paul smith's Snaps & Bytes e-home
April 2004: PAUL SMITH'S DEVIANT'S DIARY - Perving the eBay way
The electronic age demands that you have a web site if you're in business. It's second only to a 'phone number as the must-have item for any commercial venture. Forget capital, you can sell something before you've bought it. I've got several sites, ETO has one and you've probably got one too…. But do you actually do much with it? There's another breed of e-traders who wheel-and-deal very successfully online. From a comfortable sofa in front of the telly, with a laptop beside them, they enthusiastically eBay-watch.
A quick check at eBay.co.uk shows almost 2000 items with Fetish in their brief description. Erotic brings 580 books, films and assorted goodies to our attention. Gag produces 74 hits and even Dildo pops up four times. Including, amusingly 'Music CD - Dildo, Life For Rent', and a t-shirt from the town of Dildo, Newfoundland. Both of which sound hygienic enough to sell second-hand, at least. These numbers are just for items already in the UK, as opposed to ones available here from overseas. Looking for a latex nurses uniform? There's a very nice black and red number available for €49 (about £33) from a nice chap in the Rhineland. At least I think he's a chap. The Adam's Apple is a give away.
It makes me giggle that eBay rules demand that many of these pervy items have to be offered for 'display purposes only'. Let's just pause a moment and imagine the reality of such a regulation. How exactly would one display a collection of ball-gags or butt-plugs? Would you have the back bedroom lined with glass cabinets, the lurid colours and polished stainless steel shining brightly under fluorescent tubes? The very thought makes me squirm like the memory of being lead upstairs by a creepy great-uncle to see his collection of Nazi memorabilia. Predictably this leads onto fevered imaginings of a Werther's Originals™ oldster, bleating on about his own grandfather and how 'special' he'd been made to feel. Presumably whilst gagged and plugged. However this revelation has been thoughtfully edited from the broadcast version of the advert. Blugh!
Away from the obvious toys up for sale there's as much erotic art as you can shake a stick at to admire and bid on. I was particularly moved by Nancy Farmer's brave images of kinky lesbian Barbie™ and Sindy™ dolls, also seen at www.fetishdollies.co.uk. Lots of other prints, including all the classics - girl-in-stockings-heels-and-corset and man-with-oily-muscles-holding-a-collar-and-lead - are available.
eBay is easy to set up to hide bidders names in the err… name of anonymity, and with all the usual accoutrements of any auction, such as reserve and payment options. PayPal™ seems popular, as well as cleared cheque and bank transfer. Plus the feedback feature lets you know who's a good, reliable customer to deal with, and who's a time-waster on the Internet for curious kicks. After a successful sale there's extra margin to be had out of charging a little more for recorded post or other delivery than it actually costs and it's a piece of cake to keep your own pre-formatted page of description and photographs of the item as a HTML page. This means once you've sold your 'unique, hand made, never been worn' item you can easily re-advertise exactly the same thing again! It's a good idea, in my view, to avoid doing what some people do, which is having a dozen identical items up for sale at the same time. It just means people always bid on which ever is the cheapest at the time, rather than focusing on bidding against each other to push the price up on a single item. I'm sure you understand the psychology of this and how auctions work as a sales method.
Other things not to do would include what Hannah [name withheld] of Flat [address removed on her request] has done. She has 'hours of fun with this thick white jelly dildo. Vary your sex life, of (sic) just have a fun night in on your own.... whatever takes your fancy' as her advert. Fancy that. I'm sure no reader of ETO would put his or her private address on eBay. It makes sense to only send it to the winner of the auction so they can post you a cheque or postal order.
Another thing that makes me smile are items listed as 'unwanted gift'. You'd think that if someone knew you well enough to even consider buying vibrating nipple-clamps/weights for you that they'd have the decency to check that you wanted a pair first! What some people think of as fetish makes me giggle too. I suppose there must be people out their with a fetish for huge clumpy unattractive shoes, control tights or a dog kennel being passed off as a 'Dominatrix Submission Cage'. Fisherman's waders and ex-army total enclosure rubber NBC suits on the other hand… Mmmm!
Videos and DVDs on adult themes are easy to find too, but I suspect many of them would fall foul of eBay's reasonable rules on what's appropriate to sell on a web site with no age restrictions. To side-step regulations I've seen R18 movies listed as Genre: Exercise & Fitness, which I suppose is sort of being honest. Slightly smarter and a tad more responsible is to have a notice like 'eBay wouldn't like us telling you about this film here, but this link will take you to an age conformation page, and then, if you're over 17, onto more information'. Another trick is to use a sort of pervs shorthand. Until I investigated further I thought ATM was a hole-in-the-wall cash-point machine. It turns out there's more to it than that. Much more. I think I may have blushed. Certainly I then had to brush my teeth in mild horror.
If you do decide to try eBay as a sort of cut-price e-commerce outlet then it would be well worth reading their Terms of Service to avoid finding your auction terminated half way through. One thing I see lots of adult-business folks doing is including a link to their regular web site, which doesn't seem to infringe any rules. Obviously if you've listed a product as 'Latex Butt-Plug' it's unlikely anyone finding it has stumbled upon it by accident, so why shouldn't you draw this potential customer onto your site? That way they cannot only admire your firm-yet-pliable eBay offering, but also dribble over your full range of anal toys. As it were.
Personally I've sold a couple of digital cameras through eBay and found the process pleasurably painless. In fact, the worst thing about either transaction was meeting the 74-year-old chap who'd bought my Canon and realising that the memory of his supernaturally bushy eyebrows would always haunt me. Especially whenever I looked at an Old English Sheepdog again. I'm sure you'd not have to experience anything similar if you sell online though, so please don't let my tale of terror put you off eBaying.
Legal notice: The name eBay is a registered trademark of a large firm with solicitors and lawyers on 24-hour standby and is thus so acknowledged it hurts.
Paul Smith is still free to a good home. Kinky Job offers to info@snapsandbytes.co.uk please.
1185 words on doing it the eBay way, Dale :-D
Paul.