FaunaAuction.com??

[Rob Hill/Geckos Anonymous]

I'm definitely all for a Fauna Auction addition. As a seller, $10/year and a flat $1/item fee is perfectly acceptable to me. I do have some questions, though...

1. After you pay your $10 membership fee, and you place up an item for $1, when the auction is over and the item is sold, are you still going to be charged a percentage of the sale price, or will it be only that $1 listing fee? There is just something that bothers me a bit about paying to list an item, then paying again for the listing when it sells. I know $1 isn't much at all, but something about that just doesn't sit well for some reason. To me, it's like buying a sandwich for $5, but only paying $1 up front, and the rest when your done, it just doesn't make sense to me, and if I am confused or this isn't even anywhere near what you're planning, Rich, then ignore me.

2. My next thing is deadbeat buyers. It's been stated here already, but a membership fee for buyers to bid would probably help curb SOME of this behavior, but for those that aren't bothered by it, what about a warning system like the BOI? You back out of a sale, you get 5 warning points, or something like that. The same should of course be true for sellers who sell items outside of auction or don't go through with their deals, etc. So many points, and BAM you're gone. Also, I don't know how feasible this would be(probably not at all), but what about both buyers and sellers to have a profile link that includes any and all threads about them on the BOI?

3. The kinds of items being bid on, would it be reptiles only(that includes supplies and what not), or would there be also "flea market" auctions for other random items?

Anyway, I would still gladly pay the $10/year as well as listing fees to be a member of the auction site.

 

[TheVipersHouse]

well rob i can possibly answer that without charging the bidder a membership fee as well that leaves room for deadbeat bidders , and heres why

1.. even with warnings they are able to do it repeatedly until kicked off
2.whats to stop them (as we seen many times here from postings already ) from manking a new user name and falsifing info and continue doing it again ..???? see without being charged a membership fee they really risk nuthing at all but if they have to pay they wont risk losing money or it will deture them from even joining up .... so u see why i am strongly for sellers and bidders to have a membership fee .. and the question is still there about the costs im not looking to losing money everytime i post something that doesnt sell i would rather pay a % of the final sale least im not losing anything if it dont sell ..... but i wont pay 2 times for it now way never

 

[Rob Hill/Geckos Anonymous]

Shawn,

I was not saying to NOT charge buyers a membership fee. I am all for that, but for some people, $10 is probably not as much of a deterrant to keep from playing games with sellers. I meant adding the warning system in addition to the membership fee.

 

[WebSlave]

First off, I favor the listing fee of $1 OVER the percentage on the sale simply because I personally know of people whom have run auctions that the sellers using every trick in the book to dodge that fee was their biggest headache. Many would say the item never sold and they were withdrawing it from the market, when in fact it did, when a buyer saw the auction and contacted them outside of the auction.

So there would be a listing fee but NO percentage taken on the sale. If I find that this is a problem, of course I can change that to what works best for everyone. But to be realistic, paying $1 to list something for sale should not be that heavy of a burden.

The auction software is not free for me, and neither is my time.

If I am going to do this, it needs to pay it's way and be as headache free as possible.

It is extremely doubtful that any auction board I have seen can easily be linked to the BOI, which is unfortunate. I could possibly get my programmer to do something like this, but I expect that would be VERY expensive, since it would be a completely custom programming job. I honestly don't have that kind of money to throw into something that may be used only as infrequently as some of the other stuff I have set up here. Maybe if the auction board is used and generates some money, then I can funnel that back into something better.

Any auction board I choose will have a feedback system. Some of them had the capability for the seller to ban a bidder from even bidding on their auction. But I think the feedback system will suffice. Basically it would be a "three strikes, and you're out!" kind of system. Someone paying $10 to register each time would get tired of that in a hurry.

And no, I have no plans to turn the classifieds here into a fee-based service. But I do foresee that possibly the auction board might replace that entirely if it works well enough. Too many unknowns at this point, since just about everything depends on you guys.

This will probably be another of those "horse, water, drink" scenarios.

 

[Rob Hill/Geckos Anonymous]

Rich,

thanks for clarifying the listing fee for me. It was just something I hadn't understood fully. $1 per listing is DEFINITELY NOT much of a burden, and I would be more than happy to get away with only paying a buck each time I put up an item for auction(outside of the $10 membership fee of course, which is also about as minimal as it gets).

I have been to the other auction sites listed, and my biggest concern there is simply lack of participation. ReptiBid is supposed to be one of the largest ones, right? And last time I looked at it(a few weeks back honestly), there were only 4 items up for bid, with noone making any bids that I saw. I don't want to waste my time and have an animal tied up for a few days on a site with that kind of traffic/interest when I could have put it here or on kingsnake.

