Quote:They can and should make a fortune. Any seller should be able to achieve success on Wagglepop if they have halfway decent business sense and actually use it.
Please define
"fortune" in terms of monthly sales. What percentage of Waggle sellers, if any, have Waggle sales that are the equivalent of Gold or Platinum Powerseller level? Two years is surely enough time for any Waggle seller with
"halfway decent business sense" to have reached this sales level if the site is the best alternative to eBaY.
Quote:If anyone is going to lose their house based on investing less than 10 bucks a month
Waggle doesn't interface with any management tools such as ChannelAdvisor or Infopia therefore. someone who is
"making a fortune" on Waggle would need to hire extra employees to manually process orders which would make the cost of doing business on Waggle considerably more than
"less than 10 bucks a month" for high volume sellers. The added labor costs could even make it more expensive than eBaY for any seller who is truly
"making a fortune".
[quote author=user391 link=topic=3775.msg67866#msg67866 date=1202065234]
Dude. Viable alternative auction sites already exist and now have established roots. Wagglepop is the best of them. Alternatives joining forces would accomplish nothing whatsoever. The sellers are in complete control of their own destiny and more of them should have done the right thing when we got the wake-up call in 2006. It was proven way back then beyond the shadow of a doubt that eBay can not be trusted to do what's right for sellers. Greater than half of the sellers back then who landed on Wagglepop were gone in less than 30 days. Greater than 85% were gone in less than 90 days. Most of those were exactly what we're seeing now with so many of the one-listing Wagglepop stores. (Of course not all of the current stores are going to stay at one listing. They are mostly brand new members.) No online business can possibly reach it's potential in less than 30 or 90 days. The overall behavior of the community of online sellers is directly 100% responsible for what FeeBay is doing now.
[/quote]
Explain that to a Powerseller who is basing his hope on a site with less than $5,000 a month in sales split among a couple hundred sellers. How can Wagglepop be considered one of the best when they can't even get the single feature sellers have asked for since May, 2006: INSTANT CHECKOUT. All the thousands of dollars taken in, and Ray can't pay $500 for someone to modify the script?
Your second part, no online business can reach it's potential in less than 90 days is very true. I have absolutely no problem with that. I started in 2001, worked a full time job for 3 years, added 40 more hours a week to eBay, and in 2004 took my business full time. 3 years before I had built it up enough to pay the bills. What Wagglepop users had an issue with, and on most other sites as well, is that they need the sales. They probably don't expect a site with 150 sellers to do what eBay did, but they expect to sell SOMETHING in the first 30 days, and if their 90 days sales don't pay their first 90 days fees, they'll probably pack it up. They can't survive off a "dynamic" community. They can't survive off "We the People" if none of those people are buyers. They certainly can't survive on a site that requires a telephone confirmation just to buy or bid, when the same potential buyer can just sign in elsewhere. And last, they really can't survive when the owner of the site doesn't have just a couple features added to make the site more buyer friendly (see above 'Instant Checkout.')
I emailed KayRay and told them a year ago, when there were still close to 500 stores and 140,000 listings, exactly how to build the buyer base, and this was my email:
"First suggestion:
What are the possibilities of having an entry level store subscription, so a seller can see how great the site is to list on before making the $10/month jump? Let the starter store cap at 10 items. The reason I ask is that many successful e-commerce website solutions will offer a minimal cost option with 10-20 products maximum. This is the hook into the full subscription with these comanies, eBay's ProStores being one of them, and once the sellers are used to the product catalog they normally upgrade. Once sellers realize that WP is easy to use, they will come on board full time.
Second suggestion...
This would be a short term zero gain for long term gain, but what about the first 60 days SSP subscription being free? Listing counts would increase, meaning traffic would as well and more sales would come for everyone... Meaning ultimately more revenue to keep WP in the black when sellers start selling. Total loss would be in reality just a month of fees, which is a drop in the hat compared to what the site stands to lose if subscriptions keep falling. It is a short term zero-gain with no real loss, to amount to a huge future gain.
