Ebay Alternative - The Psychology of Online Trading and the Power Sellers Unite Group

Oct. 19, 2008 - PRLog -- Hi Everyone;

Well its been an interesting week in the world of online selling startups - a week in which we have had some interesting dialogue with various people from the world of the Power Seller Groups. These sellers have tried to unite themselves in an attempt to curry more favour with ebay ( found it impossible to change a large corporate driven by shareholder wealth and insider options) and then tried to find a decent alternative selling & trading venue. But without much luck apparently.

Essentially people fail to recognise that startups take time and that traffic and sell through build slowly and that a good deal of patience is required before the new guys start hitting their straps. Remember that it took eB over twelve years to get to where it was before it degenerated into a dictatorship that seems intent on driving people away and making a raft of their incumbents unhappy.

Lots of hard work is required and people need to support startups in the longterm if they want alternatives to succeed - behind every overnight success you will find two or three years of hard work, graft and grind. But we wouldnt be doing it if we didnt think we could make a difference.

So what did we do and why did we do it?

We started out by building and then launching a site that provided all Aussie Sellers with exactly what they wanted (apparently) yet most of the so called Power Sellers sit on the sideline and  wish for a magic bullet or some international company to come and rescue them and take the pain away.

In reality, the lack of support from some of the Australian Camp has been very dissapointing and would make your really wonder what happened to the  old C’Mon Aussie spirit and supporting the Aussies who have a go?

In stark contrast to the people that are filling forums with complaints we have received stunning support and loyalty from the ordinary people in the street. So there you go, the Aussie spirit is alive & well and thats been truly gratifying and rewarding. These people have pledged undying support, taken out 12 months plans in advance because they recognise that Sellmystuff.com.au is not only a great venue but bloody cheap advertising for their business and services.

So what would you do if you had a business or a shop and the rent / outgoings becomes unsustainable or you cant deal with the landlord anymore ?

You move your business and you tell absolutely everybody where you are, you make an effort to market your business again and you move on with your life and breathe fresh air again. you get a new lease of life. This happens every day in shopping malls and boutique strips. Life goes on!

So there you are - we offer a “New Online Mall” if you like; its open for business, we are still pretty new (well 1 year old now), still fresh, easy to use, cheap as chips, not a corporate entity with demanding shareholders, just a couple of Aussie guys giving it a big go. So get onto the team and start spreading some word of mouth “good news” we would love your support.

Supporting the sellers that come over is not a problem - we will do whatever we need to do to keep people on board and keep them happy. We did have a couple of eB sellers come onboard but they didnt have much patience I suspect. Expecting “instant” sell through or traffic volume like eB is just not realistic.  We were only six months old then . It all takes time GrassHopper!

We have people onboard who never sold on eB because it was too hard, too intimidating and just too confusing and you know what - “They have sold everything in their house” and just love what we do. In fact 95% of all people we recently surveyed are extremely satisfied with what we offer and that was when we were still quite raw.

We have ladies come onboard and nearly cry when they discover how easy it is to join in and start listing; more than one customer said “My god I nearly fainted when i discovered how easy it was” It took me five minutes to do something on Sellmystuff that would normally take a couple of hours on eB - so we must be doing something right.

We have also been mentioned in the Wall Street Journal “WOOO HOOOO” as a viable alternative for Aussie sellers and swamped with comments from US traders saying they love the site and our model and when would we be comiing to the States or at least opening up for international trade. We will be doing that but we had to get some things right in Australia first. I suppose that could be typical for anything good made or developed in Australia - always embraced by overseas people before anyone at home would even touch it. I lost count of the Aussie inventions or technology that ended up lost to this country because we lacked the vision and support from home. Sad but true.

So we have some automation bolted in now, stock control, Paymate (not PAL) integrated with Buy Now Buttons, HTML, more contact/details and options, better google results after SEO work, more enhancements and new modules coming - yet we still retain the same easy - clean - vibrant look with no clutter and really fast load times and good response. In fact I think we implemented every customer suggestion that we received from our survey. We allow you to pass through customers to your own website or shopping carts or use our site as a sales aggregator or different channel - whatever you want to do - its thats flexible and so are we!

We have very low prepaid plans to list and sell as much as you want - and no other fee’s whatsover. In fact you will always know exactly where you are with your profit and you dont have to reconcile sales against commission taken out every month - it could not be any easier. It doesnt matter if you sell a little or tons - we have a plan that will suit you.

We listen, you can talk to us on the phone or by Skype or Instant Messenger and we will respond to emails personally - we remembered that even though its an online business, people still like SERVICE - funny that!

Anyway - thats the challenge for you guys. get onboard and help drive this site and make it into what you want it to be - thats why we built a very open site in the first place - no hidden agendas, no smoke and mirrors, no anonymous people hiding behind bogus userids - everything out in the open and buyers / sellers communicating freely and directly, then deciding how they will do business and how they will pay.

We wont dictate to you or tell you how to run your business - we do have some rules, not many mind you and we leave it largely to the community itself to weed out the scammers or shonky people. They are quickly identified by the community, referred to us and we take action.

I cant put it any more bluntly than that - we built the site because we thought it could be a great user experience, friendly, no hassles, add value and we could make a real difference in the market place. So its over to you.

We launch next week with ClixGalore on a very aggressive incentive program and once that is gripping in the market we will go to radio. A raft of changes have just been put through by the developers and we will listen if you have more or can suggest something for the greater good.

Even simple things like categories - we can add on the fly through our management console and we do that for anyone that is selling unique items or someone requests a new subcategory. Its not a problem.

So what does all that have to do with psychology - well its a bit like the old Henny Penny Fable - no one wants to help with any of the hard work in the beginning but everyone wants to line up and eat the bread.

Take care out there!

Phill Downey & Glenn Fry

www.sellmystuff.com.au