This is very interesting. What do you plan to change to bring more customers to the site?
Does the company take a fee when items are sold? How much time is going to be put into maintaining this site?
The site was very active until we stopped making feature updates. This was due to our making sure bitcoincashout.com and other assets were properly transitioned to Bitcoin Solutions LLC. We believe that customers will come to the site as they see improvements and as the Bitcoin economy grows. We also plan to advertise and offer seller incentives to get items listed.
If full funding is reached 40+ hours a week will be set aside for maintaining the site. This includes development, customer service and logistical planning for future growth. If full funding is not reached you can expect approximately 20 hours a week to maintain the site which will increase as the site grows.
Currently all fees are suspended until October 31,2011. After that date BiddingPond.com offers "free listings" followed by À la carte premium listing options. These options currently include:
- Bold Listings
- Highlighted Listings
- Featured Auctions (rotated front page advertisement)
- Picture Upload
- (Other premium ideas to come)
We plan to offer free listings indefinitely if we determine it is sustainable in the long run. If it is determined it can not be supported we will move to a pay per listing model (negligible $.10/listing) and still retain premium features. We do not believe in other auction site payment models and our aim is to provide a successful auction site that does not abuse its sellers and buyers.
We have an escrow system that will be released this month. The escrow system will include a 4% fee for transactions. This escrow system is completely optional following our philosophy of an À la carte model and feeling that buyers and sellers should pick their own risk tolerance. We would like to also state that the escrow system is not only for our auction product but is general enough to be used for any Bitcoin transaction.
Further business income will come from sponsored advertising with ability to sponsor categories, sub categories, and the main page.
Future plans after we build a large set of Bitcoin features is to expand into other Digital and real currency options (HD Money, Liberty Reserve, Paypal, etc.).
We hope this answers some of your questions. We would like to go into more detail but revealing everything we are working on would give some competitors ideas we have not yet implemented and cause us to lose the "first to market" advantage.