Imagine you (or, I) were creating a product designed to take on eBay and improve the peer-to-peer shopping experience.<p>What would you like to see changed?<p>Think of this as p2p shopping, not auctions.
Focus. Simplicity. Service. Price.<p>Swappa is taking on eBay for re-selling Android devices...
<a href="http://swappa.com" rel="nofollow">http://swappa.com</a><p>Focus. Only fully functional, ready to activate Android devices are allowed. Anything else is blatant fraud.<p>Simplicity. Only have one form to fill out to sell a device. No auctions. One price. A device is sold only when the buyer pays.<p>Service. An actual person checks in and helps on almost every transaction.<p>Price. Flat fee ($10), paid by buyer, only when a device sells. Sell a $300 device and save about $20 in fees.
eBay has extraordinarily strong network effects. To beat them, make something designed very well for a particular vertical and build a strong following there. Like StubHub did in event tickets.
Does anyone have any thoughts on how to make shipping more efficient for the seller? I feel like we can encourage more listings by making shipping dead simple.
think etsy.<p>To me etsy was a nichified idea of ebay:<p>-remove the auctions since these people want just want to sell whenever the item gets sold<p>-make it super easy for crafts to sell their stuff; make it easier than ebay.<p>-make the fees more reasonable<p>-make the first time use - dead easy; unlike the ebay experience - so many options and too confusing. People scared of making a mistake.<p>What were these crafts people using before etsy: ebay.