Show HN: Sell your stuff for more money with less hassle

https://www.bidkat.com

by bunkat • 14 years ago

33 56 14 years ago

bunkat22• 14 years ago

Hi, we created BidKat to make selling things locally a little bit easier. Works alongside existing sites and services instead of being a replacement to take advantage of existing network effects. Would love to get any feedback on the site and am happy to answer any questions.

binarysolo• 14 years ago

Wait, so I know people on Craigslist aren't linking an eBay Buy-It-Now w/ offer listings to sell their stuff -- I'm assuming CL gets unhappy about that.

What's the differentiator between BidKat and that option?

bunkat22• 14 years ago

First of all, we work with any service (Twitter, Facebook, even bulletin boards) so it isn't just CL - though admittedly it works well there. BidKat just provides additional information about an auction like many people already add to the CL listings.

We don't do payment processing between parties and people don't pay us to create an auction. We also are not a competing listing service, we offer no ability to search our auctions - they have to be advertised separately. Hopefully these things differentiate us enough.

joshlegs• 14 years ago

>so it isn't just CL, though admittedly it works well there.

Just out of curiosity, have you tested this or is this just supposition? It was the first thought that came to mind when I read about bidkat (posting it on CL, that is). I would just wonder whether people viewing the posts on CL actually click to go to another site?

username3• 14 years ago

https://www.bidkat.com/i/9uDYAKBS

briandear2• 14 years ago

So it's kind of like ebay with a way more awesome UI?

bunkat22• 14 years ago

And free :) Main difference is that we are not a primary listing service, we're complementary to existing listing services. Advertise your item where ever you normally do, just include a link to your BidKat auction and we'll handle offer negotiations and tracking for you automatically.

briandear2• 14 years ago

Seriously cool. Nice work. I'm working on a Twitter/Craigslist/StackOverflow-like service for moms and I will certainly see how we could use your service.

kefs2• 14 years ago

How are you dealing with the new CL exclusive license when posting there?

Clicking "Continue" confirms that craigslist is the exclusive licensee of this content, with the exclusive right to enforce copyrights against anyone copying, republishing, distributing or preparing derivative works without its consent.

bunkat22• 14 years ago

People create their auction with us first then advertise their auctions where they want to. We also never obtain any CL listing in any way, shape, or form. If they want to go after their users for copying auction descriptions, they are more than welcome to.

rprasad• 14 years ago

That's not how copyright law works. The user owns the copyright, and merely grants Craiglist a license to it.

Note that a legal argument could have been made that based on the new (but since abandoned) Craiglist TOS, by posting to Craiglist a user was revoking all prior grants of license to other sites, i.e., including any licenses granted to BidKat (by virtue of using BidKat). In such case, you would have been the one in CL's crosshairs, not the user.

JoshTriplett• 14 years ago

> How are you dealing with the new CL exclusive license when posting there?

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/good-news-craigslist-d...

bunkat22• 14 years ago

That's good news!

kefs2• 14 years ago

Wow! Great news!

Axsuul• 14 years ago

Cool nice design. This is sorta like Gumroad except you're competing against other people! Can I ask what font you used for your logo?

bunkat22• 14 years ago

Thanks! The logo is in HTGelateria.

thisAintNoGame3• 14 years ago

Out of curiosity, how much thought have you put into the auction format? Is there an underlying theoretical model in use?

Allowing me to buy information on the auction is an interesting choice but I'm not convinced it will actually lead to better revenue for the seller.

bunkat22• 14 years ago

We're definitely testing out some new things. We never want to show any ads on our sites (we hate ads) so we're looking for alternatives. Based on some user research, paying a little bit for the potential of saving a lot by making better offers was at least interesting to buyers.

thisAintNoGame3• 14 years ago

Hmmm...

I have no proof for what I'm about to say but here it is anyway.

The only information that bidders will practically care about is the current top bid. So the information that you are charging people for is the same thing that most auctions already display (that is, the current top bid). As the seller, I want people to see this top bid because it will raise my revenue. Charging people to see the top bid will result in less people seeing the top bid and lower revenue overall. It makes money for the site but less money for the seller. Then I might want to go to another site and make more money for my item.

You might want to look into using a 2nd price auction (like eBay) does. There's a nice book called Auction Theory by Vijay Krishna that might be of interest to you guys.

creativename• 14 years ago

I'll agree with everyone on the design - it's beautiful, and I really love the mascot. I just wanted to add that the video really helped clear things up for me on how it integrates with other services.

