posted on July 1, 2001 03:00:55 PM
Equally silly was the 1 day auction duration with 99 automatic relists that was present at the onset of Bidville. Can you image that 1 day option on Yahoo last year? Every item would have been listed with that option for sure to get the max exposure.
posted on July 1, 2001 03:25:12 PM
With the time it takes to generate an auction why would you want it to disappear after 5 re-lists? If a person wants to re-list 99 times, and the site permits that, then that is their choice. Right now it is FREE if you list it 1 time or 99. Is the "sell through" rate affecting the stock price? Do you think the people are leaving ebay and jumping to ebay are getting cheated? I know what to expect from bidville and am happy with that, if I was not I would not list there. Bidville will never hurt ebay, only ebay can do that.
posted on July 1, 2001 03:40:46 PMWith the time it takes to generate an auction why would you want it to disappear after 5 re-lists? If a person wants to re-list 99 times, and the site permits that, then that is their choice.
Thank you, I say leave it alone. It is us warehousers that made Bidville have all those listings and if the Prez decides we can't relist, I am sure the listings will drop dramatically!
posted on July 1, 2001 03:43:29 PM
wlaschin >
With the time it takes to generate an auction why would you want it to disappear after 5 re-lists? If a person wants to re-list 99 times, and the site permits that, then that is their choice. Right now it is FREE if you list it 1 time or 99.
Let me try to explain.
You are an auction seller and want to list 100 "high demand" items at eBay. It would cost you $30. So you list them at Bidville where its free.
There nine other auction sellers doing the same thing, so Bidville now has 1,000 listings. Each of your auctions has 1/1,000 "exposure".
Buyers come along and like the new content, so you get pageviews and bids.
But then an inventory warehouser shows up with 10,000 "low demand" items. That would cost $300 to list at eBay. So he dumps 10,000 items onto Bidville, and just like that you now have 1/20,000 "exposure". Nobody wants the stuff the inventory warehouser has listed, so he just relists, relists and relists, over and over again.
All the while, nine more inventory warehousers dump 10,000 items each, so now you're down to 1/110,000 "exposure".
By now buyers are tired of the old content, tired of wading through thousands of relists for find your new listings, so they say to heck with it and, as a result, you end up with few pageviews and even fewer bids.
So how does Bidville correct this problem?
Either by imposing modest listing fees, or to deter the continuous relistings of items.
posted on July 1, 2001 03:49:30 PM
deichen >
Thank you, I say leave it alone. It is us warehousers that made Bidville have all those listings and if the Prez decides we can't relist, I am sure the listings will drop dramatically!
Well, Bidville has 45,000 new listings and 615,000 old relistings. How many times have these been relisted? One, ten, twenty, ninety-nine.
If the Prez likes the idea of being a webserver providing inventory warehousing then he should do nothing; if he wants to run an auctionserver with auction listings, however, he should take steps to limit relistings.
posted on July 1, 2001 03:50:50 PM
That would make sense if we were all listing the same item (say a playstation) but more than likely we are not listing the same item so my item (say a N64) will be veiwed by all thise people searching for a N64 those 9000 playstations will not come up. What your saying makes sense if I am shopping bidville by going through all 600,000 auctions one by one. I do not know anyone who would have that much time.
posted on July 1, 2001 04:00:50 PM
I have to disagree that everything being relisted is "junk" !!!
This is a new site. There aren't a lot of lookers yet. We don't get the views that ebay does. If we did we wouldn't HAVE to relist. I am selling more and more each week so I am having to relist iems less and less without them being sold. I am continually adding new things to my list. My "warehouse" as you call it is being restocked daily with new stuff along with the "old stuff" that is waiting for someone to find it a new home. It is all good "stuff". I had no problem selling it at yahoo before they started charging fees. But at that time they had a LOT more lookers than Bidville has now.
I didn't expect to move to Bidville and do the same amount of business as I had at yahoo the first day.. or even the first week, or month or even year. I SURE didn't expect the GREAT customer service either but it is a WONDERFUL addition !!! I listed at more than just bidville. The same exact items and the same exact prices. Bidville is the only one I was selling much at. As of about a month ago Bidville is the only one I list at. Not to say I wouldn't try somewhere else if I heard about it (actually I am going to try gegy) BUT I'm not leaving Bidville. It is the best free site that I have come across so far.
