Bitmit - Bitcoin shopping mall - Bitcoin market place - Bitcoin auction house

[thebaron]

bitmit is down right now. My auction has very very limited time to find buyers if bitmit somehow comes back soon. You really know how to screw your customers and wonder why it doesn't take off.
 

Well, at this point IMHO that the current site operator has burned the bridge for getting people to trust him with their escrow deposits.

[tosaki]

Please be informed that we have an urgent Power Maintenance in our Datacenter Network.

I read all your posts. The next days I will fix the mentioned bugs and make the Bitmit listings more cleaner by canceling the items from sellers who were not on the site for about 4 weeks.

[geniusboy91]

I disagree with the 5% listing fee idea. I think there are better ways to curb the overpriced crap problem. Besides the fact that a 5% fee raises the price to sell on Bitmit by 250%, if this were the case, there are a lot of items I would not list because I don't know if they'd sell on Bitmit before they sell elsewhere. Or an item like coupons, that require a special buyer and may or may not sell before they expire, but it doesn't mean my price was bad.

A better solution is to algorithmically push listings that have been on the site longer further down in search results. Perhaps also allow for a maximum of a couple weeks on the site before the listing is ended.

There are three main reasons I'm selling on Bitmit:
1. I can sell the things I want to sell without fear of bans, deleted listings.
2. The fees are only 2%.
3. I can't get screwed by Paypal.

Those are what make Bitmit great. Don't break those three things.

[giszmo]

I disagree with the 5% listing fee idea. I think there are better ways to curb the overpriced crap problem. Besides the fact that a 5% fee raises the price to sell on Bitmit by 250%, if this were the case, there are a lot of items I would not list because I don't know if they'd sell on Bitmit before they sell elsewhere. Or an item like coupons, that require a special buyer and may or may not sell before they expire, but it doesn't mean my price was bad.

A better solution is to algorithmically push listings that have been on the site longer further down in search results. Perhaps also allow for a maximum of a couple weeks on the site before the listing is ended.

There are three main reasons I'm selling on Bitmit:
1. I can sell the things I want to sell without fear of bans, deleted listings.
2. The fees are only 2%.
3. I can't get screwed by Paypal.

Those are what make Bitmit great. Don't break those three things.

My proposal was not for a 5% fee on starting price + 2% on the final price but to have a fee for listing (and re-listing). 5% was just a number and toki has to find the right number for that.

Having this fee proportional to the item value would be justified if the site would have costs proportional to the value of the item. As the site has a lack of buyers, it should shift the incentive to the buyer side and force the sellers to make more attractive offers. List it once, it's free. Re-list it, it costs 5% of your initial price instead of 2% of the sales price.

I understand that for items that have a fixed price where you use bitmit like amazon and not like an auction platform, this would mean an increase in price but how about:
Auction: 5% of initial price for up to 2 months of listings (1, 2, 4, 8 or 16 listings)
Sell now: 0.5% per week of listing

This way both auctions and sales have a good incentive to not spam the site with unnecessary traffic and the buyers with pointless offers.

(Again the numbers are completely made up. It's just to explain my issue with the current bitmit.)

[ercolinux]

Please be informed that we have an urgent Power Maintenance in our Datacenter Network.

I read all your posts. The next days I will fix the mentioned bugs and make the Bitmit listings more cleaner by canceling the items from sellers who were not on the site for about 4 weeks.

Nice to ear: I was a little worried to see the site again down without info

[tosaki]

for items that have a fixed price where you use bitmit like amazon and not like an auction platform, this would mean an increase in price but how about:
Auction: 5% of initial price for up to 2 months of listings (1, 2, 4, 8 or 16 listings)
Sell now: 0.5% per week of listing

This way both auctions and sales have a good incentive to not spam the site with unnecessary traffic and the buyers with pointless offers.

Thanks for your ideas. But when it comes to this model users should have a chance to list some items for free because many bitcoin newcomers use this site to earn their first coins.

