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Thanks for the reply, but it doesn't sound like there is much of a plan to attract buyers from ebay. If buyers knew that you were on stealth sites asking for input, that would be a real tough sell, to put it mildly.

I'm not in the business of giving free marketing advice to potential competitors who might be reading these forums. I hope you understand that. Obviously, the plan isn't to purchase ads on eBay's front page saying "leave eBay, come here instead". There is a plan, but I'm just not comfortable sharing it with everyone on a public forum before the website has even launched. But I think improving and building on eBay's weak points is quite a good start in attracting eBay buyers and sellers alike.

Remember that this thread isn't about promoting the website. So as for asking on here for input, I think it's the perfect place. This forum is full of people who have suffered the most due to eBay's policies, and these are the people who know best what can be improved or done differently, and I'm very grateful for all the great advice I've received so far.

Good luck with your project.

If you think this is a appropriate source of ideas for a e-commerce site, hopefully you will give public credit for any ideas that you get from here.

In regards to tackling @@@@ goods - you could use DHGATE method of not releasing funds until buyer signes them off as ok.
If they are @@@@ and the buyer signes them off.
Keep track of customer complaints as eb does - and restrict the offending sellers.
:clap:

90% of the clothing and trainers are ⊗⊗⊗⊗ ,people buy them knowing there ⊗⊗⊗⊗ ,look at a seller called bettyboo selling ralph lauren polo shirts for £15 buy now ,she has loads of complaints but still has 99% feedback score ,ebay dosent care

ebay wouldnt be as big without ⊗⊗⊗⊗,thats why everything is so cheap ,i would never buy from ebay,ebay hong kong wouldnt exist without ⊗⊗⊗⊗ ,i sell replicas thats where the moneys at and all my customers are more than happy with what they get,if companys like gucci,nike,ralph lauren,etc didnt have such high rip off prices there would be no need for ⊗⊗⊗⊗.if you dont sell knock offs what is it you sell that you make so much money off to spend all the time making stealth accounts

To avoid dodgy goods, you could maybe liaise with the various cyber crime organisations. If there is a, "Patrolled by the Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime Unit" badge or Trading Standards logo on the front page, it would probably deter the crooks. But everyone would have to enter the EAN code, the product would be grouped together as mentioned earlier and it would make it easier to spot the suspect item in the listings.

I would start as ebay did...building a community with niche products.

For second hand goods you could have a star rating guide out of ten which everyone conformed to and would give the buyer an instant guide to the quality.

As a seller, if I want to accept personal checks, or money orders, or cash, you should allow me to. I know the risks. Don't police me. Allow me to make the choice of what payment methods I'm willing to take.

I don't know...this seems like the chicken/egg problem. Sellers won't post, cuz buyers aren't there....and vise versa. Maybe you could generate enough interest if you advertised on the Super Bowl...but I'm not sure even that would garner the traffic.

I've often thought an eBay competitor will need to allow us to post auctions for free, just to build up their user base...but I'm not even sure that would do it. Heck, maybe you're going to have to go even further, and actually pay users to list aucitons on your site.

If you allowed me to use Google Adsense ads in my auctions, now I might be interested in posting. In a way, that allows Google to pay your sellers for you.

You're gonna need a big VERO team, and a substantial legal team for all the counterfeits.

True, but from an (inexperienced) buyer's point of view ..what if you buy that $300 phone from a 0 feedback seller, pay with a check or money order and never receive the item?

Without revealing too much, let me just say I don't think there will be a lack of buyers. It'll be sort of like eBay, but different. A lot of new features in regards to usability, interaction and promotion.

Come on Imjustme - get the Beta rolled out and let us have a look at it!!:D

Front-end, there's not much to look at yet, even for us. All the back-end is done, with a few minor modifications based on suggestions to be implemented. Right now a design studio is working on creating a "yummy" yet fast-loading design and control interface (sort of like eBay's selling manager, but not that ugly).

:pop2:

You got to make it easy for the buyers. From finding what they want to paying for what they wanted. EB has plenty of money to research this and they have the best they could get. Copy EB to a 'T'. Getting a percentage of what EB gets is what you want, then later change whats wrong.
The path or least resistance is what buyers are all about. Why do you think DHg ate won over everyone... they have a duplicate site. You should do the same IMHO.

