

Ask HN: What would a viable eBay competitor look like? - owkaye

For years I've entertained the dream of creating an auction service that may one day compete effectively with eBay.  I have a concept that eliminates the need for "reputation", eliminates PayPal as the primary payment option, provides secure escrow service for both buyers and sellers, send email alerts when items are listed with your keywords or in your elected categories, etc. ... but these are just MY primary ideas, and I'm interested in hearing what other people might like to see in such a venture.<p>What features would YOU like to see in an eBay competitor?
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dotBen
Take cues from existing paradigms:

A _successful_ competitor to eBay would have completely disrupt eBay's current
business model -- ie the level of disruption Craigslist has caused for the
classifieds industry. That probably means some sort of free service - perhaps
with only specialist categories requiring a listing fee/cut of final sale (in
the same way CL only charges for jobs and a handful of other categories).

A _successful_ competitor to eBay would have to have a very clever strategy to
overcome the network effect eBay has. Look at how Zuckerberg launched Facebook
in the face of MySpace and Friendster's network effect. He concentrated on a
niche (just Harvard, than just students), owned it and then enlarged. I would
therefore specialize in a niche area and then once you have pwned eBay in that
area, expand out.

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amac
One way to look at it - What is eBay's largest category of products?

Surprisingly, it's clothing and accessories and yet most people associate them
with collectibles. This is an opportunity.

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wturner
Make the imagery around the site more analogous to the "homely" tastefulness
of Etsy.

I know it's obvious and trivial, but Ebay just looks bad.

