Transcript of the live chat session that took place Thursday, December 9, 1999. These sessions are normally scheduled for 12 noon-1 PM US Eastern Time (GMT -5) every Thursday.
Since the chat itself happens at a rapid pace, it's often difficult to note interesting facts in particular URLs as they appear on-line. Here's a place to take a more leisurely look. I've rearranged some of the pieces to try to capture the various threads of discussion (which sometimes get lost in the rush of live chat).
Please send email with your follow-on questions and comments, and suggestions for topics we should focus on in future sessions. So long as the volume of email responses is manageable, I'll post the most pertinent ones here for all to see.
These sessions are hosted by Richard Seltzer. If you would like to receive email reminders of our chat sessions, simply send a blank email message to businessonthewebchats-subscribe@yahoogroups.com or go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/businessonthewebchats and sign up there.
This is one of the longest-running chat programs on the Web. (Please let us know if you know of ones that are older.) We've been doing this since June 1996.
For transcripts of previous sessions and a list of future topics, www.samizdat.com/chat.html.
For an article on how to make "business chat" work (based on this experience), www.samizdat.com/events.html.
For articles about online auctions, go to www.samizdat.com/auc.html
Richard Seltzer -- All -- as you join us, please introduce yourselves and let us know your interests. Our main topic for today is online auctions. We're expecting a guest from the auction resource site AuctionRover.
Jim Pellerin -- Hi Richard...Jim Pellerin here from Pellerin Consulting Group...how have you been?
Richard Seltzer -- Welcome, Jim. How have things been going with your project? AS I recall, you were doing training for project management over the Web.
Jim Pellerin -- Things are looking pretty good. Just finished the Business Plan (starting a new company to drive it). Now the fun begins.
Calvin@AuctionRover -- Greetings - how is everyone?
Richard Seltzer -- Welcome, Calvin. What is your role at AuctionRover? And how did you get involved in the online auction business?
Calvin@AuctionRover -- I'm the Product Manager for Seller Services here at AuctionRover. I have been a big fan of online auctions and auctions in general for many years. It's just an exciting business! It's amazing to me that you can find just about anything for sale at an online auction nowadays.
Calvin@AuctionRover -- Sure, AuctionRover is the one-stop resource for online auction users. We provide services for buyers and sellers including a cross-auction search, auction management, original articles, and message boards!
Richard Seltzer -- Calvin -- I realize that you are very new (didn't you just launch in October?) How many sellers are taking advantage of your service already?
Calvin@AuctionRover -- Yes, we officially launched the site at InternetWorld in NY on October 4th. Since then the response has been overwhelming! I don't have exact numbers handy, but several thousand users have already signed up!
Richard Seltzer -- While eBay is definitely dominant, it feels like more and more sellers -- folks with multiple copies of the same merchandise -- are listing at Amazon and Yahoo as well. That trend, I'd think, would be one of the reasons that auction resource/service sites are likely to become increasingly important.
Calvin@AuctionRover -- Exactly Richard. We agree! Our newest feature, AuctionManager, allows sellers to sell their items at the 3 largest auction sites (eBay, Yahoo!, and Amazon) without re-entering the item descriptions they've spent so much time carefully crafting to attract buyers.
Richard Seltzer -- Calvin -- Do you also have special services for buyers? If so, what are they?
Calvin@AuctionRover -- We have great services for buyers too! One of the nicest features is our ability to save a search. If there's a particular item you're searching for, you can have AuctionRover search for it at a specified interval (every 8 hours, every day, etc) and we will email you the results of the search if we find anything.
Richard Seltzer -- Calvin -- Do you have any kind of relationship with Fairmarket? They're up here near Boston and host branded person-to-person auctions. They have signed up some big name companies, but I don't think any of them have generated much traffic yet. I'd think that your kind of service could help give them the kind of visibility that they need.
Calvin@AuctionRover -- We currently include MSN in our searches and they are part of the Fairmarket network. We've had several discussions with them, but no formal agreement yet. Ultimately, we'd like to include every auction site in our searches, so working with Fairmarket is important to us. We'll continue to work with them so that all of their network partners are included.
Richard Seltzer -- Calvin -- Is your focus on person-to-person auctions? Or will you be expanding coverage to include vendor-to-consumer and business-to-business auctions as well?
Calvin@AuctionRover -- Our focus is currently person-to-person, but our goal has always been to become the one-stop resource for all online auctions. This would naturally include B2C and B2B auctions as well.
Richard Seltzer -- Do you plan to include any sites that focus on big-ticket items -- e.g., real estate auctions? And do you get involved at all in auctions for services (like MonsterBoard and elance)?
