What's New for 2017

What's New for 2017

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So what can you expect from your favorite marketplace in 2017?

2016-17 Online Selling Highlights

Half.com Half.com surprised sellers with a significant commission fee increase during 2016 fourth quarter holiday season, doubling commissions to an average of 20% final sales fee.  This makes Half.com the second highest commission fee of all marketplaces, second only to Amazon.com.
(Full Article and Video)

Bonanza.com launched a Global Shipping program using the same warehouse and Pitney Bowes company as Ebay. You'll need to Opt-In to it, if that sounds like something you want to do.  Recommend? Yes! If you sell on Bonanza.com, the Global Shipping program is definitely something you want to support and engage in to help increase sales. Bonanza Global Shipping program policies are similar to Ebay's. (Video)

EBay.com rolled out its Fall policies. While the defects policies are mostly unchanged since mid-2016, there are a lot of changes you need to be aware of that will affect how you list and create listings in 2017.  In Sept 2016, eBay also quietly rolled out a separate policy change with USPS Shipping and will be responsible for many sellers getting defects through the 2016 holiday season and into 2017.

(Ebay Policy Update Video)  (Ebay USPS Shipping Video)

Mercari marketplace on IPhone and Android devices rolled out a commission fee of 10% for all sales back in October, They ended up delaying the roll-out until November 21, 2016.  So if you sell on Mercari during the holiday fourth quarter of 2016 or into 2017, you'll be paying their new commission fee.  (Video)

Storenvy.com As predicted at the beginning of 2016, founder and CEO Jon Crawford sold or was forced out of Storenvy by its investors. Not positive which one actually occurred, though we have now 100% confirmed that Jon Crawford is no longer its CEO and is working on solo projects of his own and doing consulting. When our final video review on Storenvy was released in October 2016, the Storenvy website had still not been updated and no official announcement or press-release had been issued.  How To Sell Online blog and YouTube channel are the only sources announcing and confirming this event.   

Storenvy also, began charging shoppers a hidden "handling charge" to each stores customers on top of its sellers product prices and shipping costs. (Video)

IOffer.com is probably the least talked about marketplace for shopping and selling.  At the end of 2016 Ioffer began seeing seller growth and quite a few YouTube Video bloggers have been making positive videos about their shopping experiences and purchases.

 IOffer seems to be in a come-back, but it's not going to be the best place for all sellers by a long shot.  IOffer, though located in California's Silicon Valley, is highly popular with Non-USA sellers, so there is a lot of competition with China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.  Further, IOffer is believed to be processing payments through Stripe Credit Card Processing or a similar third party credit card processor and not PayPal. Because of IOffer's unusual commission fees structure which is closer to Half.com's, our new IOffer review was done entirely via video so some of it complexities could be more easily addressed. (Video)

EBlueJay.com  Is the marketplace that everyone is currently keeping its eye on. Though it was a marketplace formerly named BluJay for quite a few years, it remained relatively unknown, even less known than eCrater. 

It launched its new marketplace at the beginning of 2016 built from the ground up, and with extremely competitive pricing for sellers.
EBlueJay does not have the same degree of store customization as Shopify or Storenvy stores and currently lacks the ability to include multiple variables of the same product, but does offer a lot of features that make eBay, Etsy and Bonanza popular. We consider EBlueJay a competitive alternative.

In October 2016 EBlueJay raised it *One-Time base price for opening a seller account from $5 to $10. Other than the opening fee, sellers and stores can sell commission fee free, (Normal PayPal or Stripe Processing fees still apply). For our informal updates on EBlueJay, watch our EBlueJay (Video PlayList)