Ask the community for help and advice here
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kds_comics Posts: 686
3/7/2018
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My thoughts on your purported objective to be the "go to" spot on the internet for comic book buying and selling.
Currently the obvious leader is eBay - due to volume.
There are also My Comic Shop and several other lesser know site like Comic Book Realms and Sell My Comics
Suggestions
1) Take the best features from the leader -
a) Organize by Modern, Copper, Bronze, Silver, Golden Age
b) Make the sales area searchable
c) Charge a small fee either for listing or for sales
d) Allow a sale page to link to PayPal via HTML.
2) Improve on the leader's model
a) Do not charge percentage - this kills sales. Just charge a small fee per completed transaction.
b) Total comic sales in ad must be over $7.50 (or what ever we think is a good minimum. Perhaps $4 price of a new comic) There is no money and too much junk on eBay for $1 each comics. Ridiculous.
c) Give the little guy a better chance. eBay is littered with dealers who have employees with little to do early in the day writing eBay ads. The purpose appears to be more for free advertising than real sales.
d) CPG needs to implement a system to certify sellers (or a rating). I give a money back guarantee. I am sure many others here would do as well. Most of us are collectors, not dealers.
What is good not that people don't know
3) I was able to link directly to my "make an offer" page for a specific comic in the classified ads. Perhaps you could automate this process to make it easier.
4) Facebook just does not cut it as a sales vehicle
Suggestion for improvement
4) Although CPG asks for minimum I will take - there is room for negotiation. I think you should revive the auction "one cent" minimum with a reserve by the seller. eBay has killed this feature with ridiculous fee for creating a reserve.
Have I used the term "ridiculous:" enough with eBay?
Okay - let's focus on CPG. Good luck. I am invested in the process and hope you succeed.
KDS (Robert)
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+1
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expander Posts: 241
3/8/2018
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some one call my name????
JK
I Agree. Maybe in addition to this there are a lot of people who have no interest in comics who end up (here) with inherited collections.
Maybe we can offer a service that will find those collections homes either in the form of auctions or donations and, depending on whether they are sold as a whole lot or parted out.
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+1
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kds_comics Posts: 686
3/14/2018
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Ronbatman wrote:
Robert, thank you for your well thought out suggestions. We will strongly consider everything you've said.
I have sold on eBay and realize how much money they take. Total fees for my personal sales were between 20 and 25%! (for July 2017- January 2018) That is painfully too much. We have a unique opportunity here because of eBay's greed. Currently, there are tens of thousands of books for sale on CPG and plenty of sales, but we want to expand this. Our short-term goal is to develop a feedback system to build buyer confidence. It would include an automated "responsiveness" evaluation. If someone makes you an offer and you don't respond within 7 days your responsiveness rating will be lowered. We do not plan to implement any kind of percentage. I agree with you completely, percentage kills sales.
Ron
A suggested alternative is to have a "once a month" auction for a few days. This will allow you regular time to do stuff with and limit your time/effort/overtime on the programming push for a few days.
KDS
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+1
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Ronbatman Administrator Posts: 2530
3/15/2018
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You are full of good ideas. We haven't played with that auction idea yet but who knows.
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+1
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kds_comics Posts: 686
4/4/2018
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One more thing I noticed - on main page under Sold comics there is a bar. If you could list last 100 or 200 sold comics - I think this would draw a lot of folks to your site. Every wants to know what issues really sold for - not just list prices. The proof is in the transaction amount! (Or the pudding - yeah, I like pudding).
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+1
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