just an idea

[ahwoogah]

hi, I was posting some products on ebay a few nights ago and i came to realize that ebay is pretty damn expensive!!! I paid 1.35 just to post 1 item and i listed maybe 5. Thats 6.75!! i paid in just listing fee's plus i have to pay transaction fees from paypal. I was thinking about what if i started my own auction site and processing program where fee's are cheaper. Say that 1.35 ebay charges i charge maybe .50 to .75 a transaction. I just think ebay is way to expensive and i want to create a better and more costly friendly community.

What steps would i need to take to get this off the ground and what direction should i go about this

[akula]

what if i started my own auction site

when I was in high school, I had this friend who also had lots of ideas like "let's try heroin!" and "what if we dropped out!"

i could never understand why he wouldn't use all that energy to come up with positive, rather than self destructive concepts

your post reminds of this guy..it has this undercurrent of masochistic longing, that exists in fantasy far removed from reality

[Denis3721]

i would love to see a different auction site. But just creating a site with auction features is hard enough. There are some Scrips for sale out there on the internet but non of them can compete with ebay. If you are serious about starting your own auction site that would compete with ebay you would have to orginize a full team of marketing experts and web developers. And you would probably have to take out a huge business loan.

I dont know though, maybe there is an easier way...

Btw, do you own shopcorrect.com?? If you do, where do you get your products from??? PM me if you are willing to share some of your secrets. I always wanted to open my own online shop. I sell products on ebay aswell,I make lots of money sometimes...

Good luck with your ventures....

[snowgoose]

ts something thats been done so many times already,

theres plenty of other auction site not just ebay.

[kiddoso]

Have you thought about supply, demand, and everything in between? There have been tons of other auction sites, but ebay by far is still the dominating one. Why do you think that's the case? Do you think just by reducing the fees, people will come to your site? Why else do people still keep using ebay?

[richkid]

I have to agree with the others. You have to think about who would post even if it were cheaper? Everyone uses eBay for the fact that everyone uses it which means more potential buyers.

Unless you can promise phenomenal traffic I would drop the idea.

[BusinessAdviser]

And on top of all the above issues, a decreased listing price is not a source of competitive advantage. IF you spent the time, money, and effort to develop a site to compete with eBay based on lower listing fees and IF you actually started to win over some of eBay's customers, what is to stop eBay from simply dropping its prices and running you out of business? The answer is nothing. Good thought, but I would look elsewhere for opportunities.

[HiTechGadgets]

I still think that having another auctions site with lower site compared to ebay would need alot of marketing strategies and work on a business plan. If you was to compete with ebay you rather make your auction site free for all buyers and sellers. Then hopefully in the future you would have a payment/processing program after you got enough traffic. Thats just my suggestion. It can be done but has to be unique. Goodluck!!

[BeerMan]

hi, I was posting some products on ebay a few nights ago and i came to realize that ebay is pretty damn expensive!!! I paid 1.35 just to post 1 item and i listed maybe 5. Thats 6.75!! i paid in just listing fee's plus i have to pay transaction fees from paypal. I was thinking about what if i started my own auction site and processing program where fee's are cheaper. Say that 1.35 ebay charges i charge maybe .50 to .75 a transaction. I just think ebay is way to expensive and i want to create a better and more costly friendly community.

What steps would i need to take to get this off the ground and what direction should i go about this

If it's just the fees that are causing a sore point with you take a peek at BigCrumbs! It's FREE to join and you get back a percentage of the seller's fees on every purchase! Better yet, tell your friends and earn a percentage of the fees whenever they buy something too!

Probably easier than trying to slay the giant! (ie. ebay).

[edwardhalim]

I have never been to bigcrumbs before beerman. Thank you for sharing, I should give that a try

[rogercbryan]

If I'm not mistaken there are already a ton of other auction sites out there. You can actually buy a functioning auction site on eBay for under $500. The trick is getting 100,000 people to start selling on your new site... With out the proper marketing you'll have little to no chance to get things going.

My advice is to just stick with eBay.. unless you have $1M to get started.

[fwn122]

Personally, I don't know much about running auction sites, but I do know that it would be very difficult at first to get enough members on you site to trigger competative bidding. I do agree with you though. I sell computers on ebay and I usually spend about $10 per item. If you do attempt to build this site, let me know and I will be one of your first members. Good Luck