Heavy sellers are upset about eBay's recent changes to the feedback policy. And they should be: it's hard to carry on a conversation when only one party gets to do any real talking.

However, there is no real alternative, at least the way I see it. Part of my web development company's clientèle wants e-commerce web sites - natural web stores to sell their stuff. Some of them are heavy eBay sellers. They always were more focused on selling on eBay then selling through their web site, since eBay has more natural ways of reaching buyers.

So now that I think of alternatives to eBay, since some of the members suggest to "take business elsewhere" - what "elsewhere" are they talking about? Professionally designed web store that is able to accommodate large volume of buyers isn't exactly cheap, so what alternative do you REALLY have?

UPD2: My discussion on eBay forums was removed, please share your thoughts here.

Small business owners tend to make same mistakes, so it would be safe enough to assume that it wasn't my other client only who thought he can get away with home-printed business cards. After all - he had a very good Lexmark color printer, so it should be just a matter of getting a business card stock paper and aligning it in the printer properly. At least so the client thought.
Fortunately, he was stopped before ruining his reputation with such a rookie mistake. First of all - any person who held more then ten different business cards will be able to tell the difference. Home-printed cards, no matter how good the printer and the paper was, will never have a typography print feeling. Second - no matter how good you are with scissors and perforations, the edges will give you away.

Of course, images we used on web site reprinted on the business cards with high-quality color print just swept prospective customers from their feet. Visiting client's web site has become a done deal.

Small businesses are identified by the number of employees they have. It usually has to be less then a hundred. Most of our clients employ less then 50. Small businesses in USA, according to Small Business Administration:

• represent more then 99.7 percent of all employers;
• employ more then half of all private-sector employees;
• pay 44.5 percent of total US private payrolls;
• generate between 60 and 80 percent of net new jobs annually;
• produce 14 times more patents per employee then do large patenting firms.

Nevertheless, small businesses have very limited means of self-promotion, comparing to the big guys in the industry. However, just like big guys, they can promote themselves in fashions that are both affordable and efficient. For example, for local retailers an online promotion of their web site would not do any good.

Most of clients of Zealus Web Design studio are small businesses. They often share some insights on how offline promotion helps them save or make money. One of the ideas they came up with was to mail remaining dealer promotion packages to the potential customers instead of dealers. Receiving an attractive custom-printed brochure, booklet or wall calendar can make all the difference for some. Printing of address labels was made very affordable by online merchants and local print shops and company has already invested in printing those promotional packages anyway. Idea was a huge success, and such mailings became one of the favorite promotional tools of this company.