posted on October 12, 2001 08:45:15 AM new
Oh, those bellwether items that sell everytime. Listed two yesterday, one on eBay and another on Bidville. This morning, dimview finds one bid at eBay with six more days to attract multiple bids and not even a single pageview at Bidville.
A news story noted that traffic at
... auctioneer eBay Inc. (Nasdaq:EBAY - news) and online retailer Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq:AMZN - news) both saw sharp dips in traffic following the Sept. 11 jetliner attacks, but traffic recovered through the month. In the final week it was close to the levels reached before the attacks, ...
posted on October 12, 2001 09:52:40 AM newbidsbids still sees some robust trading amongst oldtimers that have "Born to Shop" tatoos on their various body parts. Of course most of this shopping is done with other BVers with the same tatoo. Sort of a co-op within BV itself. To in fairness to BV, this type of activity occurs at all of the free auction sites.
posted on October 12, 2001 11:47:57 AM new
My intuitive approach on this is that others, including myself, have noticed that "high quality, high interest" items listed at Bidville go for weeks, months without any bids, then sell quickly when moved over to eBay.
So my "bellwether basket of items" theory is that Bidville, and the other free auctionsites, will be on the right track when those "high quality, high interest" items sell on their auctionsites as well. Until then, they have little chance for success.
posted on October 12, 2001 12:29:58 PM new
RB >
RB thinks that soon we will see dimview and bidsbids posting nice thoughts on the eBay forum.
Not likely.
It is simply a matter of paying listing/final value fees and actually making sales at eBay, or free "inventory warehousing" items at Bidville with little or no sales.
When dimview looks at the free auctionsites, they appear to be playing hot potato with a chunk of dry ice. "I don't want to compete with eBay," says one auctionsite, tossing the dry ice to another, "I don't either," tossing it yet again. And round and round it goes.
< LOL >
RB (aka Buzzoon, or BuZZoon as dimview would say) is very pleased with eBay these days, both as a buyer and now as a seller too!
Third person is fun. As are the "Z's" in recognition of the Bidville PREZ.
Wonder if the sell-through reports for September 5, September 12, September 19, September 26, October 3 and October 10 got jammed in the paper shredder.
posted on October 12, 2001 03:30:03 PM newbidsbids thinks everyone secretly hates eBay not because of the fees and dirty tricks but for the fierce competition on that site that make selling items for a profit nearly impossible. If most sellers had their druthers I'm sure most would opt for dumping their inventories at a decent price and never get into the online auction thing again.
posted on October 12, 2001 10:20:21 PM new
Hello Dim and bids.....you know me right?
I have tried listing (which is HARD work) at most of the "free or semi-free sites"...and it is useless...all I see is a bunch of Sellers buying from each other to give each other a "feedback" (there is an occasional REAL BUYER in there but not very often)....so basically , yes greedbay is the only game in town! I hate to say that!!!!
Carnaby had such a nice site..but NO Sellers or Buyers to speak of, as to the other "free Sites"....geesh they are charging these die hard Sellers and buyers to deal with each other FVF's and who knows what else??? There is something wrong with that picture I think???
posted on October 13, 2001 07:53:01 AM new
beecandles >
... a bunch of Sellers buying from each other to give each other ...
I think you're entirely correct. Bidville has some 166,000 registered users, yet traffic at the auctionsite has come to a virtual standstill. One might well conclude that they are comprised of SELLERZ and FORMER BIDDERZ.
I can understand the SELLERZ, but *why* have what looks to be the overwhelming majority of BIDDERZ abandoned the auctionsite? Tired of endless relists? Tired of listings comrprised of stuff that attracted no interest if they were listed the eBay/Yahoo community and therefore "inventory warehoused" here?
Before answering, remember that Bidville has had several sales. Others (not me), including the most ardent supporters, came here to AuctionWatch to let us all know about all the NEW BIDDERZ the sales had attracted to Bidville.
posted on October 13, 2001 08:07:48 AM new
It seems even the BidVillePrez is having difficulty selling his own items on his own site. Looks like a scene from the movie Erin Brockovich where the small law firm sells everything in order to fight the big utility corporation. As Bob Dylan once wrote in a song "How does it feel?"
posted on October 13, 2001 07:53:59 PM new
"Bidville has some 166,000 registered users"
I think not. A new user signing up today would get an ID in the 166000 range but BV does not exactly go in order. I have somewhat kept track of user id #'s since March to see how many new members sign up per month. All you do is enter a random # at the end of this line
http://www.bidville.com/personal/about_me.cfm?user_id=
and the About me page shows the sign up date.
(Using xxx since AW might discourage specifics that would point out any certain users.)
The approx range on 10/1 was 165xxx
9/1 was 164xxx
8/1 was 161xxx
7/1 was 159xxx
6/1 was 156xxx
5/1 was 153xxx
I'm not even sure when BV began 6 digit user id's. I signed up in Jan. and have a 9 digit id. I have a friend who signed up in March and got a 120xxx # but there was a big skip in #'s after that. I never found any users with any #'s from 125000 through 150000 but there are users in the high 124's low 150's that signed up in a 2 day period. I don't know how many other #'s have been skipped, I do a very rough estimate by adding 3000 to the past months # then going forward or back by 100 until I hit a # that actually regisitered on the 1st day of the month.
As for active users I just tried an experiment wherein I entered specific user id's from April in a row. 9 of the 10 still had 0 ratings in the 6 months since joining. I went up a few hundred #'s, same result. A few hundred more, same result. 27 of 30 users not earning any ratings in 6 months is obviously a tiny sampling but it's as much as I'm willing to do.
