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Part Four eBay Alternatives: Don't believe the hype!
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POLLS
Polls are a nifty tool that people love because they can vote and feel that they have a voice. The reality is that most polls are worthless. Especially the ones online and in particular polls that try to determine the "best" or "worst" ecommerce sites.
I made up a few polls last week myself.
Here is a poll for the best "niche" or "specialty" ecommerce site http://www.examiner.com/x-2685-Philadelphia-eCommerce-Examiner~y2009m2d14-Poll-Vote-for-the-best-niche-eCommerce-site
Another poll for the best "auction" ecommerce site http://www.examiner.com/x-2685-Philadelphia-eCommerce-Examiner~y2009m2d13-Poll-Vote-for-the-best-alternative-ecommerce-auction-site-outside-of-eBay
And finally, a poll for the best "fixed price" ecommerce site http://www.examiner.com/x-2685-Philadelphia-eCommerce-Examiner~y2009m2d13-Poll-Vote-for-the-best-fixed-priced-marketplace-outside-of-Amazon
Each poll has four sites to choose from. You can only vote once. Seems pretty fair, right? No, that is wrong. I got to choose the four sites based on my own criteria as what what I felt was the best site that was best suited for each poll. There must be hundreds of eBay alternative sites out there yet only 12 are represented in these three polls. I made sure that 2 of the sites I sell on were inlcuded in these polls. Atomic Mall (www.atomicmall.com) and Specialist Auctions (www.specialistauctions.com). So how can these polls be fair? They can't be. They are an illusion that I created purposely to show everyone that online polls are a farce and that when you see someone going around crowing about how their site finished first in a poll, it's really nothing to get excited about. The fix is usually in and it starts with the person making the poll itself.
Now, before the cyber thug cult members out there start posting comments about how unethical this is and how I have an agenda because I admitted the real reason for the polls, just stop. I do not need to justify my reasons only to say I am making a point. Your comments will be deleted like all of the comments that were deleted talking about sites other than were mentioned in the polls.
OK, so you have some polls. One person, one vote. Seems pretty fair to me. The problem is that there are many way for people to vote 100 or more times. All they have to do is take 2 minutes to delete the cookies on their computer, vote 3 times through different browsers (say AOL, Internet Explorer and Mozilla). Repeat the process and within 10 minutes one person will have voted at least 10 times. The more socially oriented sites will send their members out in force to manipulate these "polls" for bragging rights. It's doesn't seem to be worth it but it is. There are lots of sites out there who want to be the next "Etsy" who got mentioned on a national television show and secured millions of dollars in finance. It is quite possible that a site might try to use these types of polls and other easily manipulated statistics, to try to influence someone with more dollars than sense. I am not saying this is the case, but t it is not beyond the realm of possibility.
The sites that lose these polls ar ethe sites that are more professional seller oriented. If you look at the "fixed price" ecommerce site poll you will see that eCrater (www.eCrater.com) finished dead last out of the 4 sites included. eCrater is probably one of the best, if not THE best, all around alternative sites out there in my opinion. They should have finished number one but didn't because of the type of seller they attract.
So when you see someone crowing about how their site won a poll, keep it in perspective and look beyond the hype.
As always, personal attacks, questioning motives, trying to hijack the article with nonsense and other such manipulation or posting just to try to promote sites not mentioned is this article are not cool things to do and the comments will disappear.
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