[giszmo]

for items that have a fixed price where you use bitmit like amazon and not like an auction platform, this would mean an increase in price but how about:
Auction: 5% of initial price for up to 2 months of listings (1, 2, 4, 8 or 16 listings)
Sell now: 0.5% per week of listing

This way both auctions and sales have a good incentive to not spam the site with unnecessary traffic and the buyers with pointless offers.

Thanks for your ideas. But when it comes to this model users should have a chance to list some items for free because many bitcoin newcomers use this site to earn their first coins.

Grant 5 listings per user for free. As reputation is valuable, people will not sell 5 items and create a new account (unless they are scammers.)

[SgtSpike]

I completely disagree with the idea of introducing fees to limit listings.  Bitmit needs MORE people to list on it, not fewer.  I understand that with time as the only cost to list an auction, spamming can be rather prevalent, but it is not a terrible problem right now.  But there are filters to search for and sort plenty well enough to get rid of any spam you might not want to see!  On the other hand, fees would virtually kill the site from lack of listings.  I'd much rather see a couple thousand listings with some spammy ones thrown in here and there (as it is now) than a couple dozen listens without any spam.

Bitmit needs to grow, not limit itself.  No listing fees please!

[Isokivi]

for items that have a fixed price where you use bitmit like amazon and not like an auction platform, this would mean an increase in price but how about:
Auction: 5% of initial price for up to 2 months of listings (1, 2, 4, 8 or 16 listings)
Sell now: 0.5% per week of listing

This way both auctions and sales have a good incentive to not spam the site with unnecessary traffic and the buyers with pointless offers.

Thanks for your ideas. But when it comes to this model users should have a chance to list some items for free because many bitcoin newcomers use this site to earn their first coins.

I believe your attitude is correct, gaining volyme can be far more profitable in the long run. You should however look in to other ways of improving your sites income, I for example would be interested in a service which allows a seller to promote ones products, for example you could have a highlighted 5-item window showing up when the site initially loads, thats slots were up for sale. You can even let the market set the price for this visibility, depending on queue lenght. Lets say for example one ad spot runs for 24 hours and the price of a slot can vary depending on the queue length, perhaps starting from as low as one bitcent. Perhaps ad an entire category of promoted items also so that the items promoted this way show up in two categories. I've also seen an auction site sell promotion in the form of highlighted item listing text, bold, red etc..

[minimalB]

Is bitmit working for you guys? I experience almost more downtime than uptime last few days/weeks.

[giszmo]

I completely disagree with the idea of introducing fees to limit listings.  Bitmit needs MORE people to list on it, not fewer.  I understand that with time as the only cost to list an auction, spamming can be rather prevalent, but it is not a terrible problem right now.  But there are filters to search for and sort plenty well enough to get rid of any spam you might not want to see!  On the other hand, fees would virtually kill the site from lack of listings.  I'd much rather see a couple thousand listings with some spammy ones thrown in here and there (as it is now) than a couple dozen listens without any spam.

Bitmit needs to grow, not limit itself.  No listing fees please!

I guess you don't get the point. Scrolling through bitmit filtered for auctions only, you see 2% of the items actually have bids. For me that means that 98% are overpriced. Auction means that the price gets determined by the bidders, not the seller. Sure, it's convenient for somebody uploading his 10,000 items inventory through the api setting a multiplier to his items of 1.5 hoping to fool people that are ready pay a 50% mark-up if only they can use their bitcoins. And yes, maybe he just doesn't care to ever un-list his shit cause it doesn't cost him anything to have his crap listed but it costs the buyers time and the servers space and traffic.

Tosaki has to find a balance so he attracts sellers and buyers alike. Apart from being offline, bitmit currently has more sellers than buyers. That's stupid. Imagine 2 shops per capita. Yes, you are a seller and I'm advocating to hurt the sellers in order to get the buyers interested. What does a supermarket do when it doesn't sell a single glass of peanut butter? It lowers the price long term or it sells of the rest at half the price to never refill. Tosaki keeps it in store well beyond the best before date. Sure, his display space is cheaper than in the supermarket but it has a cost, too. This cost has to be reflected in some way. Maybe listing should cost 0.001Ƀ per week. It might well be that this already would solve the problem. And if you still complain, sorry I stick with this side of the story cause if paying 1.3ct. per week per item that you try to sell, you are not seriously trying to sell but you are waiting to find an idiot that buys one of your millions of items.