It might just be me, but I didn't immediately grasp from the content on the landing page that I should be using other services like craigslist, et al. to share it. Even without sound, the video cleared that confusion up very quickly.

bunkat22• 14 years ago

Thanks for the feedback. We'll figure out how to clean up the copy a little bit. Glad that the video cleared things up!

latortuga• 14 years ago

Cool site I re-listed a CL item I have up at the moment, we'll see how it works! The video was super great and to the point and made it clear that it is intended to synergize with other services.

mamatta• 14 years ago

i love the service, but when someone made me an offer and chose his contact details to be just his First_Name, I have no way of responding to him. You should change it so email is required on a bid

bunkat22• 14 years ago

Sorry about that! We didn't require email because a lot of people use name and phone number instead. We'll fix the label on the input box.

huhtenberg• 14 years ago

Woah... If I were CL, I would be busy copying this right now. It is such a natural extension to what they already have. Offer this as an option at $1 a pop and they will be making money off the majority of their users.

lewisflude4• 14 years ago

Made a listing. It looks great: https://www.bidkat.com/i/UJXTjUfd

ahmadss2• 14 years ago

I used your listing as a "test case" to enter in various dollar amounts to see how the interaction design and app works. The $1,500 bid that was inputted/accepted was mine after I started bidding at $1,000. The first price counter price I received was $1,880, then $1,6XX, then it finally accepted my $1,500.

Did you have any control on how readily/quickly/aggressively you discount your price when creating a new auction listing?

bunkat22• 14 years ago

We do have a sample auction to test these things out instead of using peoples real auctions :) Currently BidKat is tweaked to be fair to the buyer while attempting to optimize the results for the seller. Our algorithm is configurable though and we may provide settings to sellers in the future.

lewisflude4• 14 years ago

I got all excited when I got a bid! Nope, I selected a range. In this case $1200 - $2000. Also, I should note that I'm from London, England. Changing the $ to a £ would be a pretty nice feature.

Interesting regarding the counter prices, also nice touch that BidKat suggest you give a "donation" when you get a bid offer. I think if I had a real bid offer, I'd be inclined to donate $5 or so!

rexreed4• 14 years ago

Great idea! Sorry if I'm dense or missed this, but how does Bidkat make money? I was assuming a transaction fee on top of the closed bid, but it seems that it's totally free to the buyer and seller? Maybe I missed the FAQ?

rexreed4• 14 years ago

The Terms (https://www.bidkat.com/terms) seem to imply that "upgrades" will be sold at some point, but it's not clear what upgrades.

"By selecting an Upgrade you agree to pay BunKat LLC the fees indicated for that service. Payments will be charged on a pre-pay basis at the time of purchase for an Upgrade and will cover the use of that service as indicated. Upgrade fees are not refundable."

Also, I'm confused -- where does the payment transaction happen? Does it happen inside Bidkat or is that part left up to the transacting parties?

bunkat22• 14 years ago

Currently the only upgrade is bid activity when making offers on an auction. Payment between parties is left up to the parties. Since we're focused on local sales, this is generally face to face when the item exchanges hands.

bunkat22• 14 years ago

There are currently two ways: people can purchase bid activity about the item they are bidding on (this is free for the sample, but costs for other auctions), and people can donate after they receive an offer. If we can't make it work like that, we'll try other methods (though never with ads).

rexreed4• 14 years ago

Ok, makes sense, but worth putting it up there so that it's clear how you will (and more importantly, won't) be making money so people can feel safe running their bids through you.

Also, make it clear when and how the payment part of the transaction happens -- that's not clear either.

zheng• 14 years ago

Sounds like what I would have done if I was trying to overthrow CL (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4324452). Great idea, I look forward to using Bidkat in the future.

ahmadss2• 14 years ago

This is a great concept. Here's a use case for you that you might want to figure out -- how do you deal with people who are just "bid trolling"? Any way to make a bid binding?

aeturnum2• 14 years ago

In your example, I tried bidding $20,000 (I really love the couch) and you asked me to come down to $1500. Is there a reason you're steering buyers towards a minimum price?

bunkat22• 14 years ago

Prevents people from making ridiculous offers, especially by mistake. We want buyers to come away from BidKat feeling just as good as the seller.

aeturnum2• 14 years ago

I think that's a good impulse, but completely refusing the bid seems misguided.

The current system seems like it favors predatory buyers over fair ones. If the seller undervalues their item, trying to start at a fair price will get rejected. I don't know how you selected the [500 1500] envelope on price, but it seems pretty narrow. Couldn't you just warn the bidder that their bid is way above the seller's expectations (or current maximum offer) and then confirm they want to pay that much?

lewisflude4• 14 years ago

Is there any chance you can add in a way to remove obviously fake bids? If too many users abuse the system it could ruin the functionality of the virtual cat that haggles with potential buyers.

For instance, someone might do a real bid of $500 (let's call them bidder A), but if there's a fake bid of $2000, would the virtual cat try and make bidder A bid higher than $2000?

fatbat• 14 years ago

Hah I had the same question too.

A suggestion is for a short text field for comments, to differentiate tie-breakers for the seller maybe?

savories• 14 years ago

Cool.

My immediate thought when filling out a new listing...

You should auto complete. For anything and everything (that you can.)

I type in Xbox.. a list drops down with xbox 360, complete with Photo, MSRP, estimated value (based on other data points ie craigslist or ebay) and a pre filled out description.

Well, sort of like what ebay does I guess. I hate filling out forms. Everyone else does too.

bunkat22• 14 years ago

v2? :)

Show HN: Sell your stuff for more money with less hassle

Related Stories