January's OAI Stars...Where Are They Now?

[bargainbloodhound]

7 months after eBay's fee increase announcement, the most successful new US auction sites are a pair that did not engage in endless forum spamming...er, advertisment of their sites through posts on OAI boards: eBid.tv's US site with over 100,000 listings and WeBidz (WeBidz did recently get its own forum on PSU though).  BidChaser, OnlineAuction.com, and theAuctionMan have enjoyed lesser success, but the 3 sites are not technically new .

The most prolific forum spammers ...err OAI forum advertisers, have not lived up to the hype of their forum posts:

Wagglepop-closed
BidZig-closed
iCell.biz-closed
FeeAlt/GoShopGirl-16 listings
R*n*bay/eD*bz-39 listings
Lunarbid-74 listings

Many of the sellers who put their faith in the January/February chatboard hype ended up being driven back to eBay when their expectations were dashed and the much hyped auction sites turned out to be nothing more than a smelly pile of crap.

Every year, the same story happens with sellers being led to message board hyped auction sites that don't have a chance while they completely ignore the auction sites which could provide a viable alternative (i.e. sales)...and every year the failure of this forum hype to become reality causes many sellers return to eBay with the mistaken belief that there is no life (i.e. sales) anywhere but on eBay.

The moral of the story: forum spamming auction site owners over the years have done more to drive sellers back to eBay and help eBay keep its monopoly of the US auction market than any advertising eBay could possible buy.

[bargainbloodhound]

Listings on 'The Next Bid Thing' LunarBid have soared by over 35% in the past 3 weeks...to 100 total items listed on the site. 

That reminds me, I should go relist those 200 items on Overstock that I was about to list before this post so rudely interupted me.  :twistedevil:

[dimucci]

[quote author=bargainbloodhound link=topic=99.msg1034#msg1034 date=1125094804]
Listings on 'The Next Bid Thing' LunarBid have soared by over 35% in the past 3 weeks...to 100 total items listed on the site.   

That reminds me, I should go relist those 200 items on Overstock that I was about to list before this post so rudely interupted me.  :twistedevil:
[/quote]

They only got 15 things today from  3 sellers on the sight this morning 

[bargainbloodhound]

[quote author=dimucci link=topic=99.msg1148#msg1148 date=1125579557]

They only got 15 things today from  3 sellers on the sight this morning 
[/quote]

If you go to the browse all categories it looks like there are only 11 items from 2 sellers listed on the site.  There has only been 1 post on their forums since early July, and that post is unanswered.  :

I do hope that LunarBid's owner is happy that his slick salesman spiel on forums in February and his failure to even come close to what his BS promised has resulted in many of the sellers who fell for his crap returning to ebay never to leave again because they're now convinced sales at all non-ebay sites are like this one. 

[bargainbloodhound]

Things seem to be getting worse at the remaining 3 "prolific forum posting  eBay alternatives".  None of the site owners of the 3 remaining sites have made an appearance on either OAI forums or their own sites in months, and listing counts continue to drop:

[table][tr][td]

August 1
FeeAlt/GoShopGirl-16 listings
R*n*bay/eD*bz-39 listings
Lunarbid-74 listings

[table][tr][td][/td][/tr][/table]

September 6
FeeAlt/GoShopGirl-3 listings
R*n*bay/eD*bz-11 listings
Lunarbid-22 listings

[/td][/tr][/table]

...oh yeah, and if you want to grab an expired domain name, the expiration dates for the 3 dead "prolific forum posting  eBay alternatives" are as follows:

wagglepopauctions.com December 21, 2005
bidzig.com January 13, 2006
wagglepop.com November 21, 2006
icell.biz January 15, 2007

[thentavius]

Runabay is doing better than GoShopGirl? 

[amy]

[quote author=thentavius link=topic=99.msg1341#msg1341 date=1126207334]
Runabay is doing better than GoShopGirl? 


[/quote]

Barely, the latest item counts are:  Lunar 8, Runbaby 4, GoShop 3.

*caution--one time only nice words about Ray's WP about to be uttered. this is the only time you will hear me  utter niceties about WP*

Its hilarious that all 3 sites' owners bashed WP's Ray on numerous boards  and yet all 3 abandoned their sites a few months later without a word to their users--Ray at least did his Wagglefesto on FAS to notify users.

Its also kinda funny that WP had over 10,000 listings when it closed while none of these sites even came close to that "success".  The tops for these 3 sites was Lunar with a peak of 800 items, and Runbaby and GoShop never made it over 150 items.

All that Ado About Plum For Nothing! 

[bargainbloodhound]

Bye, bye!

LunarBid has closed indefinitely.
We are sorry for any inconvenience.

http://www.lunarbid.com/

[sneakymagenta]

Runabay/Edibz is D.O.A. 

This Account Has Been Suspended
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