Duplicate, yes ..to a degree. It will have the "feel" of eBay. We're not making things harder to do than on eBay, if anything easier. The layout, while having it's own identity, will be in the format of eBay, such as seller information on the right, picture on the left, etc. DHGate I think has gone a step too far in cloning eBay, even though they've had success. The left navigation bar of the search results looks like it's ripped right out of eBay, and so are some of the listing elements :doh:

It's an extremely thin line to walk. We want to keep the "feel" of eBay, so that people can easily find their way around, yet we don't want to simply be a "copy" of eBay with a different logo.

Well all you really gotta do for the counterfeiting part is basically wait on the reviews..
are you also going to have a "FEEDBACK" system like that of ebay...
maybe its just me but when i was a newbie at ebay, i kind of found the feedback system addictive.. meaning i was constantly just going on ebay trying to buy/bid on things to raise my feedback to see the little star change colors.... which then could turn into sales - sales means more traffic and vice versa..

As far as payment methods.. yes i think it should start off with like paypal/google checkout prior to merchant accounts, you know consider them safe..
yea you want to make a safe and FUN website, user friendly.
But with that said, safe.. you also have to be strict to a point... not strict by suspending someone for making too much money too fast, which i think is RIDICULOUS!!!(reason y im here, also kind of thankful for it.. :) )

i think buyers AND sellers need to be safe equally
meaning only because a buyer opened up a case for item not as described means they'll automatically win.
With that said, it shouldn't be allowed for a buyer to open a case WITHOUT contacting the seller first...
should be like.. buyer must send seller a message.. if it isn't replied to within 24 hrs or so.. a case is automatically opened and or if the buyer doesn't agree with the sellers response.

as far as communication.. i think it would be cool to have a chat system maybe? with also a message center
24hr customer service support from "your ebay site"

Should also integrate most of ebay's ideas.. such as if your listing clothes with multiple variations to it...

Include shipping times for the items.. im TIRED of ppl asking how long will the item take to get here
HMM, cant think of anything else at the time...
Looking forward to hearing the website, i'll deff hop in to it..:)

Try to think like Apple, try to make an innovation, think outside the box, but with the feel of ebay. make it friendly something addictive, just PLEASE PLEASE dont make it like those Quibids when the time is going down to 2 secs you bid and time goes up to 15 secs.. those are a piece of C***!!
make it easy to navigate and search

I agree with gMan.
But, I'm sure you realize there are a lot that have tried to copy eBay...and all are failing, or have already failed. Without pockets as deep as Google, I think you're dreaming. I will keep an open mind, however, and I do wish you the best, as most of us would love to see eBay get a wake up call.

So many here are saying they'll jump to your site right away, and I'm not sure what they're thinking. If you don't have tens of thousands of buyers, they won't budge from ebay.

things as big as this take time

imjustme knows this!

he is not in it for the quick fix!

We'll definitely have a feedback system similar to eBay's, but not exactly the same. There's no DSR style rating and neither do we currently have any plans for it. As for disputes, that will be up to the buyer and to the seller, though the respective payment system. If you paid by PayPal, you need to open a dispute with PayPal. While we won't count PayPal disputes against you, there will still be a way for buyers to report bad transactions with sellers, especially through the feedback system.

Shipping times displayed prominently in the listing is a very good suggestion, I'll make sure it's implemented, thank you :)

Definitely not a "penny auction" website. I personally hate them, I've never used them, and I think they're sooner or later going to be banned in many countries because they're sort of online gambling.

As I've said before:

Obviously, I'm not saying we will beat eBay overnight. That's impossible. eBay will likely still be the biggest online marketplace for years to come. They've invested so heavily in their brand over the years and have become so well known that babies these days probably can say "eBay" before they can say "mommy" or "daddy". eBay is synonymous with "online auction".

We're not trying to beat eBay - we want to create an "alternative", something better, something worry-free.

Without revealing too much, the way that buyers will find your products will be different than eBay. We don't necessarily need thousands or millions of people visiting our website for them to find your products.

But either way, listing will always be free for founding members, so it can't hurt to give it a try if you have a spare few minutes. We'll even provide a way to import eBay listings. ;)

You say this but then don't tell us what the site is :spy:

it is not ready yet,he posted a thread coz he wants ideas!

when its up and ready we will be the first to know so chill out!

