Transcript of the live chat session that took place Thursday, November
19, 1998. These sessions are normally scheduled for 12 noon-1 PM Eastern
Time every Thursday. Please note that the US is now on Standard Time. So
in international terms, we are on at GMT -5.
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.
For transcripts of previous sessions and a list of future topics, click here .
For an article on how to make "business chat" work (based on this experience), click here .
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.
Richard Seltzer -- I'm interested in this topic from three perspectives:
1) Online sales has finally come of age. It's fascinating to see how
this evolves.
2) I'm hoping to do all or at least most of my Christmas shopping online
this year.
3) I'm writing a dummies-style book about online shopping for Macmillan.
Bob Zwick -- Hello everyone. Bob independent consultant in Texas here.
Ron Rothenberg -- Hi Bob and Richard.
Ron Rothenberg -- Ron Rothenberg - consultant, certified financial planner, real estate broker and writer, boston, ma
Richard Seltzer -- Welcome, Bob Fleischer. Thanks to that pointer to your detailed notes on that education conference. Sounds like it was amazing. Camden Technology Conference on the Transformation of Learning, 23-25 October 1998 http://www.tiac.net/users/rjf/ctc-report.html
Richard Seltzer -- FYI -- just received an email that Nov. 27 to Dec. 4 is going to be "National Online Shopping Week."
Richard Seltzer -- Bob -- Re: Yahoo. Is this different from their offer of store space at $100/months, which has been going for quite some time?
Bob Zwick -- Richard - I'm not up on all of their (YaHoo's) programs. What I mentioned happened to be a press release in my Poincast news this morning.
Richard Seltzer -- Bob -- Sounds like PointCast delivering "news" that's really PR. The Yahoo mall has been going for quite a while. As of yesterday they had over 280,000 products for sale.
Richard Seltzer -- Bob Zwick -- If you check that Yahoo store area, you'll find that there are many established businesses taking advantage of their offer (not just Mom and Pop stuff). E.g., Quantum Books in Cambridge (near MIT), has a store there.
Richard Seltzer -- Bob Fleicsher -- I believe that what you say is true for some kinds of products and services and not for others. I'm very curious to sort out which are which. E.g., groceries (at least the fresh variety) depend on local delivery services, so there's room there for lots of local players or local franchisees. Real estate is complex and requires lots of handholding. Any large purchase is going to be a mix. I get info about cars from the Web, but that probably isn't where I make the purchase.
Richard Seltzer -- Bob Fleischer -- In some cases, the online business is a go-between, a deal maker, a match maker, or a broker. Think of sales of tickets to live events. There could be many sites promoting different concerts and shows and they might all sell tickets online. But there can also be companies (like Ticketmaster) that sell tickets for many. In that case, it looks like it could become a battle between the producers of the shows and the ticket broker. (What value-added does Ticketmaster provide? And they add a significant fee for their non-services.)
Bob Fleischer -- re "In some cases, the online business is a go-between" -- yes, and this is an example of new opportunities which arise from "re-intermediation". It may be a better play to think of a new business made possible by the Web rather than to put an existing business (as is) on the Web. Those with an existing business may be at a disadvantage unless they understand how to break their business into components some of which may get re-assembled differently on the Web.
Richard Seltzer -- Bob Fleischer -- Amen. That's what makes this stuff so fascinating. Meditating in you your living room you might come up with a winning business model. There's a lot still up for grabs. The wild frontier of the Internet isn't contracting, it's expanding, and it's now hitting all aspects of retail.
Richard Seltzer -- I believe that "gifts" is an inbetween kind of category. There are some interesting online services to help provide you with gift suggestions. (Sometimes figuring out what kind of thing you want to get is far more difficult than finding/buying the item once you know.) I might use the Web to get ideas and then buy just about anywhere.
Richard Seltzer -- E.g., check www.museumshop.com They have merchandise from dozens of different museums around the country; and they have a very handy gift suggestion feature, where you select the age, sex, etc. of the recipient, the price range, perhaps a general category of gift, etc. and they give you a list of hyperlinked matches.
Richard Seltzer -- Ron -- I'll have to check the auction sites and auction search sites to see if things are evolving in the direction of higher priced goods. I believe that the highest priced items were among the first to be successful for straight online sales (homes and cars), because a single sale meant so much, at a time when few were connected and they tended to have some money. I believe the auctions took off with cheap stuff, and that grew with collectibles, and might evolve to high-priced stuff now that there an audience of millions.
Ron Rothenberg -- just got an offer from HomeShark, an online mortgage company -- if I put their logo on my site, I get $12 per CLICK-Thru.