I think with the kind of traffic that this site is already getting, an auction that is part of Fauna would work well. Not trying to give out ideas, but I'm sure if Jeff B. decided to add an auction, it would work quite well indeed. I have a feeling the same would be true here(what exactly ARE the traffic numbers here Rich?).

Anyway, bottom line is that I am all for a Fauna Auction site, and I will be one of the first in line for a membership(even though I don't have much for sale now).

 

[WebSlave]

Bear in mind that the auction will not be integrated with this message board. It will be on it's own separate domain, but certainly linked to this one.

I have been in contact with one of the auction board developers to see how well his product will fit my needs.

 

[Slither]

well the reason ebay is so sucessful is the fact they handle everything so in fact u really cant compare ebay to much with a reptile auction cause we will be dealing with 1 specific item herps , not 1 mill different items like my old gramas stockings cause they were made back in the civil war .... lmao the fact they handled everything and anything is the reason they became so sucessful not the fact of their rules cause if they were limited to 3 items that could be listed and still charged the prices they do forget it they wouldnt have lasted

My point about eBay was that the whole discussion here is about the rules to deal with non-paying bidders and sellers. eBay has a very good system in place for this. It has nothing to do with what they sell.

 

[Wormman]

I wouldn't mind. I advertise our auction here, and wouldn't mind. Just don't sell bugs! :0) We really just created ours as a free service. We were told by Reptiles Mag that we couldn't advertise our classifieds there anymore because they have gone online. I think you should do it. I am here more than on my own anyway. Ain't nothin goin on but the rent there! (That was corny!)
Ken Chiarella
Wormman.com

 

[WebSlave]

Thanks Ken! I really AM worried about stepping on people's toes with this. Unfortunately, the only auction board I have seen that I really like, even with some deficiencies, is the one used by ReptiBid. So if I tromp on his toes, I'll likely lose several banner ads over it. Which might happen anyway, no matter which system I would use if I do ANY auction board..

So doing an auction here will have costs involved beyond the price, time and labor.

And no, I'm not going to be selling bugs, but I would likely have a section on the auction for all feed items.

 

[Wormman]

Rich,
I like their format also. I will still advertise with you. I may drop the auction, but I will add the advertising dollars to my main business. You are a good man, and provide a great service. Do what needs to be done and you will be rewarded! I'm not leaving and I am sure many others won't. The increase with the auction may even generate more business. Thanks again.
Ken Chiarella
Wormman.com

 

[WebSlave]

Thanks Ken.

Maybe I could change the look and feel of that auction board enough so that it wouldn't ruffle any feathers. It doesn't look like I am going to be able to easily do what I want, though. I've been talking with the developer, and his opinion that charging for bidders to register is the kiss of death for an auction board, so he has never implemented it. And it would not be easy to do so.

So apparently the only way to do this will be to charge the $1 per auction fee, but registration for both bidders and sellers will have to be free of charge. This certainly takes a lot of control out of my hands over this.

So will it be worth taking a stab at it even without this registration fee? There will be feedback points, of course, so I could simply implement a three strike rule to ban anyone whom winds up being a problem. Will this be good enough?

I've contacted Danni Wilson, whom is an excellent Perl programmer (which the auction software is written in) and perhaps he will be able to help me make some mods. But he is kind of busy now, and it may take a while for him to break loose.

So do you all want to take a stab at a plain vanilla auction board to see how it flies? I'm willing to lay out the money and set it up if the interest is there.

Thanks.

 

[cahrens]

Ya know even if you don't charge a registration fee or membership fee you could still require credit card info to register. That would make it harder to have multiple identities which someone voiced concern about. What I mean is that if you get banned it would stop you from registering with another identity. With the same credit card anyway. Then you could also charge listing fees directly to the card given during registration. Not having to bill ppl and collect money would be 1 less hassle. Just some thoughts. -Chris

 

[WebSlave]

Hmm, but accepting credit card info would require being linked through a SSL certificate to encrypt that information. I would not recommend anyone sending cc info in the clear without having it encrypted, so I certainly could not make it a requirement of registration.

Danni seems to think he may be able to tie the registration to the auction with the database here, so registration could be done from this site. But I don't know how long it would take him to find the time to look into it. At least it is a possibility sometime down the road.

I suppose as long as I keep on top of deadbeat bidders and problem sellers, and be rather ruthless about it, then it should keep things in line in the meantime.