[HeavySteel]

Yes, imposing fees for listing would discourage alot of first timers and general long-time sellers like myself as well.  Bitmit is still in its infancy and needs any new interest it can get -- i.e. volume, volume, volume.  Plus, some sellers will likely just pass the extra cost to the buyers, further discouraging the use of the site. 

I like the suggestion for paying for additional and extra advertising/promotion or to charge extra to upload more than, for example, 3 photos of the item.  These items can be prioritized higher for search results or showcased within a category.  I've seen a similar site do this quite successfully.  Bitcoin is still unknown to the mainstream public and extra standard fees would be a Bitmit killer.

What I like about Bitmit:
- Relative anonymity.
- Fair costs.
- The escrow system.
- Willingness to listen to issues and suggestions for improvements.
- Seller ratings.
- Built up an element of trust for bitcoin users.
- It's the only one such site out there for the bitcoin community.

[SgtSpike]

I completely disagree with the idea of introducing fees to limit listings.  Bitmit needs MORE people to list on it, not fewer.  I understand that with time as the only cost to list an auction, spamming can be rather prevalent, but it is not a terrible problem right now.  But there are filters to search for and sort plenty well enough to get rid of any spam you might not want to see!  On the other hand, fees would virtually kill the site from lack of listings.  I'd much rather see a couple thousand listings with some spammy ones thrown in here and there (as it is now) than a couple dozen listens without any spam.

Bitmit needs to grow, not limit itself.  No listing fees please!

I guess you don't get the point. Scrolling through bitmit filtered for auctions only, you see 2% of the items actually have bids. For me that means that 98% are overpriced. Auction means that the price gets determined by the bidders, not the seller. Sure, it's convenient for somebody uploading his 10,000 items inventory through the api setting a multiplier to his items of 1.5 hoping to fool people that are ready pay a 50% mark-up if only they can use their bitcoins. And yes, maybe he just doesn't care to ever un-list his shit cause it doesn't cost him anything to have his crap listed but it costs the buyers time and the servers space and traffic.

Tosaki has to find a balance so he attracts sellers and buyers alike. Apart from being offline, bitmit currently has more sellers than buyers. That's stupid. Imagine 2 shops per capita. Yes, you are a seller and I'm advocating to hurt the sellers in order to get the buyers interested. What does a supermarket do when it doesn't sell a single glass of peanut butter? It lowers the price long term or it sells of the rest at half the price to never refill. Tosaki keeps it in store well beyond the best before date. Sure, his display space is cheaper than in the supermarket but it has a cost, too. This cost has to be reflected in some way. Maybe listing should cost 0.001Ƀ per week. It might well be that this already would solve the problem. And if you still complain, sorry I stick with this side of the story cause if paying 1.3ct. per week per item that you try to sell, you are not seriously trying to sell but you are waiting to find an idiot that buys one of your millions of items.

I understand your point of view, I just don't entirely agree.  Seeing 98% of auctions without bids could just as easily mean there's not enough people browsing the site.  More people will browse the site if there are more listings to browse.  It's also not an entirely accurate figure, as some of those could have bids before they end.

What if I am a buyer looking for an item, currently "overpriced" on bitmit, but available to buy with Bitcoin?  I want to buy this item with Bitcoin, and am willing to pay a premium to do so.  Does that make me a fool?  I'd rather like having people uploading their 10,000 items inventory automatically.  It would give me, as a buyer, more options, even if a lot of them ARE overpriced.  I'd rather see five results when I search for a particular item instead of zero.

A decent compromise might be a system whereby a seller could opt to pay a small fee upon listing, and this would get him premium listings in SOME views on the site.  Not all, because it annoys me when I am looking through autotrader and the like and I can't do a simple sort by price without it still being grouped by fee levels.  But perhaps in an "auctions ending soon" view, and other default sorts, it would put the paid listings at the top, as those are more likely to not be "overpriced".  Additionally, more particular users of the site such as yourself could opt to ONLY show paid listings as a user preference.

