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That man speaks the truth. I would also add one more very important thing to that list of questions:Originally Posted by solefulJs
Great reply.Originally Posted by krayzie41
Instead of making a non-helpful critical statement, I think you have to consider a few things.....
- Yahoo (auctions) tried to take market share from Ebay, and failed. They have top professionals working for them.
- Overstock, uBid, and the many sites out there with millions of dollars of VC funding with top professionals tried to take market share over eBay, and hasn't gone too far.
The whole advertisement model is tough; I am assuming you mean Google ad sense or having banner ads on your site. There are millions of affiliates sites and blogs that tries to do this, and maybe 1% succeed. Why would people visit your site? What content do you provide? What differentiates you from everyone else?
But given all that, unless you have a very unique proposition or can provide true "value" that Yahoo, overstock, and all these auction sites could not have provided, then I think it would be very very very very difficult.
People shop on Ebay because it is a top 5 ranked site in the world, it is one of the most recognized name/logo. It has fraud prevention system, it is integrated with paypal which has value added services that protects buyers/sellers, it provides free tools (that they spend millions in developing) so that sellers/buyers can have a better experience purchasing products. It has a million other things that creates "value." Granted, eBay is not perfect, but everyday there are millions of people buying/selling there for a reason. It adds value.
But if you are still interested in this business venture, you should be able to answer these questions:
1.) How large is the market that you are trying to attack? Talk in numbers, specify the demographic, age, type, personality
2.) Who are your customers?
3.) What is your value proposition? (Basically, what do you bring to the table)
4.) How can you differentiate yourself? Assuming your budget is not in the millions. How will you be able to create services that people can actually have a good place to buy/sell their products
A business is great man. Don't give up. But at the same time be realistic. A lot of these companies that people hate (Ebay, etc..) are run by some of the smartest people in the world. If you really believe in it, go for it.... whatever happens it'll be a good learning experience and that's part of entrepreneurship.
- How are you going to let people know about your site and convince them to use it?
Even the best system without some planned marketing is going to be a failure, because nobody is going to use it without knowing about it first.