Amazon/Ebay ish site Ideas... Advice?

[Stephan Johnson]

Hello Everyone.

My name is Stephan Johnson. I have been working on this script and idea for a while. I bought the script and have been working on tweeking it to fit the needs of my idea. I want the site to operate like Ebay and Amazon on the idea of people being allowed to sell their items (Thus they can help market the site) but without the high fees. What is a good way to attract sellers and buyers to the site without spending a ton of cash?

 

[iowadawg]

Not opening the site comes to mind.
Face it, ebay and amazon spend mucho bucks every single day to get people to come to their sites.
And you want to do the same thing on the cheap?
Then you have facebook market place, craigslist and so many more.

 

[Stephan Johnson]

But their fees are outrageous if you sell electronics or other high priced items. I am trying to narrow that margin to about half of what they charge. Im not looking to get rich.

 

[Steven McEvoy]

Im not looking to get rich.

You're not looking to get rich "yet" lol Everyone wants to be rich! You have to relize you will be spending $$$$ just to get your site out there. This is not going to be a cheap website, you will have to spend money.
There is a lot of competitors in this niche, I garantee you they havent got far with out spending lots of money.

When you pay cheap to attract visitors to buy and sell, you will not get unique visits, specially non spamming visitors.

 

[Nattydomain]

More then money is trust. NO ONE is going to trust a site they never heard of. In order to make a site like what you want yo better be talked about every day from 1,000 people each on facebook, twitter etc and I am not talking about retweeting a message from a bot.

it can be done but wont be overnight and it wont be free.

 

[Stephan Johnson]

I understand it won't be free. I am just asking what is the best approach without spending as much.

 

[Chris Wright]

I think Jeff Bezos is more of a genius than people give him credit for. And they give him a LOT of credit.

So, if there was a better way to do it than Bezos, he would already be doing it better...
IMO

 

[enlytend]

At the risk of repeating what everyone else is telling you -

Going head to head the biggest players in that space on a shoestring budget is a recipe for disaster.

You would at the very least need to have a competitive advertising budget just to get your name out there. And to even get it off the ground: site development - you need to put the money into development to make it a secure and safe environment, legal - to have custom terms and conditions and avoid anything that will get you into legal trouble down the road, and customer support for when things go wrong (and they will.) Just to name a few!

If you're dead set on trying anyway, start with a SMALL NICHE and build from there. And when I say "small" I mean very small - not a major category like electronics. Something active enough to be viable but relatively low in competition. Get a toehold, get a following, if you can make it work THEN put your earnings back in to gradually scale up. If you can't succeed on a small scale you're sure to fall on your face if you try to go bigger.

 

[robert_jones]

I hate to say it but what everyone else is saying is true – it’s going to be extremely difficult to get it off the ground and it could cost you a small fortune to even try. Even trying to pull it off in a small niche could be really difficult as getting traction would be next to impossible due to the lack of trust.

But if you are going to try and go through with it, as a fun idea, why not try creating a Flippa rival? Everyone is already complaining that their fee’s are outrageous as it is. I mean, you’re already involved in the domain flipping niche and this industry is relatively small.

Just something to think about...