Launching new Auction Site??

terrymats

Thanks rachie & soo. Your replies are encouraging. I've got money to put behind this project. With some finance, I could put up enough money to launch this and I think i'll start by doing this research myself. BTW rachie; i would love to get in touch with the person you are talking about. I'm quite keen about making money about it. But moreover, I'm keen on breaking the ebay monopoly and offering all people an alternative solution. Also rachie, free listings are an invitation to spam as mentioned by someone here. And i believe its correct. Charging anything like 5p per listing and a small 2% completion fee would be ideal. I was thinking of offering a £10 signup voucher for a month. I know people could signup multiple times, but that would atleast send off the number of members and the number of auctions by various members. Another idea would be offer a 40p credit to a member account for buying from this website. Guess research is basically the first step to this.

Now that its getting deeper, i launched a dating website last year and spent around £10,000 on marketing it. But at that time, my resources were limited and could not continue with it. I still have the complete site and the database with me. Just in case anyone is interested. There are around 6000 members who joined the community in just 15 days. But I had sevre personal problems and could not do much about continuing this project and just left it to die.

Thanks
Terry

terrymats

Just wondering if e-mail blasting to opt-in lists is of any use? I have tried this sometime back and didn't fetch much results. But free credit vouchers may do the trick?

burbs_2

terry, so you have 10,000 a month behind you. do you really want to whack that money into a project that will not be succesful, it will just keep sapping your money. You are not going to be able to compete against ebay with those sorts of funds.

as people above have said many have tried and all of them fail, some quickly others over a longer period of time but they all fail. Everybody uses Ebay to auction their goods and there is no chance that they will change that, just because it is habit.

if you have that sort of investment why dont you put it into something that has the possibilty of making you some hard cash.
its like saying i dont like the set up of Tesco so im going to start my own supermarket in direct competition with them. you stand no chance.

RACHIE77

terrymats wrote:

Just wondering if e-mail blasting to opt-in lists is of any use? I have tried this sometime back and didn't fetch much results. But free credit vouchers may do the trick?

Depends where you get your lists from, I have used "opt-in" lists before and had to write a grovelling email to my ISP cos I got accused of spamming... Lists from Dun & Bradstreet and the likes would cost a fair penny but much more likely to get results... failing that I always find students are willing candidates for a few quid, or a freebie like you say.... I'm sure if you posted an online questionnaire on here people would help??

I'll PM you with other details

PASCALI

What about a MoneysavingExpert auction site, I am sure that with the calibre, expertise and spending power of the members it would stand a good chance of succes and as for policing it I am sure there would be no lack of volunteers.

soolin

terrymats wrote:

Just wondering if e-mail blasting to opt-in lists is of any use? I have tried this sometime back and didn't fetch much results. But free credit vouchers may do the trick?

I have not heard that term before, it sounds a bit like spam though sending unsolicited email asking people whether they want to opt in to emails.

I think if the term does mean sending unsolicited emails then you will be annoying your potential customer base before you even started.

Soo

jl1_2

soolin wrote:

Other auction sites that were big, like Freeserve auctions one of the originals, have actually been taken over by Ebay.

If that is the case then it's proof that you can set up a successful Ebay rival. Maybe looking at Ebay's recent auction site acquisitions will tell you how to make something that Ebay is so worried about that they want to buy it out.

soolin

jl1 wrote:

If that is the case then it's proof that you can set up a successful Ebay rival. Maybe looking at Ebay's recent auction site acquisitions will tell you how to make something that Ebay is so worried about that they want to buy it out.

I'm not sure that ebay are going to be bothered by an auction site with a few thousand users. I'm not convinced that any money was involved in the freeserve take over anyway, I think they just offered Freeserve auction members an automatic account when Freeserve auctions closed.

I think that the number of users on ebay is almost incalculable, several million people at the last count and even well over a million in the UK alone.

Soo

terrymats

I guess a moneysavingexpert auction site would be an ideal solution to breaking the ebay monopoly. Would the moderators here have anything to say about it? Maybe Martin can have a say on this?

Terry

soolin

terrymats wrote:

I guess a moneysavingexpert auction site would be an ideal solution to breaking the ebay monopoly. Would the moderators here have anything to say about it? Maybe Martin can have a say on this?

Terry

I'm sorry to still be so negative but even if everyone of us here signed up you would still not even have the users that ebay sign up on a typical day. The idea of breaking the ebay monopoly is a non starter, all you can really hope for is a niche market somewhere.

As for linking somehow to this site as you say that would be Martin's decision. However, I can't see any reason at all why he would want to. This is a money saving site a board for people to chat and excchange ideas and bargain sightings.

It still boils down to the question, what can you do that ebay can't?

Soo