Vent regarding ebay buyer

[Enoch]

E-bay thinks the sellers are stupid. They tell you they are lowering insertion fees but then they raise the final selling fee. Oh well untill someting better comes along I have to sell there. I usually sell a few thousand items a year (all small stuff) and once or twice a year I have some one I can't please no matter what. But most of my customers are repeat and have been loyal for several years and more and more buy off line. I hope I get to the point I don't need to use e-bay.

Rich

[67L78conv]

Creating a replacement or serious competitor site for E-Bay is not actually as hard as it may sound. Where the problem lies is that it is very time consuming and requires a team first to create it and then maintain it. Unlike basic little sites you cannot go and purchased a canned site and try and build it to that size, it requires mountains of extra work beyond a normal website. Once created it requires another mountain of cash to market and get it off the ground. In short if you can assemble the people to create it (that is the easy part) you need to fund and staff it which means you need a capital investor which for web sites are very few and far between these days. Those that have managed to make a run at it have not had the resolve to really and truly compete against them and as soon as they gain any steam take the quick cash and sell to them so that they can eliminate the competition which frankly at this point I do not know how they have avoided anti-trust issues and a few other legal infractions that they have going on in their practices.

I have even gone as far as to lay out the framework for building a competitive online auction site to go against them (I'm not to bad on the programming end) but have the same issues as everyone else. No funding and can't afford to go and take the time and do it myself in the current economy. I would love to build something geared to the safety of everyone, buyer and seller, dig into Ebays bottom line without sacrificing the people who make the site happen. Sadly though that is not the vision of the few investors that I have approached with the idea, they would all prefer the fast buck and take the sellout. Even then none would back it. One day though if I can find the right investor, I will make a go of it. Here's to dreaming!

[al8apex]

here is to you!

I would be the 1st to go

Have you tried talking to Hemmings?

They are the natural in my mind ...