real ebay alternatives
kala
3,361 Posts
a suprisingly decent article via the devil's own.... cnnebay realizes they fucked up with all of the the changeshttp://money.cnn.com/2008/02/06/smbusiness/ebay_alternatives.fsb/index.htm?postversion=2008020610
Comments
http://fsbfeatures.blogs.fsb.cnn.com/2008/01/31/ebay-fee-hike-sparks-seller-rebellion/
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing...Record nerds unite!
What's held me back in the past is handling payment. Not easy!
Is it fair to say thats the ONLY tricky part?
Not at all, that's just been the dealbreaker for me to date.
In all honesty, I've been formulating a business plan for the last few months around a web portal all things music related with auctions only being a piece of it. The plan is pretty solid, but development has been real slow as I've been working 80 hours a week the past couple months at my current job... no joke. I leave for Barcelona on Saturday for 10 days for a mobile conference. When I get back, things should slow down a bit so I'm gonna pick it back up.
That's all I'll say for now... any further info on it would require an NDA
nah I meant more along the lines of preventing chargebacks and telling porkies about not recieving packages etc... I mean, how can that be enforced realistically? Mandatory registered mail?
Exactly... all that stuff is part of payment in my thinking and the predicted nightmares are what have held me back in the past. That's why I was hoping to get a best case scenario brainstorm session here for buyers and sellers. Mandatory delivery confirmation is certainly an option. Thoughts?
Payment can be sent by money order through the post. That is the way payment was handled in the Goldmine days, 10 years ago. Anyone can use paypal, your site does not need to have any business connections with paypal for a buyer and seller to use it. Legit business can offer direct credit card payments.
Disputes can be arbitrated using basic rules through the site, but in the end it is always laissez fair.
In that article on CNNMoney or whatever, one of the upstart auction places was focusing on making it very easy for buyers/sellers to interact. This is a great idea, and the better this option is, the better for everyone.
There is just no possible way you're going to beat out an Ebay style auction service. However, with some years and shitload of effort, I think you could at least make it to a GEMM/MUSICSTACK level of business, where its more geared towards collectors who know what they want and will bid/pay top dollar for it, and come to you before they hit ebay, if you're doing it right.
Some great points being made in this thread...
http://waxidermy.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=13979&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
everyone will pay with a moneyorder so that way you don't have to deal with the high paypal fees.
I still want to feedback such like this:
There was a third but it would prob shock you lot too much