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Thinking of starting a new online auction site..
 

Hello everyone

I am thinking of starting a new online auction site, if anyone knows of any good auction scripts please let me know..

Any advise would be brilliant

Please tell me what you would like

Anything that's not on ebay or amazon that you would like to see on a new auction site? if so let me know. But PM me!

Plus I will be giving away a life time free membership to a number of people that would like to help or have any advise for me. This means you'll never have to pay for any fees throughout the life time of your account.

I plan on starting this off with free listings for all, up to a set date.

If anyone would like to help please do get in touch! Lets try and make it better for you guys!

Quit while your ahead of the game.

Thinking ain't gonna cut it. I've seen 100's of businesses fail because the owner "thought." <<< Very dangerous if you don't have experience.

What's your business model?

Do you have a plan? Is it on paper? Have you shown your plan to a banker?

What about Capital?

Do you have previous experience selling online?

What's your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) <<< why should people use your site vs the big boys?

If no one thought then where would we be today?

Yes i do have a plan and yes i do have a lot of capital.

I have made websites before and made some money from these < My own online store

well for sellers its going to be free. So if you don't sell then you won't lose any money. Plus if loads of people are putting up ads this will boost the websites rank.

I have a lot of money put a side just for advertising.

I know that it is not an easy game, but why not give it a go.

I'm not trying to discourange you. I want you to think about your plan.

The reasons businesses fail, no written plan, no capital, no foresight, no competive advantage or unique product or service.

When you say a lot of capital, do you mean millions? FB, Yelp, and all the others received tens of millioins in venture capital before they made a penny.

Just do your homework before you enter a niche like this.

Good Luck

Well i thank you for your advise.

I know its not an easy marked to be in but what is? haha

No, but thousands. Enough for some tv advertising and radio plus papers.

Of course not enough to keep them going for a long time, but enough to get my website noticed.

I believe that once you get your site noticed, make them talk about it!

I also believe that you don't need millions to start a big company but instead play the waiting game. No big company today starting of with millions of capital.

Look at apple. They started in a garage! Now look at them!

You still haven't answered my questions.

What is Unique about your site? Why should I as a Buyer or Seller want to go there?

TV and Radio ain't going to cut it with thousands. I've done 100's of commercials on major networks and cable. Cost serious money to make a commercial then to run repeatedly.

Teeny, teeny mortgage compainies in a small city can spend upwards of $100,000.00 per Month and still can't penetrate the marketplace.

Start a FB page, Twitter, and any social media sites.

Start publishing Press Releases, get them to show up on Google News, page one. I do all the time. <<< Very inexpensive if you know what you're doing.

Start a Contest, make it go viral. People love contest. Make the prizes very unique.

Get some Anchor tennants, like JC Penny, Sears do at the mall. They get rent cheaper per sq ft, but the smaller stores pay way more. Big anchors bring traffic.

Start a campaign on the Google Content Network.

Create a YT channel and show others how to market their products.

I've got a 100 more but hopefully you get the point.

Never spend money on traffic unless you are measuring the traffic and conversions.

If you don't have Millions, then you better be great at Marketing! =}

There are several people who have tried opening Auction Sites on this same forum, If I find them I will post them here or you can search the forum but several are "trying".

When you hit a few hundred thousand users let me know.

Good luck!

Roscoe you are awesome and all. But .....

He doesn't have to be different then other websites, people can just be just SICK of ebay's BS that they just want to go some other place.

He might be the next ebay out of the UK only! Who knows, it's all it takes right?

Christfo - To the OP I wouldn't spend too much time on TV and news papers, maybe just the sunday paper and get front page conver only very sunday with hot deals going on. Write something like "50% off DVDs" Just to target people to come on the site to look at other deals! Attraction! You might have a better chance of doing RADIO with the same thing!!!! A lot of other people in this world came up with ideas that when you seen them you said "Now why didn't I think of that?" They had no plan, no money, not a lot, no ads, but it sold. Think of Coke, Weed, Sex, Drugs, Coca-Cola. These don't really need ads and they sell! Think postive man! I mean look at twitter, facebook, and all the other online businesses, some business hit CNN and then they get so popular it's unreal! You don't need billions, or millions! Start of small. Maybe get DVD's at dirt cheap prices and sell them for no profits on the website just to get people to come! Even if you, yourself make .10 cents per DVD at least you got traffic coming in and they'll see other deals on the side bars with ads of other people. ;) NO MONEY REQUIRED!!!! The best ideas are the ones with no money, people spend so much money on ads and get 0 results at times. I look at it as a postive way, add facebook as a group for your business, and tell people to add it for hotter deals seen daily and that they can follow up on it. etc. And post pictures of things + deals daily. Who needs billions! You don't see Tabasco sauce doing ads do you? Yet people still buy it. What about toilet paper? Tooth brush? Tooth paste? I mean a PEN! No one does ads for pens yet people still buy them cause we need them! Soxs, Shoes, Pans, regardless people still need things, there are so many things in the house that were not on tv for ads yet people buy them anyways. If they need it, they'll be buying it.

Roscoe don't hate me for it! I am kinda of a jew when it comes to spending money! BIG TIME! lol.

Also Christ, there is a company in Colorado USA! That has a cell phone service that pays $40 a month unlimited use within that area! They are only in that location! It might be something that you will do that is only for the UK location! Target UK first, the major cities! Then once you've done UK target other countries slowly!

Like Roscoe said here, start an FB page, Twitter, and other social media sites for FREE! Get the word going.

Find a location on the high way to post up a big poster of your business with prices *starting at .99 cents* deals daily something just anything. Look how the big boys did it. I remember ebay started off with radio ads 15 years ago. It's how I heard of them.

Every company that has a Unique product or service stands heads above the pack. Find something that is unique. It can be a gurarantee not related to the product.

"Fresh, Hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes or it's Free, Guaranteed" <<< made that company Billions with crappy pizza.

Notice how they never said the pizza was good tasting, or better than the competion, all they said was Fresh, hot, in 30 minutes.

That company was Dominos pizza.

You know another company that made pizza billions?? "Hot N Ready $5 Pizza" over 10 years ago! :) That 30 minutes or less was not the only way. :)~ And they had patten that slogan or idea for that whole year! :) And when you'd walk in they had 40 pizza's ready, just say give me 1 large and you had it for $5.25 michigan state tax! :P

No one will say "our pizza is good or taste like chit!" Pizza is pizza I only like Little Cesears pizza I hated Pizza Hut every time I eat it in Lux I puke same with USA I don't know why! Each pizza has it's own taste people want deals. I got crazy bread for half price in Canada cause it was half price, I didn't care if it was this company or that one, it was the deal that got me there. :) They all taste the same to me! Pepsi and coke all the same to me, with taste. I like Coke cause they came out first! Pepsi is just a copy of it, so I don't buy from them.

And I hardly drink that stuff maybe once a year if anything.

Dominos pizza sucks! I almost got my own Little C location in 2003. :) It cost them $1.25 to make a pizza to sell for $5 and crazy bread is like $.19 cents to make and resells for how much? $2 to 4!

It's the profits that allow them to market stuff etc.