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In Reply to: Re: Time For Something New posted by Ed Sawyer on May 13, 2007 at 18:58:38:
I was actually considering developing such a site, but I don't have the time or resources, so I might as well pass my ideas on to you since you seem invested in this venture.$6 per ad is fine, although I think $5 or less reaches a wider audience. By my crude calculations of Audiogon's listed items, it appears the best price point is between $4 to $5. Their rate increase from $3 to $6 severely impacted the rate of new (and consequently total) listings. If I was selling physical goods, I'd aim for maximum profit margin at lower volume (risk management, cash flow, et al). But for online services, I'd do the exact opposite. Try to get as many users in the door, and let the user-base snowball.
Ideas to attract people (other then setting up a functional and attractive site): Offer people an initial discount on their first X amount of ads. Or offer a specific trial period. You should also set up a referral system. For example, if you refer a customer, you get 5 free ad credits. This model worked brilliantly for Paypal and other service sites.
As Ed suggests, it's vitally important to develop your membership from the start. Once you hit critical mass, people will naturally find and flock to your site without any effort on your part (and perhaps even despite your shortcomings, as Audiogon's staff clearly demonstrates).
A few simple suggestions about the site layout. Make searches sortable by end date, price, and location. Find a good balance for the number of meta-tags for a listed item without being a burden to the seller listing his/her item. For example, it would be really nice to look for speakers in a specific efficiency range or an amp of a particular design (SET vs. PP vs OTL, etc.). I would, however, leave these fields optional, but encourage members to fill them to optimize their selling potential. Email notifications about a particular search result are also a big plus. Besides, email notifications function as an automatic traffic generator.
Feel free to email me for more input. If you are serious about this venture, I will be happy to assist you to help it succeed.
Follow Ups:
Len's ideas are all good ones. Except for the price. Seriously, who is going to spend $ to advertise at a site with no traffic? Certainly not me. nor will I bother looking there for anytyhing when there's maybe 10 ads listed. (other sites suffer the same fate, incl. AA's classifieds which are poorly moderated, unfortunately). Free ads... maybe. if it looks worth while. there's piles of free ad classifieds already (craigslist) that have way way more traffic than any startup is going to have. so it has to be a site with promise to even be worth the time/bandwidth to bother with. The way to get people there w/o any real ads is community. E.g. like what we have here. maybe a bit more elaborate/different/etc. But some sort of hook to bring traffic, which will then bring ads. which will then maybe bring revenue. Without serious start-up capitalization in the form of site development, marketing, identity, etc., it's an idea that will likely not get off the ground, unfortunately. The days of easy web success are long past (think 1999), barriers to entry are much greater now.
> > AA's classifieds which are poorly moderated, unfortunatelyWhat do you mean? I check them quite regularly and delete the cell phones spam and such. I've also added some AI to the mailer that will hopefully catch the Nigerian scammers fairly quickly. This won't come on line until next week after we move to the new server.
What other problems do we have other than not enough ads?
-Rod
For the AA ads,people just gotta start using them.Its a great service.
I think a free trial period is a solid approach. The reason I think the referral concept is better (in conjunction with or as a substitute to the trial period approach) is that people will view their earned credits as something with more intrinsic value and treat the site more seriously. Studies have shown that people who pay for content have much more favorable opinions of this content .... even if the content is not exclusive (and can be found for free elsewhere).
One more suggestion off the top of my head that is important to me: Allow people to link to up to two other existing feedbacks, such as ebay's or Audiogon's. Starting from total scratch is a big turn off for most people. The tricky part is how to verify people are honestly linking to their accounts on other sites.
just have them send email/contact through the other accounts for verification. that's fairly valid proof they are your account (within some reason of course. it would be doable to defraud that idea but it's more trouble than it's worth probably).
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