Okay so my last post was on Live Journal so I’m going to post here this time. It has been a while since I wrote. Basically I’ve been very busy with school so I decided to try out one site at a time for a better look. If you want to see my first impressions of several selling sites do see my last Live Journal post.

Well, my first site to actually spend some real time and effort on was ebanned. This is the one that seems to have been around the longest so I figured I’d try them first. As I mentioned in my last post, I had some reservations before I began due to the auctions I had seen there for really gross stuff such as bags of human waste, vials of menstrual blood and such. I was also a bit turned off by the high fees charged. I’ve sold some things on eBay and you can get a featured auction there for $19.95. At ebanned to get featured is $20.00 and the goody fees, insertion fees and final value fees are at or above ebay prices too. Really expensive to sell here! Regardless, I bit my tongue and went for it.

Since I was doing my first auction as an unknown and I was afraid that my auction would go unseen on the huge list I went ahead and did the full treatment with the featured auction, highlighted and all. Total cost to list my first auction for a thong was $24.90. Since I needed photo hosting (ebanned doesn’t give you any pictures for free) I signed up for ebanned’s photohosting service called Photeo. I found this service a little hard to use at first and was disappointed that I had to sign up for an expensive plan even though I just needed nine photos hosted. Anyway, the Photeo bill came to $4.95.

After setting everything up and putting my auction together my auction was listed as promised. I felt a real sense of accomplishment after going through the whole process to get it done. This turned to panic when after three days I had zero bids. On the fourth day I got my hope back when I started to get notices of questions on my auction. Sadly, most were guys asking me for free pictures, asking to prove I was “for real” by giving them a free cam show, etc. Only one actually asked about my thong . I was starting to get a little worried so I visited the ebanned forum area to see if anyone there could give me some pointers. This was a bad move for my confidence. Aside from the guy that offered to teach me how to make my auctions “stand out” if I paid him $150, the response I got from long time sellers there was best described as cold. It seems that competition there for buyers is steep and none of the sellers was willing to part with any tips. I was really put off in general by some of the posts these sellers were posting there. The general theme was that these ladies see the auction buyers purely as an inanimate source of cash only and that cash cow was to be fiercely guarded. Definitely only about the Benjamins for a lot of these sellers. So much for the “sexiness” of sharing your panties, huh?!

Moving along, my first auction ended with no bids. Good news was that I was able to re-list it without incurring all of the same fees. More questions came with the re-list and…I got a bid! I could have danced when I got notice of my first bid. Despite the problems I had had getting there, the first bid was an adrenaline rush to say the least. The next day I was contacted by bidder. He told me that he was really sorry, but he was begging me to cancel his bid for him. According to the bidder, his “mistress” who also has auctions at ebanned saw that he had bid on my auction and was demanding that he not go through with it. Talk about a let down. I didn’t want to get some poor sap in trouble and I also didn’t want to get on any one’s shit list as I had seen in the forums how nasty it could become so I found the link to cancel his bid and ban him from bidding again. My auction ended again with no bids. End of auction story, ebanned $29.85 me $0.00! I was pretty heart broken to have to pay $30.00 and a ton of time for nothing. I didn’t give up though and listed a few more auctions over the month. I didn’t use all the bells and whistles (I couldn’t afford to lose more money) in my next auctions and I did finally sell two pair of panties. Even so, after taking the hit on my first auction and paying the fees for my subsequent auctions, my final net take was about $10.00 for a month of work!

Bottom Line and Final Thoughts

As a first time seller I did find lots of excitement here and felt a sense of accomplishment in the end when I’d sold some panties. Unfortunately, the only people getting seriously rich at ebanned seem to be those that own the site. I was disappointed in the coldness of my fellow sellers and do think the guys that buy should be treated with a little more respect than an ATM. I did walk away though at the end with a couple of guys who promised to buy from me directly so that would help not having to give the majority of the money away to a site owner, I’ll have to see if they come through though. My recommendation is that new sellers might want to avoid selling here as they start out and maybe totally if they can find buyers elsewhere. If you do give it a try like I did, make sure that you plan the ROI carefully so you can at least walk away with a little for yourself, still, treat it like gambling and don’t list an auction if you can’t afford to lose that money.