Calvin@AuctionRover -- We hope to include as many auction sites as possible in our searches. What the sites will sell, whether it be services, pokemon cards, or the next hot collectible, is anybody's guess. We hope to include them all!
Richard Seltzer -- Calvin -- Do you have or plan to have partnerships with "expert" sites? I'm thinking of www.expertcentral.com, where people with knowledge/expertise and people with questions. it would seem natural that people wanting to buy or sell particular kinds of goods might want an opportunity to link up with an expert in that field.
Calvin@AuctionRover -- Richard, expertcentral and the sites like it are terrific. We've got lots of interesting partnership deals in the works. Keep an eye out for them soon!
Richard Seltzer -- Calvin -- You you have forums or chats at AuctionRover? A place where folks could go to to continue discussions of this kind?
Calvin@AuctionRover -- We do indeed have message boards that include many forums for auction users to discuss whatever is on their minds.
Calvin@AuctionRover -- For auction management, right now we support eBay, Yahoo!, and Amazon. We will be adding many more soon based on user demand. Ultimately, we would like to include as many auction sites as possible.
Richard Seltzer -- Calvin -- Yes, listing and relisting, at one site or multiple sites is time-consuming -- an unnecessary pain. Is there some minimum number of items for doing this through your site? a maximum? And are you able to accommodate all the variants (e.g., including at Amazon a list of ISBNs of similar books)?
Calvin@AuctionRover -- There are no minimums and hopefully no maximums either! Our posting engine is capable of handling all the details of each site's particular form. This is great for sellers wanting to take advantage of site-specific features like the ISBN numbers you mentioned on Amazon.
Richard Seltzer -- That relisting/auction management service sounds like the kind of thing that one would expect to have to buy special software for. It's interesting that you are providing it as a free service. Where does AuctionRover get its revenue? Is it strictly an advertising model?
Calvin@AuctionRover -- Yes, our revenue comes from several sources, advertising, partners, and auction sites looking for more exposure. We intend to keep all of our services free for the forseeable future.
Calvin@AuctionRover -- Good question. AuctionManager includes great features like auction Monitoring, inventory management, cross-auction posting, easy relisting, template designs, and much more! It definitely helps eBay users by providing them with easy-to-use templates so they don't have to know HTML to design attractive listings. Of course, we have free image hosting and free page counters so you can store your images and see how many people are viewing your auctions. eBay doesn't offer these features, so we do to give sellers a one-stop shop where they can get everything they need to sell online.
Richard Seltzer -- For the auction monitoring -- I'm used to using My eBay and also checking my auctions at Amazon and Yahoo. How do you handle it so you can see the status of all your auctions at one place? Do you do it by seller name/password or by having sellers enter the numbers of all their auctions?
Calvin@AuctionRover -- Once a seller securely stores their auction username/password with us, we automatically pull in their current auctions and allow them to monitor all of the auctions from one interface.
Calvin@AuctionRover -- Another great service is the ability to monitor a single auction. Similar to saved searches, you can have AuctionRover email you whenever the price of the auction you're monitoring changes!
Richard Seltzer -- Calvin -- Is that email search just for the particular item? Or do you have a way to alert people when a particular item is on sale at a designated price level? (In either case, sounds like a very handy service).
Calvin@AuctionRover -- Right now our saved searches alert you when that particular item is available. Then, if you go back to our site, you can filter the results based on price and other factors.
Calvin@AuctionRover -- Richard, yes of course! How could I forget our most popular feature? AuctionManager does indeed provide the ability to schedule the posting of your auctions (up to 30 days in advance). We've found that sellers generally like to have their auctions end in the evening. If you're listing hundreds of items though, it's a race to get them all in at the time you want them to end! AuctionManager solves that problem by allowing you to schedule. So, you can enter your auctions at your leisure and let AuctionManager do the work for you!
Richard Seltzer -- Calvin -- I'd think the scheduling of auctions (up to 30 days in advance) would be especially helpful for the professionals, who are selling new or nearly new merchandise and who relist the same items as soon as the old ones ended.
Calvin@AuctionRover -- Yes, the scheduling feature has been extremely well-received. Many businesses use auctions as another sales channel or just a way to gain more exposure either for their online or offline business. We make it easier for them to do that by saving them time.
Calvin@AuctionRover -- Richard, yes that's one of our newest and most distinguishing features. It's really useful for both buyers and sellers because you can easily see trends in the market for various items. For example, if I'm selling the Charizard Pokemon card, it's useful to know which auction site is currently garnering the best prices!
