Hi from Buzzmart

[buzzmart]

Dear all,

Hi my name is George, 24, I am one of the co-founders of Buzzmart.com and just finished my university degree in the UK. Since a young age I have been an advocate of buying and selling online, specifically on ...cough..ebay..cough sorry. I really enjoyed making my own money and most of all I enjoyed spending it even more. However, over time, especially as I grew older and realized that I needed more money to support myself, I realized the bay was too expensive for a small scale seller as myself. After the deduction of all fees, it was just not worth it anymore. So I thought of maybe trying other websites that do not charge such big commissions. Fair enough, there were many just like the bay out there but there was just something missing about all of them which did not make them stand out. They all felt like they were clones of one another, doing what ebay does at a cheaper cost to the seller but without offering anything unique. Not to say that this does not work. However, with the rise of facebook and youtube, I thought it would be a good idea to start my own marketplace which would incorporate some of these social networking and rich media elements, and so the story of Buzzmart begins.

In a way, I would describe Buzzmart as just having started off as a hobby, and it still is my hobby project, but after conducting some research into what people would like to see in new online marketplaces I decided to turn it into a business as well. After months, weeks, days, hours and time we should have been spending with our girlfriends, what you see live today at Social Marketplace | Buy And Sell Marketplace | Buy And Sell Auction | Buy Sell Products is what we have been working on the last 2 years almost. To be honest we really underestimated the amount of work, think about having to code a marketplace from scratch as well as include social networking features. Not easy I tell you.

Anyways, we are continuing development as I write this. The ecommerce/auction market is a very competitive one to enter, with some very big players and sites popping up left and right before you can say "oh no, not another one!!". So we have to be realistic about our goals, but we truly believe we have something different from most our competitors. Our goal right now is to get as many people signed up and selling their stuff for free, with no commission or final fees. Marketing costs are not cheap as many website owners will know, so our success relies on our users to join and start selling.

I would really love to hear peoples feedback and suggestions about Buzzmart. Looking forward to hearing from everyone.

[simplyfreegas]

Hi George!

First off, welcome to YE.

Secondly, hats off to a beautifully designed website. The whole feel of the site is very clean and clutter-free. I love the instant search (like google) in terms of changing the price range and buy now only sorting.

I am curious as to how you are going to turn this into a profitable business though. Is the free buying and selling temporary? Will it be supported by Ads? How will the ads look on the site?

Thumbs up for now though!

[buzzmart]

Hi George!

First off, welcome to YE.

Secondly, hats off to a beautifully designed website. The whole feel of the site is very clean and clutter-free. I love the instant search (like google) in terms of changing the price range and buy now only sorting.

I am curious as to how you are going to turn this into a profitable business though. Is the free buying and selling temporary? Will it be supported by Ads? How will the ads look on the site?

Thumbs up for now though!

Thanks a lot for the comments. Im really happy you like it, my team and I have worked really hard and its not an easy task coding a website like buzzmart from scratch. Having said that we are constantly coming up with new and exciting features and improving upon what we have.

Regarding profitability, to be honest with you, we originally had a fee system but we decided to drop it based due to the feedback we were getting. Right now, the biggest challenge as with any startup is getting the user, so our main goal is to get people to start buying and selling. At a later stage sometime in the future we will think of ways to make it profitable, maybe through affiliates or offering user to pay a small fee to promote their listings to the homepage.

Our aim now is to generate a decent user base and to continue improving the website. This website started as a hobby of mine after all and it still is, so I get joy from working on it which is why profits are not as much as a priority as is just creating something people will like and use.

[buzzmart]

Guys, if you like Buzzmart we would also really appreciate if you place your vote for the 2010 Mashable using this link Mashable Awards Help your young entrepreneurs as we have put a lot of time and passion into this project and we are improving the website on a daily basis based on amazing peoples feedback which we have received from forums such as this one.

[buzzmart]

Hey Guys!

We know it has been quiet for some time, but there is a really good reason for that.
For the last 2 months we have been working hard day and night to improve our marketplace platform by offering you all some great new features you guys asked for.

Here they are:

1) eBay listing and feedback import tool: You can now import all your live eBay listings directly into Buzzmart with just a few simple clicks.

2) Google Checkout: Sellers can now accept Google Checkout as an optional payment option.

3) Live chat: Now you can chat to all online sellers without them having to be on your friends list beforehand.

4) Interactive faq with Q&A facility.

5) Additional check out cart features.

6) Improvements to existing functions and design tweaks.


Thank you and for all you who are interested in giving us a try we hope our platform will bring you lots of success.

Kind regards,

The Buzzmart Team...you can read about us in our new About Us page.