That's the nature of vaporware sites.

SHould deff be addictive and fun
doesn't have to be over thought of..

You should have sometype of feedback system where its easy to tell how trusted a person MAY be...like ebay with the stars.. however its just a OVERALL feedback.. you dont know how they are as sellers/buyers unless you go on their account etc..

what about a LEVEL type of system?
and maybe 2 feedback systems (like having 2 stars next to your name on ebay..?)
one for a buyer account feedback
and one for seller account feedback..

what about integrating a live chat system like dhgate has..
when buyers/sellers are online..they could chat with each other (if they choose to under their privacy settings)?
although privacy could easily be a concern for this.. not to mention bots..

Live chat between buyer and seller is a brilliant idea!!!

seeing if seller is online is good option, so you can chat, I agree....

counterfeits, I think an expert should run through pictures of goods before they get listed, you can almost always tell - I volunteer for this job, because I pretty much know what is what!

Given that alot of popular goods are branded, and that is what will make you alot of money, banning them is not productive. People who sell alot of them should be questioned about supplier proof, but if someone sells the odd one, the feedback is ok and the pic look fine then do not hassle the poor b stard...

why dont you run a few things by on execs if you do not want on open forum...

because some of us cannot see execs:mad2:

The live chat suggestion is excellent, thank you, along with an option to disable or enable it for sellers. We've already started researching it and have a few options in mind. General chat rooms site-wide is a bad idea, especially if it gets abused by spammers, but I think from buyer-to-seller it's great.

Yea deff not an open room chat
And deff an option to enable disable the option this should be monitored however because of possibility of sellers trying to make transactions outside of the "ebay alternative site"
At least a Warning message or something

BTW happy to be co founder with all my genius ideas :)

99% of the reasons paypal and ebay do what they do it because most of you sell phake items, burn and turn account, or scam

i dont see what everyone on heres problem is with replica goods,the people buying them know they are replica and are happy to buy them for half the price or even a third of the price cheaper,most the replica items on ebay are items none of you can buy wholesale from unless you are a big company so it is not effecting you.90% of the stuff on eb ay below the price in shops is fa ke unless you are a real company like house of frazer or m&m direct ,thats why stuff is so cheap on there and why people love to buy from there, the replicas are so good now days half the people that think they are selling genuine products are ⊗⊗⊗⊗,

Because it is illegal.... Put yourself in the property rights owners shoes.

I dont see the problem with just stealing your money or property.

Bonanza has this, but ebay needs it. When busy parts of the year start up, I use skype and get instant sales after people ask a simple question they were wondering. On December 18th-20th I had skype running 24-7 and sold 5,000+ items. I thought I was going to have a heart attack.

:doh::doh::doh:

I think if you want to buy and sell VeRo, you will have to do so on E-Bay and won't be able to on the new Beta site.

bet you any money there will be plenty of VERO on this new site

anyone thinking that there wont needs a reality check

I think there's virtually no way we're getting rid of all VERO items. Obviously we'll have to comply with any legal requests from trademark holders, but we also don't want to permanently suspend and ban for life anyone who's affected by it like eBay does. While you can "spot" VERO items by their price and sometimes through photos, there's also a risk that you're targeting someone who sells a legit item for a price lower than in the store for whatever reason.

but if the companys products that get ⊗⊗⊗⊗d werent such a rip off people wouldnt buy replicas ,so if the companys lower there price they would make the money back from lowering there prices from people not buying replicas..it may be a illegal but i dont see it as a crime making money from greedy people dosent bother me :D weed is illegal but it dosent stop people smoking it

if you do chat between sellers and buyers you need to make sure the chat blocks people putting there email address in there and doing private sales for cheaper.

So I invented this widget - it's the best widget in the world - it took me two years to develop it and I spent quizillions of dollars developing it.

I now need to sell loads for two years at lots of money to get my money back

My friend bigmoe got a chinaman to copy my design and as he has no design costs he can sell widgets for a quarter of the price I charge.

I don't mind because he tells me I'm greedy and I deserve it.

I hope he gives me a lift to the bankruptcy court because I can't afford to run a car as bigmoe has taken all my business

But that's OK - I'm greedy!

:pop2:

Now do you get it?:doh: