For the longest time I can remember I have had an eBay account. Many years ago I used to do a lot business with them. In 2001 eBay flew me down to San Jose to talk with them about organizing a huge aviation auction event. I even used to build and sell my own computers on eBay. For many years, eBay played a huge role in how I made money online. With building and selling computers, this was long before major manufacturers dropped their prices making it virtually impossible to compete with. All in all eBay has been very fun for me, but I don’t really do much with them anymore.

Quite honestly, their fees are way too expensive for me. My last auction with eBay was for an item that I spent $50 dollars on for getting extra exposure.  Needless to say, the only traffic to the auction was generated by my own resources. I wasn’t very pleased and decided it was time to stop using eBay.

So is there anyone out there who can bring some competition to eBay. I have often wondered if Google would start offering online auctions? Many years ago, the #2 online auction site was provided by Yahoo. It was actually sad to see their service slowly die. Yahoo provided a unique blend in the business of online auctions.

So anyway, I received a guest post from Kevin Borrill who wants to tell you about a new auction service called bideasi. This is a service that caters more to the European market but as they continue to grow in popularity, they may also increase their USA market. Could bideasi overtake eBay? Well, I believe that the sky is the limit for anyone, but I would have to say that for any company to overtake eBay it would be very difficult. At any rate, enjoy the article by Kevin Borrill.

Could bideasi take eBay’s crown in 5 years?

Written by Kevin Borrill on June, 29th 2008

I’m not a heavy seller on eBay, but even I’ve got a little angry at the ever increasing fees, and so I decided I would search around on Google for an alternative. There were obviously many to choose from, but I was looking for something different and something that I could switch to for the long term. I found www.bideasi.com, as I read through ‘How bideasi Works’ I realised that both Buyers and Sellers would save time and money by using bideasi first before eBay.

Also you can earn money each month in several ways without buying anything; I’ve made £26 since joining, not a fortune, but neither did I have to do much for it.
The look and feel of bideasi is not everyone’s taste and I’m in two minds, but maybe the look will change over time.

Ok, how it works; Buyer and Seller negotiate on price, starting with the Buyer setting a required price. Whilst the automated price monitoring system ensures that Buyers offer fair starting prices. I’ll explain a bit more; Buyer places a buy item onto bideasi he/she must set a required price for the item. This is the price that the Buyer would like to buy the item for. The Buyer and Seller continue to negotiate on price. The Buyer can then choose to either accept or decline the Sellers offer price.

The starting prices set by the Buyers must be realistic prices, for example, £1 for a new family car is not a realistic price. To ensure realistic starting prices are set, guide prices are provided for items, and the monitoring system assists in preventing the submission of unreasonable starting prices, thus safeguarding fair prices of items for Sellers. By using a guide and a starting price this produces a range of prices that negotiations between Buyer and Seller will likely operate within. Out of these negotiations either the Buyer or the Seller will get a good deal, but both will be happy with their deal since they have agreed to buy and sell.

To save time Sellers can create new items to list by using existing items as templates to create completely new listed items. The Bulk Upload utility can submit 100’s and 1000’s of items to bideasi in an excel spreadsheet, which is ideal for professional Sellers. Bideasi also has a rapid image uploader that can upload many images in one go. I took this image from bideasi’s blog which explains how all of this works.

All members when they join can invite their friends and can earn for every invite; can create a profile which can be automatically submitted to Google to promote their bideasi profile and shop online.

Members that have their own websites can feature real time bideasi listed items on their website. When a customer clicks on an item the item appears in bideasi. The customer can then choose to purchase any item on bideasi and the member will be paid 5 % of the bideasi fees of the sold items.

Every 2 months a competition is run which gives the top 50 members for the 2 months a 20 % refund on all fees for the next 12 months.

I think bideasi has a chance to compete with eBay, but it will take a long time, probably longer than the 5 years that bideasi expect. To attract the number of Buyers to compete is going to be difficult and I don’t think bideasi has the money to invest into advertising.

So good luck and bideasi.

All the best,
Kevin Borrill