This post is more or less an open forum for sellers to brainstorm and offer their ideas on how eBay sellers as a group could take down eBay. I will start the discussion with a couple of ideas that I think could be a good start for the discussion.
1. Create a free, seller-owned, non-profit, fixed price, eBay-like marketplace- The only stipulation for the site is that all products listed must be cheaper than the equivalent listing on eBay by at least the amount of the eBay final value fee. The reason is that since the site is free, the sellers must pass along the savings to the buyers to attract them to the site. I think an eBay seller-owned site that is "always cheaper than eBay" would be a great news/PR event that could help drive traffic to the site. It could be named something like minuesthefees.com or some other name that expresses its strongest value proposition: that it has the same products as eBay but they are just cheaper. My feeling is that most eBay buyers are attracted to bargains and would flock to the site. Maybe someone at PESA could organize something like this with all of the PowerSellers...
2. Create a free, open source, multichannel listing tool- In order to make it easy for all eBay sellers to list their items on minusthefees.com, we would have to have a listing tool that resembles Turbo Lister but actually works, that pushes listings to eBay, Shopping.com, etc., in addition to minusthefees.com. Maybe Craig over at Craigslist would let the tool push the listings to Craiglist as well -- or maybe Craig could help create the tool and help organize the marketplace. Another option could be to ask Scot over at Channel Advisor to put out a free version of CA's product that pushes items to just eBay and minusthefees.com, and then he can charge for adding the ability to push your items to other sites like your website or Shopping.com.
Anyway, those are my first few thoughts on how to get started. Please post comments on new ideas or on how to improve upon my suggestions. Thanks for reading and please subscribe to this post's rss feed. Also, if you do like it please bookmark/share it with one of the social bookmarking sites on the top right of the blog.
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5 comments:
I agree that Ebay needs some type of competition. The only thing keeping it afloat is a lack thereof.
Good post.
And this web site or these tools will be funded by.....??????
It would take a big pile of money to create and run a non-profit marketplace the size of eBay. I don't see it happening with a donate button on the home page.
eBay may suck in a lot of ways but it would be a tremendous loss to sellers if it was "taken down"
In response to Ken:
Craigslist was started with very little money and is still run on a an extremely small budget. It doesn't seem too crazy to think that something similar to Craigslist could be created for auctions and not just classified ads.
good post. you are rite sellers now should take step. good idea.
It was established in 1995 and is flourishing since then .I was searching for the E bay customer number and i found the site.
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