[giszmo]

@HeavySteel: I did not suggest to make bitmit more expensive but to use the revenue model to give an incentive for faster turn-over. Sure, in the end, always the customer pays. That's only logic.

If Tosaki's target is to have the average item on stock for about one year, he could model the fee such that instead of charging 2% of the sales price, he charges 1% of the initial price per item per year of listing and 1% at sales. This way somebody selling quickly or selling well above the initial price would save money and people that have their value weighted average item listed for more than one year selling at exactly the initial price would pay more. Setting the initial price at practically zero would reduce the fee to 1%, so maybe the equilibrium would be more on the 0.5% 1.5% side but it is all doable without charging more fees in total.



@SgtSpike: Optional listing fee with a way to sort by listing fee paid would be nice but I'm afraid it wouldn't work as people would get the reasoning behind the fee wrong as I wouldn't see that as a way to actually make these auctions more expensive. How do you sell that to the shoppers that the one auction pais .1Ƀ per year of listing + 1% of whatever you pay him and the other pays 2% of what you pay. Call them A and B? Red and Blue? Guess this option has a marketing problem.

[SgtSpike]

@HeavySteel: I did not suggest to make bitmit more expensive but to use the revenue model to give an incentive for faster turn-over. Sure, in the end, always the customer pays. That's only logic.

If Tosaki's target is to have the average item on stock for about one year, he could model the fee such that instead of charging 2% of the sales price, he charges 1% of the initial price per item per year of listing and 1% at sales. This way somebody selling quickly or selling well above the initial price would save money and people that have their value weighted average item listed for more than one year selling at exactly the initial price would pay more. Setting the initial price at practically zero would reduce the fee to 1%, so maybe the equilibrium would be more on the 0.5% 1.5% side but it is all doable without charging more fees in total.



@SgtSpike: Optional listing fee with a way to sort by listing fee paid would be nice but I'm afraid it wouldn't work as people would get the reasoning behind the fee wrong as I wouldn't see that as a way to actually make these auctions more expensive. How do you sell that to the shoppers that the one auction pais .1Ƀ per year of listing + 1% of whatever you pay him and the other pays 2% of what you pay. Call them A and B? Red and Blue? Guess this option has a marketing problem.

Call it featured listings.  Or paid listings.  Or premium listings.  Something along those lines should work nicely, as people are used to those words being used for higher-paid listings.

[giszmo]

@HeavySteel: I did not suggest to make bitmit more expensive but to use the revenue model to give an incentive for faster turn-over. Sure, in the end, always the customer pays. That's only logic.

If Tosaki's target is to have the average item on stock for about one year, he could model the fee such that instead of charging 2% of the sales price, he charges 1% of the initial price per item per year of listing and 1% at sales. This way somebody selling quickly or selling well above the initial price would save money and people that have their value weighted average item listed for more than one year selling at exactly the initial price would pay more. Setting the initial price at practically zero would reduce the fee to 1%, so maybe the equilibrium would be more on the 0.5% 1.5% side but it is all doable without charging more fees in total.



@SgtSpike: Optional listing fee with a way to sort by listing fee paid would be nice but I'm afraid it wouldn't work as people would get the reasoning behind the fee wrong as I wouldn't see that as a way to actually make these auctions more expensive. How do you sell that to the shoppers that the one auction pais .1Ƀ per year of listing + 1% of whatever you pay him and the other pays 2% of what you pay. Call them A and B? Red and Blue? Guess this option has a marketing problem.

Call it featured listings.  Or paid listings.  Or premium listings.  Something along those lines should work nicely, as people are used to those words being used for higher-paid listings.