 

[cahrens]

How do you plan to collect fees though? I think it's become a point and click world and you're gonna need a secure site. I for 1 know that I'm actually willing to pay a little more for something if I can buy it online and pay online. It's just so easy that way. That's of course just my opinion. -Chris

 

[WebSlave]

I don't know the answer to that yet. I believe there will be a direct tie in with PayPal. I may also be able to redirect registrations to my own SSL certificate. I can share my SSL cert with all of the domains on my server. Danni Wilson showed me how to do this little trick.

Yes, I am fully aware of the attraction of "click the button" selling.

I got an email from the developer of the software I am looking at concerning controlling abuse:

Another feature we have is in the config.pl you can setup how many postive feedbacks the users has to have before they can bid on unlimited auction items, if under this them they are limited on auction items they have current open running bids on at a time this you also setup in the config.pl file. Example: the max auction items they can bid on at a time is set at 3 and the postive feedbacks needed for unlimmited is set to 10 then if the users has less than 10 postive feedbacks they can only bid on the max of 3 diferent running auction items at a time. you can set this to what ever.

Might be somewhat useful to do damage control from new registrations with mischief on their minds. Also, I believe the sellers can ban users from bidding on their auctions as well.

I guess like anything else, nothing is perfect. I may have to run with it, "as is", and then hope it can be massaged into something better. Either that, or maybe something better will come along in the meantime.

 

[cahrens]

That sounds like a great idea. Limiting bids allowed based on feedback. Another question I have is based on what I think is a problem in ebay. I absolutely hate being outbid in the last seconds with no time to bid again. What I thought would be a good idea is if there is a bid, let's say in the last minute, then the auction would run an additional 5 min or whatever to allow ppl to bid again. True auction style as opposed to "sniper" style. Any thoughts on that? -Chris

 

[WebSlave]

I have seen that on one of the gun auctions I frequent, and as a bidder, I hate it. Takes some of the fun out of it for me. Now I don't like the sniping programs that do that automatically, but I always did like sitting there in front of the screen, waiting to launch my bid and hoping there weren't a dozen other people doing the same thing. Of course, as a seller, I would probably like the auction to be extended as long as necessary to get every possible bid in.

But it depends on if this is implemented in the software or not, and right now, I don't know. I rather doubt it, though. Maybe in one of the $3,000+ packages it may be.

I always thought that auctions should be fun. So if I can, I'm going to try like heck to keep anything I set up along those lines as something that will be fun to do.

I stopped going to Ebay because it wasn't fun any longer.

 

[WebSlave]

Status report....

Well, I bought an auction package last night and it is installed on my server. I don't have any public links to it yet, since I am still fiddling with it. But as soon as it is ready, I'll just link it up so going to FaunaAuction.com will automatically crank it up for you.

It actually seems rather easy to modify. I just spent a couple of hours on the formatting a little bit and made the color scheme pretty much match this site. Now I have to delete the stuff that came on the auction and put in my own categories and subcategories. Then do some testing.

There are a lot more bells and whistles than I thought in there. This might actually be fun! I may even use it myself. Of course, I'm going to be pretty much useless trying to help anyone with any problems, since I'm a newbie with that software too.

But some things I want to disable right off the bat. The system can allow a seller to attach music files, which would probably drive people batty. There are also a bunch of "attention getter" icons that are tacky as all getout. I haven't figured out how to disable them quite yet, but I think I have set it up so that nearly everyone will be REAL reluctant to use them. You'll see what I mean....

Gosh! I think this might be ready to go even by this weekend! I think this software has been around long enough that nearly all of the bugs should have been ironed out of it. So I'm not going to beat myself to death too much testing it out. But bear in mind that there may be some aesthetic changes early on as I try to fine tune the look and feel of it all.

One negative thing I did notice is that the auction board software is NOT based on a MySQL database like I had thought it would be. So directly interfacing it with the user file on this site will probably not really be feasible at all. Darn.....

 

[WebSlave]

Question.....

I'm about ready to put the categories and subcategories into the auction board. Looks like there are only two levels available to work with so I am thinking of doing the structure listed below:

• 
  Reptiles & Amphibians
• Snakes
• Lizards
• Turtles & Tortoises
• Amphibians
• Crocodilians
• Feed, Caging, Supplies & Services
• All other herp related material

• 
  Insects & Arachnids
• Insects & Arachnids
• Products & Services

• 
  Birds
• Birds
• Products & Services

• 
  Mammals
• Mammals
• Products & Services

• 
  Fish & Aquatics
• Fish & Aquatics
• Products & Services

• 
  Miscellaneous
• Miscellaneous Animal Goods
• Miscellaneous Non-Animal Items

Any comments or suggestions?

 

[The BoidSmith]

WebSlave,

Congratulations! I will be using this FaunaAuction.com as soon as this year's babies are born. Good luck!

Regards.