International Online Auction News
Aussie auction site sells for $2million – In Australia, Ebay is the dominant player in the online auctions market. Although that didn’t stop 2 determined aussies from starting their own auction site 2-3 years back. They named it ‘Oztion’ – Its Aussie for auction – A terrible, but no doubt memorable name. They quickly built membership up to 275,000. Also in their favour was Ebays ‘monopolistic’ move to ban other forms of credit card payments for auctions, and only allow eBay members to use their inhouse Paypal credit card processing service. This heavy heanded approach alienated hundreds of larger fee-paying sellers who looked for an alternative selling channel and jumped onto Oztion bringing their listings with them. The owners of the site and have just sold the site to Jumbuck Entertainment for $2million.
This should give hope to all the NZ auction sites, that it could be possible to make some money by building a TradeMe alternative.
First mover ebay is impregnable
Although according to the Australian Commerce Commission (ACCC) eBay is still the dominant force in online auctions and will likely remain so due to their “First Mover Advantage”
You can read the article here:
And you can read an explanation of, and learn about the effectiveness of the “First Mover Advantage” on TradeIt here:
http://tradeit.co.nz/whytmnumber1.html