Richard Seltzer -- $12 a click-through? Bizarre. At that rate, you could set up a few dozen free email accounts at hotmail etc., and pick up a few quick bucks by doing the clicking yourself :-)
Ron Rothenberg -- Richard, I will see Ned Hoyt, prez of HomeShark at a conference in two weeks - I will ask him about it- I don't think it's that bizarre -- it costs a lot to gain a customer. Amazon spends $30+ -- they can pay you a fixed fee, or pay you as a percentage of the sale -- what's the difference???? Also, RESPA, the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act from HUD prevents mortgage companies from legally paying a kickback or rebate to r.e. brokers.
Richard Seltzer -- Ron -- Yes, travel is a natural for the Web,
because of
1) the complexity of the information you need (destinations, times,
prices/deals, across multiple airlines)
2) the need for immediacy, when you need to make/change travel plans
3) all the frequent flier data
4) tie-ins with hotels and car rentals etc.
Ron Rothenberg -- i think the online travel agents are struggling - they may not have the acceptance they thought they would have. Lots of shoppers there for their excellent information, but many fewer actual buyers.
Richard Seltzer -- Ron -- Travel agents are in an interesting and difficult position. They need to redefine their value added and make it clear to their potential customers. Their main value in the past seemed to be their access to information (schedules, offers, fares, etc.) Now that's readily available to everybody. So the agents have to push a deeper level of knowledge, and do more in the way of putting together packages and making travel easy for the traveler.
Ron Rothenberg -- the internet has shifted a lot of business to different real estate licensees. Those who depended on being the gatekeepers of information (such as mls listing) don't have much of a business left. Those who got online and offer good info + knowledge + (sometimes) wisdom, have done very well. Most people still by homes the traditional way, but more and more are doing some of their shopping for services and homes on line.
Ron Rothenberg -- There has always been a glut of real estate agents, and the efficiencies of the interenet will probably knock a whole bunch out of business. but it is moving slowly, very slowly. I have learned to stop predicting and giving dates at the same time.
Richard Seltzer -- Ron -- Yes, I can easily see using the Web to do initial scouting, but wanting a live person to talk to and walk me through the prospective houses and provide advice. But does that now become the buyer's agent instead of the broker? Is this giving a big boost to that new role and diminishing the role of the broker who represents the seller?
Richard Seltzer -- Ron -- I suspect that one reason why there are so many is the inflation in the prices of houses. If brokers get a fixed percentage of the sale price and the sale prices keep escalating, that means that a single sale is like winning the lottery. So I suspect there are lots of licensed brokers whose main employment is something else, and who if they sell a house that's found money. Is that an accurate assessment?
Bob Fleischer -- Re "brokers whose main employment is something else": my cousin who is a RE agent told me that there's some fantastic number of licensed agents (hundreds) in Aspen, Colorado, which is basically a small town. Of course, real estate prices are fantastic there, too.
Richard Seltzer -- Yes, I can imagine that if a house sells for $1 million, a 10% or even 5% fee would be quite nice, and certainly the work involved is not the same as a full-time job for a year. but it must be a real gamble -- like a lottery -- with few of those sales taking place.
Ron Rothenberg -- the average real estate agent does two sales a year, and has a 4-digit income - thus it has always been. There are many who have real business and do well. Averages are deceiving especially when standard deviations are large.
Ron Rothenberg -- there are only a handful of homes that sell for over 1,000,000 in the U.S. Far less than 1/4%. There are some specialty brokers who have that market wrapped up -
Bob Zwick -- Ron - has the MLS moved to the Web yet ?
Ron Rothenberg -- There is not one mls, but thousands of privately-owned mls's across the country. some are on line with partial information. You'll find collecitons of partial info at www.realtor.com and www.homeadvisor.com. The latter site is microsoft owned.
Ron Rothenberg -- Yes, there are online auctions for real estate - mostly commercial r.e. - hasn't yet extended to residential in a big way. Though you may want to look at Charles Laquidara (the big mattress) site at (i think) www.charleshome.com - he is trying to auction off his own home with a $10,000 web site.
Richard Seltzer -- "his own home with a $10,000 Web site." ??? home and Web site? I'm confused. What is he auctioning?
Ron Rothenberg -- it was a great site, but i think he had enough trouble getting a critical mass of interest to create an auction atmosphere. Bill Wendell of the real estate cafe was involved in making the site, and has more info.
Richard Seltzer -- Ron -- The online atmosphere seems to be changing fast. Business models that didn't work a year ago might work now or a year from now.
