

Show HN: Sell your stuff for more money with less hassle - bunkat
https://www.bidkat.com

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huhtenberg
Woah... If I were CL, I would be busy copying this _right now_. It is such a
natural extension to what they already have. Offer this as an option at $1 a
pop and they will be making money off the majority of their users.

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rexreed
Great idea! Sorry if I'm dense or missed this, but how does Bidkat make money?
I was assuming a transaction fee on top of the closed bid, but it seems that
it's totally free to the buyer and seller? Maybe I missed the FAQ?

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rexreed
The Terms (<https://www.bidkat.com/terms>) seem to imply that "upgrades" will
be sold at some point, but it's not clear what upgrades.

"By selecting an Upgrade you agree to pay BunKat LLC the fees indicated for
that service. Payments will be charged on a pre-pay basis at the time of
purchase for an Upgrade and will cover the use of that service as indicated.
Upgrade fees are not refundable."

Also, I'm confused -- where does the payment transaction happen? Does it
happen inside Bidkat or is that part left up to the transacting parties?

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bunkat
Currently the only upgrade is bid activity when making offers on an auction.
Payment between parties is left up to the parties. Since we're focused on
local sales, this is generally face to face when the item exchanges hands.

~~~
rexreed
Can sellers specify "methods of payment accepted"? I can definitely see myself
selling some things to local people (couches, for example), but other things I
would place on forums where there are aficionados for those products (baseball
cards, for example), and where I'd rather receive payment via some online
method (Paypal, etc.) and not be constrained by locality.

Not sure if that's your vision or not, but I would totally use Bidkat for
collectibles as well as local sales. Of course, in your value proposition you
state your purpose is to make local sales a lot easier, so I guess that's not
the current vision.

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bunkat
We definitely want to see BidKat used in these scenarios. Currently payment is
completely between the seller and buyer. Feel free to add information to your
description on what payment options are available.

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latortuga
Cool site I re-listed a CL item I have up at the moment, we'll see how it
works! The video was super great and to the point and made it clear that it is
intended to synergize with other services.

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aeturnum
In your example, I tried bidding $20,000 (I really love the couch) and you
asked me to come down to $1500. Is there a reason you're steering buyers
towards a minimum price?

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bunkat
Prevents people from making ridiculous offers, especially by mistake. We want
buyers to come away from BidKat feeling just as good as the seller.

~~~
aeturnum
I think that's a good impulse, but completely refusing the bid seems
misguided.

The current system seems like it favors predatory buyers over fair ones. If
the seller undervalues their item, trying to start at a fair price will get
rejected. I don't know how you selected the [500 1500] envelope on price, but
it seems pretty narrow. Couldn't you just warn the bidder that their bid is
way above the seller's expectations (or current maximum offer) and then
confirm they want to pay that much?

~~~
bunkat
We can definitely look into this if we see this happening a lot. This should
be a relative edge case and only kicks in for more expensive items, but you
are right that there are other options.

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creativename
I'll agree with everyone on the design - it's beautiful, and I really love the
mascot. I just wanted to add that the video really helped clear things up for
me on how it integrates with other services.

It might just be me, but I didn't immediately grasp from the content on the
landing page that I should be using other services like craigslist, et al. to
share it. Even without sound, the video cleared that confusion up very
quickly.

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bunkat
Thanks for the feedback. We'll figure out how to clean up the copy a little
bit. Glad that the video cleared things up!

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savories
Cool.

My immediate thought when filling out a new listing...

You should auto complete. For anything and everything (that you can.)

I type in Xbox.. a list drops down with xbox 360, complete with Photo, MSRP,
estimated value (based on other data points ie craigslist or ebay) and a pre
filled out description.

Well, sort of like what ebay does I guess. I hate filling out forms. Everyone
else does too.

~~~
bunkat
v2? :)

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kefs
How are you dealing with the new CL exclusive license when posting there?

 _Clicking "Continue" confirms that craigslist is the exclusive licensee of
this content, with the exclusive right to enforce copyrights against anyone
copying, republishing, distributing or preparing derivative works without its
consent._

~~~
JoshTriplett
> How are you dealing with the new CL exclusive license when posting there?

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/good-news-
craigslist-d...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/good-news-craigslist-
drops-exclusive-license-your-posts)

~~~
bunkat
That's good news!

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bunkat
Hi, we created BidKat to make selling things locally a little bit easier.
Works alongside existing sites and services instead of being a replacement to
take advantage of existing network effects. Would love to get any feedback on
the site and am happy to answer any questions.

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thisAintNoGame
Out of curiosity, how much thought have you put into the auction format? Is
there an underlying theoretical model in use?

Allowing me to buy information on the auction is an interesting choice but I'm
not convinced it will actually lead to better revenue for the seller.

~~~
bunkat
We're definitely testing out some new things. We never want to show any ads on
our sites (we hate ads) so we're looking for alternatives. Based on some user
research, paying a little bit for the potential of saving a lot by making
better offers was at least interesting to buyers.

~~~
thisAintNoGame
Hmmm...

I have no proof for what I'm about to say but here it is anyway.

