Have you noticed my newest sponsor? The cute little ad at the top of the center column? It’s efreeme, a new online marketplace that already has quite the following. Haven’t heard of it yet? You will, and it’s got a little something over Etsy and Artfire. It’s free. Completely. You don’t have to give anybody a cut of your sales, and you definitely don’t have to pay anything to list something that isn’t even guaranteed to sell. I’ve already got a little shop on there, and Diana, the brains behind the whole shebang, is one of the most helpful, accommodating people I’ve had the pleasure of coming across!
Guess what else? If you open a shop on efreeme right now and list 20 items, not only will Diana not charge you anything, but she will also give you $5.00!
Q. What’s the story behind efreeme?
A. My brother and I both have computer backgrounds, and realize that many successful websites are actually free for their users. I thought, “why not a free site to sell vintage and handmade, all in one place?”. There really is no reason to pay to list or sell something, especially knowing how hard some of these sellers work at making or finding their unique items!
Q. Why should sellers list with you instead of on Etsy, Artfire, or some of the other options out there?
A. We’re free! Also, since we are new and small, it’s a great opportunity for sellers to give us feedback and suggestions to help make efreeme the selling venue they want to use. We’re very friendly and quick to respond!
A. We plan to eventually make a bit of money through advertisements on the site, but we’re still working on the traffic to make that happen. We’ve also had experience in the past moderating websites and automating some of that moderation process (I still reply to each email personally though).
Q. Tell us a little bit about your referral program.
A. We want efreeme to spread like wildfire (but a nice one), and we want to reward the users that help make that happen. When someone signs up for our referral program, they’ll get a customized link to efreeme to put on their blogs, facebook, twitter, etc. When someone else uses that link to go to efreeme, open a store and list 20 items, the person who referred them will then get $5. You can also get $5 if you open your own store and list 20 items. Basically we like giving away $5. 🙂
A. Quote: “An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.” – Charles Bukowski
Colour (notice the “u”? I’m Canadian): Mint Green
Animal: I love raccoons and hippopotamuses lately.
Now that you’ve gotten caught up to speed on my latest sponsor, I’d love to know what you think of her idea. Will you list with efreeme? Will you buy from there?
It may lack the slickness of a site like Etsy, but I love how quick and easy it’s been to list items there – and, heck, it never hurts to have more eyes on your products!
Bethany and Corinna – I definitely agree that it’s worth a try – nothing to lose, right?!
Joyce – I’m sure that Diana will appreciate your feedback. Like she said in her interview, they are looking for sellers to get in early so that they can get feedback to grow and develop efreeme, so she realizes that it’s not fully polished yet. She is trying to build meaningful traffic, which is why she is advertising and offering a referral program.
Thanks for your feedback, everybody!
i took a look and I am just not interested. The design of the site isn’t geared for shopping. The logo is so huge that I barely see any products when I tried to browse. The list of categories is in the middle of the page with an ad. Once again, I barely see the products and I have to scroll.
The list of products have huge spaces around each product with all that info and small picture. It takes so long to “browse”.
Sorry I am very critical. I appreciate the concept and it’s great that the site is free to use. But free doesn’t mean anything if the site doesn’t get enough meaningful traffic.
Very interesting! I hadn’t heard of this before. Maybe I’ll give it a try.
Wow…wow. I just took at look at their site, and I think they have something going. It’s definitely not polished like some of the other sites, but I feel like they have the right idea getting people to join and fixing issues as they arise. I think I might just try it out. I mean…..it’s free, right?