As big as ebay?

[Jason_Lee]

Hi,

I am thinking of launching a new auction site that is set to rival ebay for quality and interaction. The site will be free to register and list auctions. I will be making money through advertising on the site with other businesses rather than making money from the listing fee's etc.

Please any advice and ideas would be great!

[Robert]

Join the ranks of 100's of other ebay wannabee that wont make it?

Sorry to be so negative. "If you built it they will come" doesnt apply to auction sites.

You have a (slim) chance if you aim for a niche market, but as a rival to eBay, forget it. Even their closest rivals perform really poorly.

e.g I placed the same ad on eBay and eBid (2nd largest)
In the same time as I sold 20 items on eBay I had 18 page views on eBid.

[Jason_Lee]

WOW, selling 20 items compared to 18 page views. Thats good.

Do you not think though that with a good design and with it being free, and with good advertising it could be a success?

I mean 'ebay' has been on telly etc and has alot of money spent on advertising. I have never seen 'ebid' advertised half as much.

any thoughts and ideas?

[mattk]

Without being harsh, you'll never rival eBay. The closest is something like craigslist, but that is free to advertise and free of ads.

[crus]

The potential is there, if you can find the twist to oust it.

Google did it to Yahoo, so yes it IS possible.

You need a twist, being free just aint gonna crack it.

I've had a couple of ideas along this way and to give you a clue, incentivising people to bid on goods, sponsored pay to sell is an option. But you really need to transgress a couple of ideas to get the product right and have some substantial backing.

or 2 mil I worked to for closing down the UK, after all who buys outside of the UK in general. The thing is the best you can hope for is an ebay buy out, and heres another hint PayPal will be against you!

D

[multilingual]

PayPal will be against you!



That's a good point actually, because as we all know PayPal and Ebay are part of the same company and ebayers love doing business by PayPal.

How will people pay for goods on your site?

If you incorporate PayPal and later become big enough to get noticed, then they might get dirty and pull the plug on you.

JB

[fastfences]

Hi Jason,
If you get it going quick enough you will be able to sell all those clothes from your other business dilemma, and then you won't need an investor!
Cheers, Nigel

[Jason_Lee]

Thankyou for your ideas.

I know people say noone can rival ebay but it has been done! Google rival yahoo now dont they! I use google more than yahoo!

Im going to make it completely UK customers. I do not know yet what payment type i will be using yet, although i do no ebay and paypal are owned by the same company, so paypal is a no go!

With it being just UK we will be able to monitor things more closely as most of you know there are alot of scams now on ebay! I honestly am wary of ebay now!

[Dread]

You may well rival ebay, but lets face it, your gunna need (hundreds of?) millions, to do it.

[crus]

Hi Dread,

I disagree if a 'new' product or service can be created, it will take time for an elephant like eBay to adjust and could just work.

D

[Eagle]

Maybe talk to Nochex?...

[ewan]

As Eagle just mentioned, you really need a payment gateway partner if you want to get anywhere. By partnering with NoChex and making clear their advantages over Paypal, you could take a sizeable slice out of ebay's market. Its all about making the right partnerships and building up a recognisable brand. I'm not sure if its the kind of thing NoChex would be looking to though.

As big as Ebay? Not likely. A large business worth the effort? Possibly, if you get it right.

[cjd]

You're 10 years too late.

And even if you had the cash, you'd just lose it. ebay has the market; that battle has been fought and lost.

Think of your own great idea and spend 5 years developing it.

[magic-merl]

Don't try to take e-bay on - they are too big. Find a niche and build on it - Antique Sales - Attic Sales - Online Car Booters - try something a little different and your market will grow.

As for PayPal. Use it. You have a PayPal userbase already in place. E-bay will not pull the plug on your auction site - at least not for a number of years. Why would they? - you are still contributing to their company through the use of PayPal.

Go for it and enjoy it for what it is. If you can make money (no matter how little) then do it.

[Cornish Steve]

I suggest you read about eBay's origins in a book entitled The Perfect Store, written by Adam Cohen. It's very interesting, and it reveals the key to eBay's success: a focus on community. eBay established a loyal community of followers early on and built their success by tapping into that online community.

[webit]

I suggest you read about eBay's origins in a book entitled The Perfect Store, written by Adam Cohen. It's very interesting, and it reveals the key to eBay's success: a focus on community. eBay established a loyal community of followers early on and built their success by tapping into that online community.

I agree, it is very good book.

[mattk]

The difference with Google compared to someone like Yahoo is although they are in the same market, searches, they go their search in a totally unique way. They also presented their results in a totally different way, Google is clean and lean, whereas until recently Yahoo was covered in ads and links to news, sport etc.

You could take on eBay if you come up with a new idea, like CraigsList, free text-based listings in an easy to browse format - but just copying eBay with a UK-bias isn't going to give you enough of a edge.

[Jason_Lee]

Ok, i understand that maybe trying to compete with ebay would be a huge ask. Something more uniqe and niche would be better. How about this?

I have a designer clothing business but do not have any stock. It is a great site and can be made into a success. I was thinking instead of buying and selling stock i could approach designer clothing businesses who do not have websites and provide them with a service. I would advertise all their stock on my site for a monthly fee. This would include photographing the stock, putting it on the site. I would advertise the site as my own etc. Would something like this work? Setting up their own site would cost them far more money, plus all the advertising costs and management of the site. This would get them on the internet for a fraction of the price.

Please could i have some opinions.

How much could i charge for this service?

[easyasit]

the thing to remeber is ebay has a mammouth marketing machine.
As with google it did not need massive adveritsing to get to where it is.
Why it chooses to advertise now is beyond me.

A businessman once told me, if you want to succeed, copy a concept and improve upon it.
In the case of ebay so many have tried. Its like the million dollar website, one person succeeds, now all of us think we can do it! not so.

However i will offer this. Ebay has some 9 million users nationwide. That is not a bad yield out of 22 million households nationwide. Nearly 50%
So its reasonable to assume that the market is all but saturated.

BUT, in your favour
Not all these 9 million users are active and happy users, me being one. So there is a chance that you could take up the slack here for those un happy with ebays service.
Also, i woul say to be honest Ebay have become a victim of their own success, too many listings, who is going to be bother with yours out of the many hundreds of similar items on there.
So i will say in theory YES, it is poss to rival ebay. There is a space for competition, but that said, it ain't gonna ge easy.

Ebay is one of the most heavily hit website on the internet.
But then everysite and concept has a weekness, Ebay included, exploit these weaknesses, make them your strengths, it will become an asset.
I would say ebays weakness is complacency, then they are advertising. Why is this the case?
A fall in sales?
Are ppl starting to get disgruntled by ebay?

Al

[magic-merl]

Sounds like your almost describing "drop shipping". Your not quite there but not far from the mark. Your site selling other peoples products!

[Jason_Lee]

Yeh my site, but i will be advertising other peoples clothing ( just businesses without a website) I will do all the work that they would be doing if they had their own site. They pay me a monthly fee for this ( which would be cheaper than advertising costs etc if they had their own site. This would be just local clothing shops however as i would have to go to them all to take descriptions and pictures of the stock.

Does this all make sense?
Could this work?
How much could i charge for this service?

[Mwebb]

BUT, in your favour
Not all these 9 million users are active and happy users, me being one. So there is a chance that you could take up the slack here for those un happy with ebays service.
Also, i woul say to be honest Ebay have become a victim of their own success, too many listings, who is going to be bother with yours out of the many hundreds of similar items on there.
So i will say in theory YES, it is poss to rival ebay. There is a space for competition, but that said, it ain't gonna ge easy.


Al

I would have to agree with the above. Ebay are a huge pain to search nowadays. Many items are repeated hundreds of times over, many by the same seller.

An idea could be to limit the amount of the same item listed. For example: Some one wants to sell a laptop, but there are 3 the same already listed with a similar spec. Until one of them is sold, the other person can not list. Once the first is sold, the next listing is automatically put up for sale.

If you are starting out you do not have the infrastructure that ebay now has to sustain. You can out price them, even give the listings away for free, and by doing the above you send traffic to each and every listing. I am sure people list things on ebay never to even get a look in to a sale.???

You could offer 10 photos for free of the product for sale. You could allow people to list a sales url for their products ( a recent complaint on this very forum i believe that ebay have now stopped you doing this)

There are a lot of things you can do...you just have to get your "angles" and marketing right.

Good luck your gonna need it.