Ron Rothenberg -- Looks like charles home is still for sale, but no longer as an auction - just a regular sale. He originally set out to sell it in a one month auction, then extended the date a few months due to lack of interest, now it's just an attractive sale site.
Ron Rothenberg -- www.charleshome.com includes virtual reality tours of much of the house. very pretty.
Ron Rothenberg -- there are some massive commercial real estate auctions online.
Richard Seltzer -- Ron -- do you have a URL for one of those commercial real estate auctions?
Richard Seltzer -- Bob Fleischer -- Interesting. What's the URL of the Web site you used? (I have to write a chapter about buying cars online :-)
Bob Fleischer -- I started my quest for a used car by looking up the reports on a couple of candidates on the Edmunds site http://www.edmunds.com/ . Once you get to the page giving Edmunds' data on a car, there is a "find this car" (not sure of the wording) link -- it was so easy, I hardly gave it much thought, but in a page or two I had a list of dealers having exactly the used car model I was interested in. (I would have bought it but they had just sold it!)
Ron Rothenberg -- bob, if location doesn't matter, do you know about automobile buyer agents? They are intermediaries who work for you and almost always get a better deal than you can from a dealer, online or othewise. there are a few on line.
Richard Seltzer -- Ron -- I hadn't heard of automobile buyers agents. Do you have a URL or two? Is there perchance an association of them? Sounds like a natural, and something that the Web could facilitate. What kind of cut do they get? And is that added to the price of the car or does it come from the dealer?
Ron Rothenberg -- Generally get a fee of around $400 - flat fee - average savings that I've seen over buying using web services or the"consumer report" method is about $1000.
Ron Rothenberg -- home page for the national assn of buyer agents (for automobiles) - http://www.naba.com/ contact there is linda lee goldberg. She knows me. Tell her I sent you and I get a $25 gift certificate toward my next car.
Richard Seltzer -- Ron -- I'll be sure to tell her :-) (Does she have an email address?)
Ron Rothenberg -- linda lee goldberg -- carma@naba.com (she's the prez and founder of naba)
Ron Rothenberg -- they are not auto brokers, and owe their loyalties and responsibilities to you. see the tenets page for more info.
Richard Seltzer -- Ron -- So if I understand you right, the buyer's
agent does the price negotiation and typically does much better than an
uninformed individual would, and hence the agent makes money, the buyer
saves money, and the dealer moves a car. It would seem that the Web then
becomes a very important tool for that buyers agent. Very interesting.
Ron Rothenberg -- yes.
the unfortunate part is that no matter how much information a buyer has,
that buyer doesn't have experience and certain knowledge that insider's
have. Car dealers love it when people walk into their offices with the
consumer reports printout of dealer costs. They're the ones who "invented"
that method of buying a car.
Bob Zwick -- Ron - to rent your appt. you might try a local usenet for sale group. I use the D/FW Forsale group sucessfully.
Richard Seltzer -- Bob Zwick -- what's the name of that newsgroup?
Bob Zwick -- Richard - try a Dejanews.com search for "forsale" to find a group for a particular area.
Ron Rothenberg -- ne.housing -- new england regional housing usenet group
Richard Seltzer -- Ron -- re: ne.housing Do you mean that they conduct auctions by way of a usenet newsgroup?
Bob Zwick -- Aside from all of the bad hype newsgroups get, they still have a lot of traffic and should not be overlooked to buy or sell items.
Richard Seltzer -- Bob -- Amen re: newsgroups. (Just wrote a chapter about that yesterday).
Ron Rothenberg -- i buy computer equipment all the time on usenet newsgroups.
Richard Seltzer -- All -- please post your email and url before logging off (don't presume that the software captured it.) Thanks again.
Ron Rothenberg -- Ron Rothenberg - Homebase@world.std.com
Bob Fleischer -- Bob Fleischer, robert.fleischer@compaq.com, rjf@tiac.net, http://www.tiac.net/users/rjf/
Richard Seltzer -- Jeff Kane and Terry, unfortunately you've arrived just as we're finishing. I'll be posting an edited transcript in a few days. Check http://www.samizdat.com/#chat Please send me email with questions/comments you didn't get a chance to post here and I'll add them to the transcript. We'll skip next Thursday for Thanksgiving, but be back Dec. 3 to talk some more about online shopping.
Previous transcripts and schedule of upcoming chats -- www.samizdat.com/chat.html
To connect to the chat room, go to www.samizdat.com/chat-intro.html
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Take
Charge of Your Web Site, Shop Online the Lazy Way, and
The
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Internet: a Personal View of Internet Business Opportunities.
Web
Business Boot Camp: Hands-on Internet lessons for manager, entrepreneurs,
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