The overwhelming majority of live auctions are just tired, old relists that nobody has wanted for weeks, months.
So now its rare that I browse Bidville's postcard categories.
Edited because you're right daredevil2010, there was an error. Each page on Bidville has 50 entries, not 100.
[ edited by dimview on Jul 1, 2001 04:39 PM ]
How many times are you going to be wrong? The statistics you use to figure out Bidville's sell-through rate would make my old Statistics professor cry in agony. I would get a "G-" if that was possible. You're using 1st grade math, assuming too much, and hoping with all hope that you pull a rabbit out the hat.
Also, Bidville needs relists!! Who's going to go to Bidville if it only has 9,000 items? Not me. I never go to ePier because I know 9 out of 10 times it's going to be a waste of time. Bidiville needs to add inventory. When Yahoo! Auctions first started out they used to list for 20 days and about 10 relists. Then they continued to limit it. eBay did the same thing. Get it through your thick skull: Bidville is not at the same level as eBay. Bidville needs to build an inventory. For instance, I have cards at Bidville that sit for months and then one day... someone buys it at the "Take It" Price. What does that mean? It means Bidville needs more buyers... not less inventory!! When the buyers come... the amount of relists will decrease, but until then Bidville needs to build up inventory. That's Econ 101 for Dummies!
posted on July 1, 2001 04:21:30 PM
That could get old. But I like the relist feature and would hate to re-do them all after 5 times (how about a 3 day wait between re-lists?). On another subject I found a bunch of Charles M. Russell (western themes) postcards when I was going through my garage. They were in an evelope postmarked 1972. I do not want to list them on ebay (hate to pay the 30 cents for a low end item I know nothing about) and I do not want to list them on bidville in case they are worth something. Know anything about them?...
posted on July 1, 2001 04:35:21 PM
daredevil2010 >
How many times are you going to be wrong? The statistics you use to figure out Bidville's sell-through rate would make my old Statistics professor cry in agony. I would get a "G-" if that was possible. You're using 1st grade math, assuming too much, and hoping with all hope that you pull a rabbit out the hat.
Again, please feel free to provide the correct statistics.
posted on July 1, 2001 04:35:41 PM
The one thing I hate about bidville is mob mentality. I like the relist feature but look at it from dims point of view, click on his link to the 50 pages of postcards listed on bidville (most with no bids). I would never search through 50 pages. So If I want to list my postcards on bidville he would be one potential bidder that would not bother looking. What would you suggest?....
posted on July 1, 2001 04:41:32 PM
I suggest he go to Ebay! Enough of this. He expects BidVille to provide all the same features and fresh listings, well, they aren't because they are free. And that was promised to us in the very beginning.
Now, several smaller sites do charge slight listing fees or FVF. Go there!
posted on July 1, 2001 04:45:39 PM
Send a bidder back to ebay, great idea. Do you buy off of bidville? If so how? Do you "search" or are you one of those that just buys off the boards?
posted on July 1, 2001 04:46:20 PM
But ebay has 100x more postcards. Why don't they have a "problem". Because it's not about inventory... it's about the lack of buyers at Bidville. The majority of buyers have a objective when they come to eBay. They just don't wonder around... and then find something they like. They're look for a specific item... perhaps a trading card of their favorite player.
Dimview,
Another "witty" reply. Once again you're missing the point. You can't calculate Bidville's sell-through rate because they don't offer enough public data. Stop trying to calculate something that you can't. On multiple choice questions sometimes the RIGHT answer is: None of the above OR Not Enough Info Supplied.
What if I started a 30 day auction and it got a bid the first day, yet it will still end in 29 days. According to your flawed numbers I would have a sell-through rate of 23%. But that's WRONG. My sell-through rate is 100%.
posted on July 1, 2001 04:54:05 PM
daredevil2010 >
Another "witty" reply. Once again you're missing the point. You can't calculate Bidville's sell-through rate because they don't offer enough public data. Stop trying to calculate something that you can't. On multiple choice questions sometimes the RIGHT answer is: None of the above OR Not Enough Info Supplied.
