I see AAPK as the clear winner. Below is my pro/con table which will lave to be enlarged to view, more opinions are most welcome!

[Quick Steel]

bestgear, do you or anyone else have some idea of how much traffic AAPK stores receive overall? I don't mean for individual stores. But how many viewers might visit the site in, say, a week or a month.

[bestgear]

QS - I only have colloquial information, no hard statistics but they would be helpful in making a decision. I'm only going to list on 1 platform and while having your own ecommerce site sounds enticing, it's a lot of work to maintain a single infrastructure whereas AAPK has multiple stores all under the same infrastructure. If anyone (Bryan?) has any Google Analytics or other such statistics on AAPK store traffic, that would be helpful to this community.

[roofsc]

My .02 , I would open a AAPK store. List the knives at a price you see fit. If your not getting noticed or time is an issue then remove and list on Ebay. They will sell at the time you list. I have bought and sold on Ebay. I have no proof of traffic on either sight but I would imagine a lot more people see Ebay. Until I got the internet in 1996 , I would find a knife here or there at local shows. When i got on the internet the world opened up and I just about went broke because the World of knives were a chick away.

I must say something about buying on Ebay. I have never felt like I won something. I have always felt that I just paid more than anyone else on the planet was willing to pay. But I got what I wanted and what I "thought" I could afford. Never buyers remorse but a lot ramen noodle and water for a few days

[Bryan]

I'm glad you posted this, Tom.

This is the kind of information I can use to make AAPK's services better & more competitive.

I'm going to print your pros & cons list & work toward adding more to the pro's & eradicating the cons where possible

We do actually have a feedback system on the new platform. I'm sure it could use some improvement. Suggestions would be most welcomed.

As stands right now, only AAPK registered buyers can leave feedback for sellers. It should probably be more visible with a followup call to action directed at buyers.

On the downside, I've heard from some sellers who have stated that they don't like the feedback concept at all ...

Regarding visit count; I have numbers for AAPK as a whole, but not much that's isolated to store traffic. I'll try to get some analytic stuff on there & report some numbers when I can. I do have a fairly long to-do list, so it might not happen right away, but I'll shoot for getting it done sooner than later.

[XX Case XX]

Tom:

I've bought and sold on eBay, and I've bought from the AAPK Stores. Never heard of Wix until I read your post. So here's my thoughts on this:

I guess it would depend on how fast you want or need to sell your knives. If you need to unload them fast, eBay is probably the way to go. If you don't, then an AAPK Store is most likely your best bet.

It's pretty much that simple. "Fast and Loose" or "Slow and Steady"? Your choice.

____________
Mike