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Overstock had it rolling along and something happened.

Dont know what but they were on a roll and now seems no one is talking about them any more.

Look at them, their website looks way too professional. Wondering what Bonanza (Bonanzle back then) looked like when they first started?



http://i41.tinypic.com/er0w1g.png


Very very ugly

I've gotten as much sales through bonanza in 1 year as my own website in a few months

We don't have to compete with ebay all we would have to do is do a good job and let ebay finish destroying itself. We don't have to worry as much about amazon because amazon is not a auction site. Ebay is Also big because the fun factor of bidding.

Ok So here is what I think.. We should not be banning people we should rather ban, banning people.

Ebay takes newbie sellers that have the intention to make big and ban them instead of punishment and if not a banned the punishment is so harsh you are almost forced to go stealth. Ebay is like a country that has a death penalty and life in prison for stealing candy and for every other crime.

When these sellers come back and make stealth accounts they come back evolved learning from there mistakes and most of them have 100% feedback afterwards. However Ebay will not let any seller learn from there mistakes.

30 day suspensions.

Lower selling fees.

Make the site easier to use/list and search

Implement a flash site. make it look revolutionary. Eye candy.

And many more ideas.


Site name variation ideas. EBETTER.COM E-SLAYED.COM BETTERBAY.COM EBIDDER.COM F-EBAY.COM ABAY.COM ASPKINBAY.COM SCREWEBAY.COM ect






One thing I would like to throw out there is that ebid is hard to use and there category system sucks. I Hate the fact cases and things are listed where phones only are suppose to be listed.

I will let you in on a little secret. I'm developing a marketplace myself, since almost 2 years. Do you know why eBay doesn't have any serious competitors? I didn't know 2 years ago. I know today. It's an absolute horror to develop a project like this. I'm nearing the end of the development and the start of the beta phase, but it's still a long road.

Now, don't take my comments below the wrong way, but they're just sincere based on my experience.

Don't focus on destroying eBay or eBay destroying itself or eBay at all. eBay is not your problem or your concern. Your own project is your concern, nothing else.

eBay is big because it exists for 18 years. Bidding is being replaced by Buy-It-Now. Nobody wants to get into a bidding war anymore and even eBay is moving away from it.

Plus, starting an auction website from scratch will guarantee failure. When your sellers start listing items and they all sell with 1 bid or no bids at all, it's no fun. And no sellers means no buyers.


Based on what criteria? You need criteria. Someone who sells their baby on your website surely deserves more than 30 days.

Selling fees are based on your operating costs and revenue. If your revenue is lower than eBay and your operating costs higher, how can you justify lower selling fees? eBay has carefully calculated their selling fees - have you?

How? It's one thing to say I'll make a better wheel, it's a whole different thing to do it.

No flash please. Flash websites are sooooo year 2003 (or around there). Flash loads much slower compared to CSS/jQuery.

Sigh. More than likely anything that includes the word 'ebay' or resembles 'ebay' will get you into a lawsuit with eBay. Anything that makes people think about eBay - they will just go to eBay.

You have a good idea, but it needs a lot of work. I'm 2 years into this and know what I'm talking about, believe me.

I strongly agree with imjustme's view here. I have read plenty of threads and posts on the forum ever since I've been on here since 2008 about people wanting to create their own marketplace, and most of them have absolutely no idea what they're going to do when asked about the specifics or even realize what they're wanting is completely unreal or absurd.

Sure eBay itself has its ups and downs, but if you switch your shoes into their perspective, you'll get a better understanding of what they're doing and why they're doing it. Realistically as an individual, one should just focus staying in the game rather than completely eliminating the game. It's just not realistic.

What Athletichunta has summerized basically overlaps a lot of people's dream together, but very flawed. On top of imjustme's point, I would like to point out some additional thoughts of my own.

Sadly, eBay isn't destroying themselves at all. They are actually expanding bigger and bigger every year with more and more users, both buyers and sellers.

If you keep all the scammers, counterfeiters, and other sh*tstains on your platform when you clearly know they're doing something wrong, your marketplace will plunge to hell very shortly and no buyers (or perhaps even sellers) will trust your platform at all. eBay bans people as a precaution and to protect the integrity of their marketplace, this is one of those things where you must step into their shoes to understand why eBay does it.

I do agree with you eBay might be pretty harsh at times with new sellers, but they can usually identify legitimate newbie sellers with stealthers quite well. They usually treat newbie sellers pretty fair though, you can get a lot warning strikes and still be allowed on the market as long as you're proving that your'e learning. Furthermore, they are also pretty lenient in allowing account reinstations on newbie bans. These are all based from personal experiance of myself and my friends.

I know imjustme has already talked about this, but oh god no please no flash. Sorry, had to restate that again.
Flash websites might be nice for intros and portfolios but heavy use of flash on commercial websites are actually found really annoying by visitors, and often resource consuming for both client and host.

All that green would make be hit the X real quick.

imjustme- looking forward to seeing it. ive just got started on my own website however a marketplace i can not even comprehend

has anybody tried egatemarket.com

ePier.com is an open source site now. THAT has collaboration. Anyone try selling there? Any luck? It's free. (Since it is now open source)

Right now, in my opinion, the only sites worth selling on are eBay and Amazon. Simple reason: that is where the buyers are.

Any company wanting to create a marketplace could make an attempt, but the only one that I could see succeeding is Google. Remember, back in the day, Amazon also ran auctions, so did Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, MSN.COM, Auctions.com, etc. None of them do it any longer - they couldn't attract the buyers.

People like Amazon because they have made their site easy to navigate, the prices are cheap and Amazon covers them with the A-Z guarantee. I buy tons of stuff from Amazon and other marketplace sellers.

On eBay, you are more likely to find the quirky stuff, or something else that is specific. I go there for nostalgic items and I check prices on some used stuff sometimes. But new, I generally buy from Amazon.

Bonanzle (or Bonanza) and Etsy are good for older stuff and homemade items. I found some amazing LED signs and neon art at Etsy, all made by one guy who specializes in it.

But, generally speaking, Amazon gets probably 70% of my business, eBay 20% and everything else is 10% - roughly speaking.

In order to compete with that, you would need a huge budget for advertising to get buyers to the site. Google COULD succeed with it, but I doubt they will be getting into the auction business anytime soon. I somehow can't see Microsoft or Apple trying it.

The internet is different now from when Pierre Omidyar started eBay. Back then, everything was smaller. And eBay was NOT the first online auction site. There were several before eBay. But eBay was the first auction site where anyone could sign up to buy AND SELL. That was HUGE! Not to mention, very cool at the time.

Back in the day eBay was the coolest place to be. eBay WAS just a venue - not at all like it is today. Communication with buyers and even other sellers was ENCOURAGED. Now, eBay does not want you talking to anyone, except via their messaging system.

You could find some TRULY COOL stuff on eBay. They even allowed guns to be sold. Before eBay started banning entire categories of items, it was a wonderland. Now it is like a K-Mart.

Don't get me started...