So Who's Willing to Get Their Hands Dirty?

[jules43035]

It's been a flurry of activity since I launched the eBay alternative ning just a few days ago. Many of you have contacted me privately to express your interest, ideas and frustrations - and, for that, I am encouraged and grateful. I do hope as we move forward with this "committee", "group" or "association" more will be willing to share their thoughts with the group publicly so we all can benefit from these collective insights.

If you are seriously motivated to find a viable alternative to eBay, especially one with a specialization in the antiques, vintage and collectibles product category, I hope you'll agree that NOW IS THE TIME to participate. The purpose of this group is NOT to BUILD a Web site but to INFLUENCE those who already have one or are planning to build one (and, yes, I have been contacted by individuals in the process).

Following is a sampling of what I am currently doing (and, at the end, is a suggestion of what YOU CAN DO):

As I previously mentioned, I am in the process of compiling "white papers" to give us a handle on the industry so that we can make smart decisions and effectively "make our case" to prospective online auction, marketplace or community sites (or even some combination).

The first thing I did was start with keyword research to give us a basic understanding of the market. The research is an indicator of just how many are actively searching for our product categories online. Although this is broad sweeping information, it shares some insight into just what people are doing online when they conduct searches related to "antique", "vintage" and "collectible". Primarily, they are 1) looking to buy, 2) looking to sell or 3) looking for information. For your information, there are approx 1,220,000 searches for antiques each month.

Second, I have been scouring the news for any relevant and timely information that will help us formulate our white paper. There is a lot of good information out there re: the economic downturn is enticing people to invest in antiques instead of the stock market, buying antiques and collectibles is one way to support the "Go Green" environmental movement, more people are selling their antiques to survive in turbulent economic times, eBay is discontinuing its live auctions, etc.

Third, I am actively contacting trade publications, associations, etc. to get any "stats and facts" that are important to quantify our market, identify the "players", identify selling trends, etc. As you are aware, this is such a fragmented industry, it's been tough to find recent and relevant information.

Finally, I am putting "feelers" out to companies that have 1) auction platform software, 2) established marketplaces, 3) classified ad listings, and 4) antique industry-related forums or other appropriately geared sites, to gauge their interest in building a successful selling venue specifically for our antiques.

So what can you do? Your participation is key. YOU have the experience, interest, and motivation to work with a group that can help define the ideal selling venue for antiques, vintage and collectible items online. Please participate on this site, start discussions, share information and resources and TAKE "OWNERSHIP". If you want ACTION and not just TALK, this is our forum. While I agree with many posters that there is no current site that can go "toe-to-toe" with eBay, I also know that the opportunity is real to create one (not necessarily from scratch) for this product category.

[Rivers]

Well said Jules....Looking foward to moving forward..!

[Caroline L.]

I joined this network specifically to make a comment!

I'm sort of an eBay newcomer, just started making sales about 6 months ago. Found out about general signs of unrest, took a look at my own numbers and yeah, it's a chunk of change that I've paid out to eBay and PayPal for fees so with everything taken into account, any profitability, even for my part-time hobby seller level of sales, is going to be fairly lean. But for me, personally, at least over the past 6 months, the total amount of money made was only part of what has made it worthwhile. Other factors have been:

1 Excitement. As a buyer, or a seller, there is undeniably a lot of fun to be had in using the auction style selling format. Will you wiin that item, or not? Will it sell? It did? For how much? HOW MUCH!? The astonishment factor is just so simply addictive that I find myself being just a little disappointed that a couple of the sites that are otherwise 100% at the top of my list -- etsy and bonanzle -- simply don't offer the excitement because they are fixed-price sales sites. The auction style sites that some folks like, have gotten some fairly negative press from others who are most unhappy about some important aspect, these comments have so far been enough that I am a bit nervous to even try out the possible alternative auction sites with one exception: mibauctions.com This site is specifically for collectors of contemporary, vintage and antique marbles, and it seems a little bit rough around the edges in some ways, but at least as far as the auctions part of it goes, to me, they do seem to be getting that part right.

