Love to buy and sell online? Try www.ecrater.com for jewelry, books, fashion, antiques, electronics,etc.
eCrater is more than just a marketplace of fixed-price listings. It's a free web-hosting site where sellers manage their own stores (like eBay Stores but better organized).
On eCrater, shoppers can access an individual seller's site directly or may search for products
from the main eCrater.com website (http://www.ecrater.com).
The beauty of eCrater is that it is so simple. Sellers can point their websites to their eCrater
page using URL masking, so buyers will only see the seller's website address (not eCrater's). This
makes it seem more professional, and more like your own website rather than a page on someone
else's site (as you get with eBay Stores).
eCrater has a feedback feature just like eBay, and some of the better features of Feedback 2.0
were integrated, well before eBay launched them. eCrater allows sellers to accept PayPal and
Google Checkout and has plans to add Amazon Payments.
Premium Listings
eCrater is completely free, but the site does offer premium positions. A position on the home
page, which merchants can use to rotate their products, costs $100/month. (The position is booked
through the end of March 2008.) A position on the top of all listings in a category costs
$25/month per item and guarantees a premium top spot in the category.
New Features
eCrater also added a "mods" system. The idea is similar to the Wikipedia content control.
Moderators make sure that all the listings belong in the correct category and are compliant with
eCrater's policies. As a certified Google Checkout partner eCrater will make sure that all
listings are compliant with Google Checkout's and Google Base's policies too.
Moderators receive a small icon next to their store name as a bonus for their efforts, making
their stores stand out from the others.
eCrater Forums
Unlike some other free sites, eCrater has a great set of forums. They have an entire board
dedicated to suggestions for making eCrater better.
The eCrater Support Team
http://eCrater.com