Yeah, optional featured listing would be fine, but to make it clear again that I don't want the shop to pay extra to get featrued, here is an example:
Imagine a shop that has a listing of 1000 physical bitcoin wallets, selling 10 per day. He who has an interesting product would pay as in the example above 1% of initial (= final price) per month per listing + 1% per sale. Selling his 1000 physical wallets at 3Ƀ each within 100 days would result in 1%*3Ƀ*3months + 1%*3Ƀ*1000 = 30.09Ƀ as opposed to 2%*3Ƀ*1000 = 60Ƀ.

[SgtSpike]

@HeavySteel: I did not suggest to make bitmit more expensive but to use the revenue model to give an incentive for faster turn-over. Sure, in the end, always the customer pays. That's only logic.

If Tosaki's target is to have the average item on stock for about one year, he could model the fee such that instead of charging 2% of the sales price, he charges 1% of the initial price per item per year of listing and 1% at sales. This way somebody selling quickly or selling well above the initial price would save money and people that have their value weighted average item listed for more than one year selling at exactly the initial price would pay more. Setting the initial price at practically zero would reduce the fee to 1%, so maybe the equilibrium would be more on the 0.5% 1.5% side but it is all doable without charging more fees in total.



@SgtSpike: Optional listing fee with a way to sort by listing fee paid would be nice but I'm afraid it wouldn't work as people would get the reasoning behind the fee wrong as I wouldn't see that as a way to actually make these auctions more expensive. How do you sell that to the shoppers that the one auction pais .1Ƀ per year of listing + 1% of whatever you pay him and the other pays 2% of what you pay. Call them A and B? Red and Blue? Guess this option has a marketing problem.

Call it featured listings.  Or paid listings.  Or premium listings.  Something along those lines should work nicely, as people are used to those words being used for higher-paid listings.

Yeah, optional featured listing would be fine, but to make it clear again that I don't want the shop to pay extra to get featrued, here is an example:
Imagine a shop that has a listing of 1000 physical bitcoin wallets, selling 10 per day. He who has an interesting product would pay as in the example above 1% of initial (= final price) per month per listing + 1% per sale. Selling his 1000 physical wallets at 3Ƀ each within 100 days would result in 1%*3Ƀ*3months + 1%*3Ƀ*1000 = 30.09Ƀ as opposed to 2%*3Ƀ*1000 = 60Ƀ.

Interesting idea charging the final fee based on how long the item has been up... again, he'd run into problems where people relist items by canceling the original auction and remaking it, but if that issue can be circumvented (perhaps with a craigslist-style similarity detection of some sort), I think that would make for a nice solution on both counts.

[giszmo]

@HeavySteel: I did not suggest to make bitmit more expensive but to use the revenue model to give an incentive for faster turn-over. Sure, in the end, always the customer pays. That's only logic.

If Tosaki's target is to have the average item on stock for about one year, he could model the fee such that instead of charging 2% of the sales price, he charges 1% of the initial price per item per year of listing and 1% at sales. This way somebody selling quickly or selling well above the initial price would save money and people that have their value weighted average item listed for more than one year selling at exactly the initial price would pay more. Setting the initial price at practically zero would reduce the fee to 1%, so maybe the equilibrium would be more on the 0.5% 1.5% side but it is all doable without charging more fees in total.



@SgtSpike: Optional listing fee with a way to sort by listing fee paid would be nice but I'm afraid it wouldn't work as people would get the reasoning behind the fee wrong as I wouldn't see that as a way to actually make these auctions more expensive. How do you sell that to the shoppers that the one auction pais .1Ƀ per year of listing + 1% of whatever you pay him and the other pays 2% of what you pay. Call them A and B? Red and Blue? Guess this option has a marketing problem.

Call it featured listings.  Or paid listings.  Or premium listings.  Something along those lines should work nicely, as people are used to those words being used for higher-paid listings.

Yeah, optional featured listing would be fine, but to make it clear again that I don't want the shop to pay extra to get featrued, here is an example:
Imagine a shop that has a listing of 1000 physical bitcoin wallets, selling 10 per day. He who has an interesting product would pay as in the example above 1% of initial (= final price) per month per listing + 1% per sale. Selling his 1000 physical wallets at 3Ƀ each within 100 days would result in 1%*3Ƀ*3months + 1%*3Ƀ*1000 = 30.09Ƀ as opposed to 2%*3Ƀ*1000 = 60Ƀ.