2. Another important factor, for me, has been the ability to interact with my customers on some occasions. True, some sales have been very minimalist interactions. Others have involved lots more than I wanted, but in the end, the truth is that I look back on even the situations that were kind of a problem at the time, as well as the interactions that were simply someone telling me how much they liked the item they had gotten, and it makes me very happy to think about the fact that I have made a number of people happy, that I would otherwise probably have never even had the chance to meet. A couple of international sales, too. It still kind of makes me say "Wow" to myself when I think about it. Both Bonanzle and Etsy seem to offer the opportunity for interactions between sellers, and that's been great for me in particular at Bonanzle. Have made no sales there so I cannot say whether the possibility for interacting with buyers is there, too, but it certainly does look like it. And on the other hand, both still retain the opportunity for a simple, effortless and almost automated sale with only the very minimal amount of interacting necessary to actually sell an item and get paid for it, by allowing for the possibility of accepting electronic payments.

3. The other very important factor for me, personally, is the financial aspect. As a buyer I want to keep the details of my finances private, and place a high value on ease of use, when paying for my items. As a seller, I also value the privacy aspect, plus I want the ability to be able to retrieve my financial historical data from the site easily, and download it in a format that will make it simple to import into a spreadsheet or accounting program, so that I can run the numbers myself, and see whether my business is making any money or not. Having some kind of sales report available, like eBay has, is ok, but ultimately I may or may not care about the kinds of results they choose to report and compare. If only for simple accounting and taxes, being able to easily get my sales data downloaded -- and not have it be erased after too brief of a period of time -- is very highly important.

4. Last but not least, I have used eBay's "completed listings" search more times than I can count to simply research both potential market demand and a price range for some odd vintage item that I know very little about. And even though their free-access data is limited, it is "good enough" that I have not had to try and become an expert on items that I am less interested in, but may still be able to recognize as a bargain when I'm out shopping at flea markets, thrift stores, or rummage sales. One of the aspects of having eBay be "the" site to go to for oddball collectible items has meant that the data was pretty much all flowing through their site alone, and it was therefore easy to tap into. I suspect that as sellers of antiques and collectibles diversify their online business and set up shop on multiple sites, one thing we're going to lose out on is an easy way to collect up, and tap into, the kind of market data available from eBay, and since any service that can produce that data will have to do a lot more just to collect it, I doubt that even the limited stuff we got from eBay will still be available for free. If anyone can pick up this aspect of the eBay business, I think it's probably going to be Google, but I hope they are already working on something or it may be quite a while before we will all have such easy access to this level of information again.

So, that's about all I have to say for now. These 4 things pretty much sum up, for me, the most important aspects I would very much hope to see in some kind of a new and better eBay replacement, beyond the most obvious things, which are that both buyers and sellers will need to be able to trust the site, and it will need to be publicized heavily, or something like that, in order to very quickly become as well known.

[Cathy G]

Thanks Jules. I found your network on another chat site and said what the heck I'll look.

My story is 8-9 years ago I sold on eBay then stopped. I knew when I retired I would pick it up again for extra cash and some fun....but after reviewing everything I have about eBay this week I was stunned to see how much eBay has changed and how some things never change. The never change part means back then I remember people also looking to find another alternative to eBay because of the lack of customer service, the high fees and the rigid rules the were starting to crop up - I'd say that was back in 1999/2000.

Well here I am retired with piles of stuff to list on eBay and I'm stunned to see all the hoops and costs I as a seller will have to jump through! I even saw a new rule come into play where no checks or money orders could be used!! I always thought the feedback system would allow users to police themselves, but now I find out sellers can't leave bad feedback.

I'm so discouraged and saddened that I have stacks and stacks of boxes filled with collectable that I was saving to list on "eBay" and now, after a week of reading, I don't feel comfortable doing it.

Anyway, I'm open to anything. I will monitor this ring carefully and hopefully a group of people in 2009 can come up with something that people since 1999 were trying to do - find an successful alternative solution to eBay. And if you do, I'll be there with you.

The original idea of eBay was great, but then they got to full of themselves (yes Meg, you) and started having to answer to stockholders. All we want is that original idea to work with again.

Cathy