Bzzzzzt. Wrong answer.
There's certainly enough available to get a good idea of what's going on.
What if I started a 30 day auction and it got a bid the first day, yet it will still end in 29 days. According to your flawed numbers I would have a sell-through rate of 23%. But that's WRONG. My sell-through rate is 100%.
Bzzzzzt. Wrong answer.
If you started a 30-day auction and got a bid the first day, guess what, your item would have that bid listed in the live auctions.
Why is the bids-to-live auctions ratio so low then?
After the end of the auction, it would show up in the closed auctions.
Why is the bids-to-closed auctions ratio so low?
So, daredevil2010, since you won't correct what you see as flawed mathematics, why don't you tell us a little bit about your listings on Bidville?
posted on July 1, 2001 04:54:06 PM
Ebay does not have the problem because if the item does not sell the 1st time a seller is not going to pay 30 cents each time for the next 99. I buy game boy games and the same ones are always on bidville. It is not a big deal because there is only one page, if there were 50 pages I would not bother to look.
posted on July 1, 2001 05:01:18 PM
daredevil2010 >
what if I posted a 30 day auction and it got a bid on the final day... what would be my sell-through rate?
Why is this so difficult to understand. If your current auction has a bid, it will show up in the live auctions; if your closed auction has a bid, it will show up in the closed auctions.
posted on July 1, 2001 05:15:49 PM
Dimview wrote:
For the largest subcategory in each group, the first number are live auctions; second number is closed auctions with bids for the period April 27 to date; the third number is the average weekly closed auctions with bids; the fourth number is the average weekly sell-through rate.
So here we go:
Beans and Plush 7,279 | 2,200 | 238 | 3.3%
---------------------------------------------
Dimview, you don't seem to understand your own math. Look at the number above. You divided 2,200 roughly by 10 (number of weeks) to get 238. But that's wrong MATH, because you'e assuming a WEEKLY Average. If my auction was 30 days.. not 7 day you should only be dividing by 3; thus 238 becomes around 730. That's almost 200% higher than your 238 number. Finally, why are you dividing 238 in 7,279 to get 3.3%? That's wrong!! Those 2,200 sales (238 weekly average) maybe occured 2 months before those 7,279 items were listed. And since Bidville is GROWING that means using 7,279 is too high of a number. There are more flaws, but i don't want to waste anymore time.
Unless you know the exact average length of all the auctions. How many of those auction close... you can't relaistically calculate the sell-through rate. You can do it, but that means you have to track, right now, a good number of current auctions and watch them until completion.
[ edited by daredevil2010 on Jul 1, 2001 05:17 PM ]
[ edited by daredevil2010 on Jul 1, 2001 05:18 PM ]
posted on July 1, 2001 05:34:55 PM
daredevil2010 >
WEEKLY Average.
Yup, that's exactly what I want. A weekly average in order to compute the weekly sell-through rate.
Most auctions are of seven day duration, some five days, some ten days, some thirty days.
Are you privy to the actual distribution of auction durations?
Exactly what number do you want the sell-through rate to be? Maybe we can multiply by a fudge factor. < LOL >
[ edited by dimview on Jul 1, 2001 05:36 PM ]
posted on July 1, 2001 05:59:39 PM
I just want to give my Bidville numbers. I sold at Yahoo for 1 year. I have sold 6 months at Bidville. I am only $300.00 shy of matching my sales at Yahoo for the same time frame. Thats not bad considering I spent $40 to $60 a month to feature at Yahoo. And I only spend $10 a month at Bidville
posted on July 1, 2001 06:24:00 PM
Thank you, Richhillbilly!
More important, are you currently happy with BidVille? I am. So, if someone wasn't happy with Bidville performance then they should move on....why doesn't anyone understand this. Not happy with your auction performance, move to another site or spread out. Not happy with your weight, lose some. Haircolor? Change it.