Interesting idea charging the final fee based on how long the item has been up... again, he'd run into problems where people relist items by canceling the original auction and remaking it, but if that issue can be circumvented (perhaps with a craigslist-style similarity detection of some sort), I think that would make for a nice solution on both counts.

Actually no. My idea is to charge even when you  cancel … in advance. You would configure the listing to be re-listed 2 months, so you would have to pay 1% for the listing now, 1% next month and get de-listed afterwards. It would be trivial for 1-item-listings to pay back 0.734 months if you sell early or to charge daily. The free listings for beginners (10? 100? per account) would still apply if this model is not optional.

(1%? 0.00001%? These numbers are completely made up the way it feels reasonable to me but please don't get excited about "overcharging" and "ripping off" people. It's just examples.)

[SgtSpike]

@HeavySteel: I did not suggest to make bitmit more expensive but to use the revenue model to give an incentive for faster turn-over. Sure, in the end, always the customer pays. That's only logic.

If Tosaki's target is to have the average item on stock for about one year, he could model the fee such that instead of charging 2% of the sales price, he charges 1% of the initial price per item per year of listing and 1% at sales. This way somebody selling quickly or selling well above the initial price would save money and people that have their value weighted average item listed for more than one year selling at exactly the initial price would pay more. Setting the initial price at practically zero would reduce the fee to 1%, so maybe the equilibrium would be more on the 0.5% 1.5% side but it is all doable without charging more fees in total.



@SgtSpike: Optional listing fee with a way to sort by listing fee paid would be nice but I'm afraid it wouldn't work as people would get the reasoning behind the fee wrong as I wouldn't see that as a way to actually make these auctions more expensive. How do you sell that to the shoppers that the one auction pais .1Ƀ per year of listing + 1% of whatever you pay him and the other pays 2% of what you pay. Call them A and B? Red and Blue? Guess this option has a marketing problem.

Call it featured listings.  Or paid listings.  Or premium listings.  Something along those lines should work nicely, as people are used to those words being used for higher-paid listings.

Yeah, optional featured listing would be fine, but to make it clear again that I don't want the shop to pay extra to get featrued, here is an example:
Imagine a shop that has a listing of 1000 physical bitcoin wallets, selling 10 per day. He who has an interesting product would pay as in the example above 1% of initial (= final price) per month per listing + 1% per sale. Selling his 1000 physical wallets at 3Ƀ each within 100 days would result in 1%*3Ƀ*3months + 1%*3Ƀ*1000 = 30.09Ƀ as opposed to 2%*3Ƀ*1000 = 60Ƀ.

Interesting idea charging the final fee based on how long the item has been up... again, he'd run into problems where people relist items by canceling the original auction and remaking it, but if that issue can be circumvented (perhaps with a craigslist-style similarity detection of some sort), I think that would make for a nice solution on both counts.

Actually no. My idea is to charge even when you  cancel … in advance. You would configure the listing to be re-listed 2 months, so you would have to pay 1% for the listing now, 1% next month and get de-listed afterwards. It would be trivial for 1-item-listings to pay back 0.734 months if you sell early or to charge daily. The free listings for beginners (10? 100? per account) would still apply if this model is not optional.

(1%? 0.00001%? These numbers are completely made up the way it feels reasonable to me but please don't get excited about "overcharging" and "ripping off" people. It's just examples.)

Ah, you had me going there... I thought we actually agreed on something!

I don't think it's a bad fee model to follow, but I still don't think now is the right time to introduce fees.

[Isokivi]

Please be informed that we have an urgent Power Maintenance in our Datacenter Network.

I read all your posts. The next days I will fix the mentioned bugs and make the Bitmit listings more cleaner by canceling the items from sellers who were not on the site for about 4 weeks.

I really hate doing this but it needs to be said:
bitmit.net is hosted by piradius.net, there site is fine. I dont think there is any power maintenance going on atm.