ezebee.com : Newest freelance e-market !

ezebee.com : Website review for India 

Are you into crafting for business? Im just a hobbyist who like to try and learn new craft & arts and maybe in the process dish out some unique pieces for my home 🙂  But 80% of crafters I know of are highly talented and experienced and they  craft for business. I happened to ask a few of them if the business is worth the effort and investment, and they feel sometimes its the sheer joy of doing something you love doing that matters despite less profits. Many also happened to mention how a Facebook shop generally attracts friends, relatives and referred people alone and hence is a little difficult getting new customers.

I think that’s were a common market helps the crafters like in the US they have Etsy where they can sell their handmade items. Anybody searching for a particular item say a handmade birthday card can see your item through the search result unlike on Facebook & blog shops where most orders are repeat orders from loyal customers. I feel it also creates a need for improvising and diversifying your works to stand out amongst other sellers. When I came across this new freelance market place on the internet – ezebee.com, I thought its going to be just another Etsy but I guess I was wrong. Totally!

A little about ezebee.com

ezebee.com was founded in late 2012 by Ossian Vogel and Frank de Vries. ezebee.com combines the goodness of free online market with the strength of an active socially interactive platform for sellers and buyers. Ezebee is more of an online community rather than a marketplace and that is clearly evident from the lot of options for interactions available on the site like groups,blogs, events etc. By March 2013, Ezebee already had vendors from more than 35 countries. ezebee.com has a growing market in the U.S. and Spain and at the moment many of the vendors are from Germany.

ezebee.com website layout & design :

On first sight, to be frank I was little confused with too many options across the website but thankfully there is this small video tour right on the landing page that gives you pretty much a good idea about the website. The site looks absolutely neat and eye catchy with white with pastel shades combination of colors. The landing page has option to select your language, links to start your shop, tiled categories of products etc along with sections displaying featured shop, featured seller, recommended products, newly listed shops etc for ease of finding.

Another cool thing is search local option through which I just randomly checked for Bangalore and to my surprise I actually got shops listed in Bangalore ha ! There are options such as flea market, shops, swaps etc pertaining to each locality selected which is really cool!

Four links are prominently displayed on the top sticky bar of the page – Marketplace, Classifieds, Community and People.

• Marketplace : This link takes you to page with tiled layout of random collection of products. On the left side is a neatly laid out categories tab for ease of selection of items. Each items also has seller shop/seller mentioned along with it which is a great input to find items from same seller.
• Classifieds : I have never seen a website offering classifieds option but I think this will be handy for whole sale sellers and buyers.
• Community : I feel the interface to this page is more or less similar to Facebook news feed wherein latest details about products posted, products liked etc keeps trending . Also are options to get involved with groups and forums, read the emagazine etc.
• People : This page displays list of sellers along with their shops ( can be filtered on region,gender etc), options to message and follow which I think is a great way to interact with fellow sellers and users.

I think I can keep browsing all day on ezebee.com ! I feel like its going to a mall with my friends – There is no way I’m leaving the mall soon :P!

Business on ezebee.com :

Just for the sake of knowing the process of buying and selling, I created an account for myself and setting up a shop was very easy! They give you these many categories and subcategories to choose your shop’s niche and you also get a custom URL for your shop ( if it has already not been taken!) The best part is all listings are free and they dont cut a penny from your income through ezebee.com.  You also have options to share your items on social media, and also link your Ezebee store to your Facebook page etc.

They also had option of blogging ( Im not kidding!) where you can jot down your musings or anything about your product etc and I loved going through a few blogs posted by users. As for buyers, the item description page gives you all information about the product, the seller, location , shipping charges, likes for the products, other products from the same seller etc which is really cool!

Payment can be done via paypal , bank transfer and also there is this cool internal currency called Beecoins that can be used. Most of the sellers have mentioned shipping price ( international also) along with the products and they can always be contacted through the website for tracking informations, follow ups etc .

Things I loved about ezebee.com :

• Social interaction platform : There is an immense opportunity of interaction between buyers and seller which I feel promotes business at both personal and professional levels
• Beecoins : The option of internal currency called Beecoins that can be earned through various activities on the blog gets a big thumbs up from me. You can always swap items with other sellers/buyers for beecoins and never spend a penny! yaay !
• Local search : ezebee.com is a global marketplace and if you want something authentic to a place, you can always search for shop/seller location and filter out sellers from the particular country/place.

Things I feel could have been better on ezebee.com :

• There are lot of different pages and options like community, forum, groups, blog etc but I think a few visit to the website is enough to get one acquainted with the layout.
• There is no buyer protection/purchase protection offered by sellers or ezebee.com although it might only be required in extreme cases. An option of that sort to report/complaint would be a welcome move.

Did you check out ezebee.com ? Well hurry then! You can also be a part of Ezebee team by sharing your creative journey through their blog!

There are lot of Indian shops as well on ezebee.com and here are my favourite picks from the stores 🙂

Do let me know if you are planning to open a store on ezebee.com. I would love to come and visit 🙂 Also let me know if you like ezebee.com and think that its going to change your business on a positive note 🙂