Third suggestion:
Make the forums public to view, but only allow members to post. This would give potential members a view into what the community is really all about, not just what many say it is on other forums, and also add a ton of content to move WP pages in search results. Search for nearly any keyword on Google, and you are almost guaranteed to get an eBay forum post in the first couple pages because theirs are able to be seen by the search engine. It would bring a major traffic boost to Wagglepop, and help improve the site's image to see positive members. Have you searched Google lately? Search for Wagglepop, and you will find 7 negative articles or threads on page 1. That's bad, but can change with forums open to searches and visitors to read.
Fourth Suggestion:
Get rid of the Phone confirmations, and pay out just a bit of the marketing money to add one last feature to the site: Instant payments with Paypal and Google Checkout. Not being able to immediately register and buy, and not being able to immediately pay (instead of waiting for an invoice) is the reason the buyers aren't here. Give these two things, and they will. If over 30,000 unique visitors come to the site monthly, and there are only 12,000 members, you will need to do something different to make the other 18,000 join. These are my 2 suggestions to help grow sales from new buyers.
Last suggestion:
If the second suggestion about the free 60 days were to be, then begin having buying contests every month, or every week, depending on the amount of extra cashflow. If the listing numbers increase, so will the sales, and it could pay for 10 - $10 Paypal gift certificates for the winning buyers. I don't know how the script for WP works, but I am sure there would be a way to track monthly sales record numbers, or something similar, then load it into a random number generator site to select the winners. This would keep the new sellers on board if they saw increased traffic to their listings/stores and more sales because the buyers are all shooting for the free gift certificate. One word I have found that always brings people in the store (or to the site, as it is) and that is "FREE." This could even be extended to store owners... Have an occasional listing contest, as we do on the forums, and offer a free month to the winner."
Their response was totally lacking of any realism. All they said was that it wasn't worth looking into, and that Wagglepop offered such a wonderful package for $10 a month that they weren't going to drop it for any time or any reason. If the seller didn't like it, they could leave.
That's exactly what they got!
[quote author=maggie777 link=topic=3775.msg67878#msg67878 date=1202071468]
What percentage of Waggle sellers, if any, have Waggle sales that are the equivalent of Gold or Platinum Powerseller level? Two years is surely enough time for any Waggle seller with "halfway decent business sense" to have reached this sales level if the site is the best alternative to eBaY."[/i].
[/quote]
If sellers who sell at a Gold or Platinum Powerseller level anywhere put the same level of effort into Wagglepop I would expect 100% of them to make comparable sales on Wagglepop. Not within the first few months but certainly within a couple of years or less.
[quote author=xwpopper link=topic=3775.msg67880#msg67880 date=1202076097]
All they said was that it wasn't worth looking into, and that Wagglepop offered such a wonderful package for $10 a month that they weren't going to drop it for any time or any reason. If the seller didn't like it, they could leave.[/quote]
I completely agree with their position. You can always try out those ideas on your own auction site and see how it goes.
[quote author=user391 link=topic=3775.msg67881#msg67881 date=1202077068]
If sellers who sell at a Gold or Platinum Powerseller level anywhere put the same level of effort into Wagglepop I would expect 100% of them to make comparable sales on Wagglepop. Not within the first few months but certainly within a couple of years or less.
[/quote]
Do you seriously believe what you say or are you just that well trained?
I was expecting PS and USER to pop in here with their gospel-spouting, goose-stepping, regurgitated line ofÂ
For the record, my eBay sales for January (normally one of the slowest months of the year) were actually much higher than December (normally one of the busiest times). A had quite a slew of sales from international buyers, many of whom were past clients.
By the way, PS and USER, how many international buyers have you dealt with on WP?
Regarding your feedback comment, PS: According to eBay's new policies, my high feedback and star rating should boost my inventory exposure without increasing fees.
Oh, and tell your leader Ray, that if eBay allows your goose-steppers to spam the boards on eBay then fantatic eBayers (no, I'm not one) should be given the opportunity to spam yours at WP. Oh, but wait, WP isn't an open marketplace, it is a DICTATORSHIP.