Richard Seltzer -- Calvin -- Yes, those trend charts help you decide the best places to sell and also the best places to buy; and also help you set realistic starting bids. Will you be expanding the categories that you cover? How do you determine what categories to cover? Is it based on searches/statistics?
Calvin@AuctionRover -- Our trending charts currently cover over 350 items and new items are submitted daily by our users. If there's a particular item you'd like to see trended, just send email to speak@auctionrover.com!
Richard Seltzer -- Calvin -- Following up on Jim's question -- I see that the products that you provide the trend stats for tend to be collectibles. Is that a deliberate choice? Or are those also the hottest selling items at auctions? What about digital camera and other electronic gear and computer related stuff? Is the price variation on things like that great enough to merit that kind of tracking?
Calvin@AuctionRover -- Richard, collectibles are indeed amongst the hottest items. Other electronic gear is also getting hotter. Items like digital cameras, palm pilots, dvd players, etc. are all very popular online auction items. The dvd players in particular are great to watch because the prices just keep getting lower and lower!
Calvin@AuctionRover -- Jim, yes we do monitor activity. Pokemon cards and cars are some of the hottest items.
Calvin@AuctionRover -- I know it's hard to believe, but used cars are very popular on eBay! In fact, our CFO just sold her '67 Chevy Camaro convertible on there!
Richard Seltzer -- Calvin -- How much did that Camaro go for?
Calvin@AuctionRover -- I believe the final price was $7500, but I'd have to check to be sure. We auctioned it off using an Electrifier show which is another great seller feature that we offer. Essentially you can create a TV-like show that plays through RealPlayer. You can embed this in your auction to help it stand out.
Calvin@AuctionRover -- Richard, yes on both counts with Electrifier. You can see a demo on our site at http://www.auctionrover.com/sellerservices/electrifier.asp
Richard Seltzer -- Calvin -- Also, does Real Networks know about
your Electrifier feature? Sounds like
something they'd like to promote.
Richard Seltzer -- Calvin -- quick question -- what do you need to use the Electrifier? to add a video of your product? a webcam? do you include sound as well?
Calvin@AuctionRover -- To use Electrifier, all you need to do is download their software (there's a link on our site) and then you just drag and drop your images into their application to create a slideshow. Very easy!
Richard Seltzer -- Calvin -- So you don't even need a video camera of any kind -- just still pictures in electronic form? Sounds great. (Sounds like people would want to use that for more than just auctions). I'll have to take a look.
Calvin@AuctionRover -- Regarding the auction license issue, I don't have the latest information, but I do believe it is true. We had a feature story on the whole thing come out just this week. See http://www.auctionrover.com/NewsFeatures/NewsAndFeaturesArticle.asp?TargetID=439 for more details!
Richard Seltzer -- Calvin -- I find that auction license thing totally bizarre. I believe that the old law was intended to get auctioneers to register and get licensed. That makes sense in the physical world. But they appear to be distorting the intention of the law when they apply it in cyberspace. They are saying that they don't require the "auction mediators" to get licenses (the eBays etc.), but rather require the auction sellers to register. If I wanted to sell an old chair at an auction, I'd take it to an auction house and the auction house would have a license and I wouldn't have to worry about such nonsense. I can't imagine that ordinary people with just a couple items to sell should be required to get a license...
Calvin@AuctionRover -- Yes, it doesn't make sense to me either. I'm not a lawyer of course, but I think the issue essentially boils down to who is considered to be holding the auction. Is it eBay or the seller? I'm sure there will be much passionate debate if they continue to move in this direction!
Richard Seltzer -- Jim -- elance.com is doing that. And, to some extent, MonsterBoard.com I'm not sure how well they are doing. It's a very different kind of ballgame and could be touch to handle auction style. (Ron Rothenberg who has joined in on many of chat sessions, especially about auctions, has strongly stated his belief that it's a bad business model. It will be interesting to see how this evolves.)
Calvin@AuctionRover -- You're very welcome Richard. Thank you for the opportunity to spread the word about AuctionRover! Take care.
Jim Pellerin -- Thanks Calvin
and Richard, Jim Pellerin, pellerin@pellerin.net,
www.pellerin.net
Richard Seltzer -- All -- As usual I'll posted an edited version of this transcript in a few days. Check www.samizdat.com/chat.html We'll be taking a break for the holidays and returning January 6 to share war stories and lessons from our holiday shopping experiences. Then on January 13, Bob Supnik from Fairmarket will join us for another auction-related discussion. (Bob used to be VP of Research at Digital.) Please send me email with your suggestions for future topics and guests.
Richard Seltzer -- Signing off. Merry Christmas. Happy New Millenium. And please join us again January 6 and 13.
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