The only information that bidders will practically care about is the current
top bid. So the information that you are charging people for is the same thing
that most auctions already display (that is, the current top bid). As the
seller, I want people to see this top bid because it will raise my revenue.
Charging people to see the top bid will result in less people seeing the top
bid and lower revenue overall. It makes money for the site but less money for
the seller. Then I might want to go to another site and make more money for my
item.

You might want to look into using a 2nd price auction (like eBay) does.
There's a nice book called Auction Theory by Vijay Krishna that might be of
interest to you guys.

~~~
bunkat
I appreciate the feedback and can give you some of our thinking. Our target
audience of buyers generally has no access at all to this type of information
today for local transactions. You just send an email into the void and cross
your fingers. Providing this information at all is an improvement to this
audience.

For the seller, showing the top bid means that people will bid no more than
they have to. Witholding the top bid (except to those who are interested)
means buyers offer what they think the item is worth - which could be a lot
more than top bid + 1$.

It's definitely a different approach and may fail miserably. At which point
we'll pivot and come up with a better one :)

~~~
Domenic_S
> Our target audience of buyers

Who is that? It looks to me like it's local-transaction buyers. This could
definitely make craigslist selling a lot better.

It wasn't clear to me what you did -- obviously I read "auction" and I think
eBay. But you're much different. The marketing copy didn't explain it well to
me, but the video gave me that 'ah-hah! Nice!' moment.

Take that for what it's worth. GL!

~~~
bunkat
We've found that most users won't read much on a home page so we kept the copy
short and focused on the video. We'll try and clean it up, but getting people
to watch the video seems to be working out the best.

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zheng
Sounds like what I would have done if I was trying to overthrow CL
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4324452>). Great idea, I look forward to
using Bidkat in the future.

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binarysolo
Wait, so I know people on Craigslist aren't linking an eBay Buy-It-Now w/
offer listings to sell their stuff -- I'm assuming CL gets unhappy about that.

What's the differentiator between BidKat and that option?

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bunkat
First of all, we work with any service (Twitter, Facebook, even bulletin
boards) so it isn't just CL - though admittedly it works well there. BidKat
just provides additional information about an auction like many people already
add to the CL listings.

We don't do payment processing between parties and people don't pay us to
create an auction. We also are not a competing listing service, we offer no
ability to search our auctions - they have to be advertised separately.
Hopefully these things differentiate us enough.

~~~
joshlegs
_> so it isn't just CL, though admittedly it works well there._

Just out of curiosity, have you tested this or is this just supposition? It
was the first thought that came to mind when I read about bidkat (posting it
on CL, that is). I would just wonder whether people viewing the posts on CL
actually click to go to another site?

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bunkat
The magic line is 'for more pictures and information visit bidkat.com...' :)
People love pictures.

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FredBrach
Is there trully more pictures? (I mean, except the cats)

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bunkat
That's generally how we've set up our auctions since pictures look nicer on
BidKat than on CL.

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ahmadss
This is a great concept. Here's a use case for you that you might want to
figure out -- how do you deal with people who are just "bid trolling"? Any way
to make a bid binding?

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Axsuul
Cool nice design. This is sorta like Gumroad except you're competing against
other people! Can I ask what font you used for your logo?

~~~
bunkat
Thanks! The logo is in HTGelateria.

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lewisflude
Made a listing. It looks great: <https://www.bidkat.com/i/UJXTjUfd>

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ahmadss
I used your listing as a "test case" to enter in various dollar amounts to see
how the interaction design and app works. The $1,500 bid that was
inputted/accepted was mine after I started bidding at $1,000. The first price
counter price I received was $1,880, then $1,6XX, then it finally accepted my
$1,500.

Did you have any control on how readily/quickly/aggressively you discount your
price when creating a new auction listing?

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lewisflude
I got all excited when I got a bid! Nope, I selected a range. In this case
$1200 - $2000. Also, I should note that I'm from London, England. Changing the
$ to a £ would be a pretty nice feature.

Interesting regarding the counter prices, also nice touch that BidKat suggest
you give a "donation" when you get a bid offer. I think if I had a real bid
offer, I'd be inclined to donate $5 or so!

~~~
bunkat
We have the ability to select different monetary units for auctions and will
be implementing that feature shortly. What do you mean that you didn't really
get a bid?

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username3
<https://www.bidkat.com/i/9uDYAKBS>

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mamatta
i love the service, but when someone made me an offer and chose his contact
details to be just his First_Name, I have no way of responding to him. You
should change it so email is required on a bid

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bunkat
Sorry about that! We didn't require email because a lot of people use name and
phone number instead. We'll fix the label on the input box.

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briandear
So it's kind of like ebay with a way more awesome UI?

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bunkat
And free :) Main difference is that we are not a primary listing service,
we're complementary to existing listing services. Advertise your item where
ever you normally do, just include a link to your BidKat auction and we'll
handle offer negotiations and tracking for you automatically.

~~~
briandear
Seriously cool. Nice work. I'm working on a Twitter/Craigslist/StackOverflow-
like service for moms and I will certainly see how we could use your service.