[quote author=user391 link=topic=3775.msg67881#msg67881 date=1202077068]
[quote author=maggie777 link=topic=3775.msg67878#msg67878 date=1202071468]
What percentage of Waggle sellers, if any, have Waggle sales that are the equivalent of Gold or Platinum Powerseller level? Two years is surely enough time for any Waggle seller with
"halfway decent business sense" to have reached this sales level if the site is the best alternative to eBaY."[/i].
[/quote]
If sellers who sell at a Gold or Platinum Powerseller level anywhere put the same level of effort into Wagglepop I would expect 100% of them to make comparable sales on Wagglepop. Not within the first few months but certainly within a couple of years or less.
[/quote]
If they'd put the majority of their effort into a website instead of [insert your favorite eBay clone's name here] they'd do much better because the vast majority of the "Google buyers" WP is targeting will NOT a. shop at an auction site (especially an unknown eBay clone) b. don't want to register at a site to buy c. want to use a shopping cart to pay instantly with a credit card d. don't want to go through phone verification to make a purchase e. don't want to buy from some anonymous user ID named bubbasmomsbutt101. You're missing out on a lot of sales/buyers if you make an eBay alternative auction site the center of your online selling universe.
Quote:Waggle doesn't interface with any management tools such as ChannelAdvisor or Infopia therefore. someone who is "making a fortune" on Waggle would need to hire extra employees to manually process orders which would make the cost of doing business on Waggle considerably more than "less than 10 bucks a month" for high volume sellers. The added labor costs could even make it more expensive than eBaY for any seller who is truly "making a fortune".
The lack of automation at "eBay alternatives" rules out the possibility of anyone ever making a fortune at a site like WP.
Quote:No online business can possibly reach it's potential in less than 30 or 90 days.
eBaythink...or is it wagglethink? If you think of your business as an online business rather than an "ebay business" or "waggle business" then you're not starting a new business when you list on a new site you're merely adding a new selling channel. Your business should be the center of your selling universe not the venue...
EDIT:
...and if the new channel (venue) doesn't perform you dump it (like 90% of sellers dumped WP)...you don't sit around chanting "in it for the long haul, no sales today, kumbaya"
happy to be in it for the long haul, hundreds of dollars in profits from today's sales, kumbaya
[quote author=user391 link=topic=3775.msg67916#msg67916 date=1202249676]
happy to be in it for the long haul, hundreds of dollars in profits from today's sales, kumbaya
[/quote]
Hundreds of dollars in profits and undoubtedly thousands of dollars in gross sales today. With those results your WP sales qualify you for PeSA membership. Congratulations!
Revised PwSA Summit 2008 Agenda
Multi-Channel eCommerce
eBay Selling Strategies
Wagglepop Spamming Strategies
Comparison Shopping Engines
Amazon Marketplace
GoogleBase/Checkout
Cause Marketing
International Commerce
Cross-channel Merchandising
Overstock Direct Program
arcasm1:
[quote author=user391 link=topic=3775.msg67916#msg67916 date=1202249676]
happy to be in it for the long haul, hundreds of dollars in profits from today's sales, kumbaya
[/quote]
Way Back when I thought selling Vintage item on WP would be profitable. I also had the Adsense to realize sales in the hundreds & More. That didn't stop me from bailing out of a site that expects their sellers to don hair shirts and whips them until they like it. Not my idea of a supportive, trust-based site that could allow me to grow and develop with any degree of confidence in them, let alone my own abilities. Just couldn't adjust to the daily diet there and I've been better off refusing the menu.
Of the 3 thousand plus reputedly non-paying sellers. How many of those were thrown in this classification because they were banned for speaking of taboo subjects? Account canceled without notice but they are expected to pay a bill? I'd ask for another breakdown specifically aimed at this scenario and I bet you'll find about 2,000 of the 3,000 were thrown in the non-paying category because of this.
Have another drink. Is Grape Grope the preferred flavour this week?