Hi Everyone!

While surfing through eBay.com today, I found that there are scores of auctions for Web Hosting, but hardly 1s or 2s as Bidders!

Does it speak enough for eBay as a marketing channel for selling webhosting services?

Has anyone had any experience with eLance.com? What are the finer issues to transact on this website?

Actually, I had one client moved away from us because they offer a better price at eBay (1 month later he came back to us). People does look at eBay for cheaper deals.

As far as eLance.com, we haven't had any experience yet with them. Seems to be interesting though ...

Elance.com is a great company if you are looking to outsource any aspect of your business. From networking to data entry, its all there.

Moreover, there are always people looking for webhositng and they are usually tempted in paying higher amounts of money for a good host. I highly recommend it.

Maybe it's just me, but I cannot fathom why anyone would go to an Auction site for Web Hosting services? That's akin to going to there for Telephone services -- which I don't think many do.

I've been using elance.com for some time now. There are both positives and negatives about elance.

Positives: You can often get good quality work for a good price. A LOT of the providers on elance.com are from India or other countries where due to the currency conversion, they can afford to bid a lot lower than US companies for a lot of the projects. Most of these providers also have excellent portfolios and a very good feedback profile on elance (it keeps track of their earnings and feedback earned on the website).

Negatives: As is the nature with outsourcing, since they are so far away, if their communication skills are not good then you can get very frustrated. There ARE those employers who are very bad at this. Some of them offer to stay on AIM, MSN,etc for several hours a day so that they can converse with you in real time, others don't. There are a few providers who try to bid low to catch your attention, and once you've selected them and made a deposit payment, then try to raise up their bid and get more money out of you.

I've outsourced a few logo projects to one provider and I could not ask for better customer service from someone (username - iandistudio). On the other hand , recently I posted a project and selected another provider (username - umerth) and they tried to jackup the price after I made the deposit. I told them it was unacceptable and requested a refund and thankfully was able to get my money back.

Elance does have a dispute resolution policy and it's wise to read up on their suggestions regarding posting projects before you post a project.

Also you should thoroughly look into the person you'd be selecting (by this I mean their portfolio, their feedbacks on elance, etc) and you should have a contract with them. Elance shows you how to do this.

Hope this helps.

I wouldn't rate ebay as a place to sell your hosting, I have only heard bad things from people who bought hosting from there!

EBay is such a messy place. I woulnd't sell or buy anything on it at all. I keep wondering how on earth would their stock keep growing..

I couldn't agree with you more on the saturation of web hosting offers on ebay.

I also noticed on ebay there are literally hundreds of people selling low quality domain names for prices that insult my intelligence. Has anyone else noticed this or am I just halucinating?

-Visionary

No you are not hallucinating...I've seen this as well. Some domains listed for several thousand dollars and they have no site built around them, no traffic, nothing...kind of makes you wonder what these people are smoking...

You can find anything on ebay these days

I even saw memberships to Orkut selling on ebay.

I tried it

But it didn't work to well so ixnayed the idea.

actually tried it once just for the fun of it, and it resulted in.. zip!

all I ever see on ebay is a bunch of "unlimited" hosts. No really decent hosts etc.. they all seem to be resellers (not saying theres anything wrong with resellers) who won't even last a year and just trying to make a quick buck without any actual work)\.