Subject:
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Sales and Auctions
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.finance
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Date:
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Wed, 22 May 2002 01:57:25 GMT
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Viewed:
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2114 times
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Hey Y'all:
Idea Number One:
My weakest recommendation is that an honor system be set up on the
marketplace pages, and that any seller obtaining a sale from a contact made
on Lugnet pay a small percentage of that sale to Lugnet. Obviously such
sellers could allow for that percentage in their haggling with buyers.
Buyers like me myself would readily pay a small fee as part of the price of
getting that odd ultra rare item obtained from someone not as well setup as
someone with a regular Bricklink store. The reason I see this as my worst
suggestion is that it is based on the honor system, and even though I post
WTB lists periodically I often get no replies whatever. So, I have no idea
how much $$$ this technique would yield -- representing a tiny piece of the
available pies. I have always seen the marketplace newsgroups as ideally
created for putting one hobbyist together with another -- neither one a
regular seller elsewhere.
A related idea here, is that all eBay auction announcements be placed in a
newsgroup of their own and no mention of eBay be allowed anywhere else on
the site. Lugnet could even filter all messages for this series of letters
and kick messages back to would-be posters if they try to violate such a
rule. I see no reason why Lugnet should allow others to advertise this way
for nothing, while the likes of eBay get richer and richer. See what I
mean? Same thing with Bricklink, frankly -- which brings us to...
Idea Number Two:
I am just assuming that y'all are kicking yourselves for not coming up with
something along the lines of Bricklink first; but really I have no idea and
for all I know you may already get a nibble from that source already, or at
least you should -- certainly Bricklink benefits from the existence of
Lugnet in no small way. A quick related idea is an agreement with Bricklink
not to compete with it if it will give over some percentage of profits over
to Lugnet as a kind of buyer finder's fee -- and this could even take the
form of a surcharge on every transaction (as one does when shopping in the
supermarket and some X amount goes to some charity). If y'all aren't getting
a slice of that pie and no agreement can be reached, I can't see any reason
not to compete with Bricklink - not that I have anything against Bricklink!
But seeing how that site is quite well-established at this point, only a
strong audience supported site like Lugnet could conceivably give it serious
competition anyway -- and that presuming it wished to do so. So wrong or
right, that's idea number two.
Idea Number Three:
Something else Lugnet could do, and maybe even beat the stiffest competition
doing it, would be to run an auction site exclusively for brick toys as
occurs on a tiny portion of eBay and yahoo (and I wouldn't limit the site to
lego, I'd suggest at least allowing all construction toys in the form of
bricks). Sure, there would be coding and server stuff to do up front to
allow for the posting of auction info, the making of bids, and the tracking
of the sale after the hammer -- but I am going to assume that the biggest
hassle is up front to set it up, and afterwards one might just have to fine
tune it and otherwise maintain it. And this is something that could be done
without competing with the likes of Bricklink; so this could be done in
addition to, or instead of idea number two.
I realize these ideas are unbelievably obvious, but I have never seen them
suggested before so what the heck. Anyway, these are just idle thoughts and
I am always looking for a way to up the standards of toy grading which I
would think Lugnet would wish to encourage if it were to take on any of the
above ideas -- at least I assume that Lugnet could do this better than does
eBay! Almost every other suggestion I have seen being made for Lugnet's
financial survival are suggestions of the type that haven't kept any other
website floating for very long either -- so I have to assume that Lugnet
would tend not to benefit from them just as other businesses have not
benefitted from them either.
Really, I am not trying to step on anyone's toes. I just think that a lot
of different sites have left most of the hard work of gathering fans
together to lugnet and then stolen the gold for themselves. Perhaps I am
speaking out of turn, but it's really hard to see how it could be otherwise.
Since 99.9% of my online "money for bricks" action is with me as buyer, I
assert that I wouldn't mind the extra fees -- so much easier than trying to
get it together to give Lugnet $$$ every year. And I say this as a buyer
only. I have no idea how sellers would feel about this.
I am trying to make this coherent, but I am also dashing it off -- so my
apologies for incoherence where it occurs.
-- Hop-Frog
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