Sellers are often revolted after receiving their bill for listing items at online auction sites. They seem to have fees for everything under the sun these days. On one popular auction site it is possible to run up fees of over $50 just by selling a single item. Many would be clients wrangle over whether it is really worth paying that much. They fear that their auction may never get noticed while buried beneath a million other similar auctions.

If you've ever spent time on Internet discussion forums then you know you can easily find people willing to speak their minds. Anger and resentment toward those big sites can sometimes run deep. Especially among those who sell frequently. Professionals, homemakers, hobbyists, and collectors all tend to be somewhat frustrated when it comes to buying and selling used merchandise online. One member gripes, "Those greedy sites might as well be collecting taxes too."

Most sellers say they are fed up with soaring End-of-Auction charges and what seems like a minefield of listing fees. A few can recall how it once was when online auctioning was in its infancy. Selling expensive items online used to be somewhere around two or three dollars in total fees. They have indeed been slowly creeping up for many years.

More and more disgruntled sellers have been turning to alternative selling methods in an attempt to save money. A new trend has been growing in the form of "niche" auction sites. These are smaller and leaner auction sites that specialize in only one type of merchandise or what would be only one category. They have been gaining appeal because fees are generally much lower than their big brother's.

Another source for inexpensive auctioning is the mom and pop owned sites. These are private and sometimes home based sites which seem to combine the best of both worlds. They often have all of the general merchandise categories like the big sites, yet they keep overhead low like the niche sites. These site owners clearly don't have as much overhead to bear.

Most have extremely modest fees while some have no fees at all. That's right, none. If you dig deep enough you can actually find full service auction sites that allow visitors to run auctions completely free of charge. Not just once but as many times as they want and for as long as they want. Now that's what we call a bargain.

In recent years, smaller auction sites like these have also been enjoying a steady growth of "buyer" traffic. More and more people are shopping from the security and comfort of their own homes. As the number of shoppers grow, so too do the number of auction sites. Bargain hunters have more choices today than ever before. Shoppers have adjusted to these trends by learning to hop from one auction site to another in search of the best deals. No more of the one-size-fits-all marketplace for them.

Ambitious webmasters have utilized unique and creative ways to advertise auction items. They know that more buyers mean more sellers and that the whole process can snowball. They generally make use of free or inexpensive off-site advertising for each auction item. The advertised links can lead straight to the auction pages of their clients which draws in prospective buyers. The proof is in the pudding because folks have indeed been migrating to those smaller sites.

Thanks to the perseverance of budget minded site owners, sellers can now shop around almost as much as the buyers. Price wars between sites are emerging as they vie for market share. The low-priced auction sites have been slowly but surely nibbling away at the clientele of those gigantic auction sites. Does this mean that those fat cats have finally priced themselves out of the market? No one really knows for sure, but perhaps someday some of those Goliath sites will fall from power.