The Wholesale Forums

[bigkipper]

Hey guys its something that ive wondered. why hasnt anybody come up with a free auction site ?
I know theres the Gumtree etc out there but why has'nt anyone come up with a free version of eBay ?
any answers or reasons why this hasn't happened would be appreciated
cheers guys
George

[greedyboy]

How is this 'free auction site' going to get buyers and sellers? Without both of them it wouldn't work.

[bigkipper]

because its free for the sellers hence more sellers and more items with more items there would be more buyers if you see what i mean ? www.121bid.com is as close as ive seen but no where on the scale as ebays popularity
cheers
George

[Andy777]

Because eBay is the king of auctions and it will stay that way.

You see - buyers don't have to pay any fees to eBay, hence they are not interested in alternatives. Sellers? Sellers without buyers are not sellers...

[uhafmail]

Because if it was free then they wouldnt be able to afford to advertise, Without advertising who is going to use it?

[hardwareheroes]

...and who is going to man the phones that they cant afford to connect?

[ADC]

You can't say no one can ever compete with eBay, but it would take a company with big balls & very deep pockets to run the operation at a loss for the first four or five years. They would have to offer free listings to sellers and spend the same amount on advertsing as ebay. Then once they have built up a customer base of buyers & sellers, then they could start charging the sellers. Then they might start challenging the dominance of ebay.

When they first launched Sky TV in the early 90's they made big losses for the first five years until they got enough subscribers on board.

[uhafmail]

i agree with you (is this the only time lol ). It would be possible to compete with ebay but would take years of running at a loss. Google to be honest is the only company i can see doing it, just because they have all the complimentary products already set up.

[sydneysky84]

Originally Posted by uhafmail

Because if it was free then they wouldnt be able to afford to advertise, Without advertising who is going to use it?

they could do affiliate ads on there site how do all these other free websites run

[Andy777]

Yep, theoretically it is possible to compete with eBay but no one will do it. Because it's all about money - investors care about money, profit they can make. Why would they want to freeze $1 billion (just an example) for 5 years??? And with no clear guarantees that it will work??? Why would they want to do so? It would be a pure gamble... Because on the web it's not that simple how it may look some times (remember about Books.com & Dogs.com - one of the biggest failures of all times).

As I have said many times - for customers - eBay is a synonym of a word - auction. It will take years upon years and hundreds of millions of dollars to change this.

In my opinion investors would choose far more safer investments, with less risk and higher ROI.

The other option would be that someone buys out eBay! This would be a more realistic scenario.