One of the ways the customer chooses the price is when you sell by auction. Auctions have been around for decades and ebay is the grand-daddy of auctions. Today’s video is a promotion for the Internet Marketing Center, but at the same time it gives a good insight into the huge success of ebay. And ebay isn’t the only online auction website; there are many.
Some of the fact about ebay are staggering. They have 88 million users worldwide. There are 63 million shoppers per month. $160 million is traded every day. Ebay is now the largest ecommerce site online beating amazon and walmart. You can shop for virtually anything, not just collectibles. There are even thousands of ‘powersellers’ and ebay stores. With such a massive marketplace, online ebay stores are booming, even in a recession.
So, why are auctions so popular? I think it the possibility of a bargain. You know you don’t have to pay retail prices and you can get it for less. Perhaps the other reason ebay is so popular is the sheer scale of the marketplace, the ease of finding what you want and paying it for it with paypal, which is so easy to use. If you are thinking of opening an online store or bringing your business online, an ebay store could be a good move.
Anjuno takes this idea further and has created the world’s first pick-your-price music, games and ebook store. Anjuno’s stated goal is to connect fans directly to the artists they love, by building a marketplace where artists place their products and customers decide what they will pay. Springwise thinks this could be a shift towards pay-what-you-want pricing models and asks will more businesses adopt it. I think we should watch this space.
Letting the customer choose the price could be a big seller.
