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.
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?
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.
>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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I appreciate the feedback and can give you some of our thinking. Our target audience of buyers generally has no access at all to this type of information today for local transactions. You just send an email into the void and cross your fingers. Providing this information at all is an improvement to this audience.
For the seller, showing the top bid means that people will bid no more than they have to. Witholding the top bid (except to those who are interested) means buyers offer what they think the item is worth - which could be a lot more than top bid + 1$.
It's definitely a different approach and may fail miserably. At which point we'll pivot and come up with a better one :)
Witholding the top bid (except to those who are interested) means buyers offer what they think the item is worth - which could be a lot more than top bid + 1$.
That's not true. I'm not going to put down what I believe the item is worth because then you will charge me that amount. If I believe this item is worth 100 and you charge me 100, I get a final value of 0. What I actually do is bid under my value and its not exactly clear what I do.
If you sell the item to the guy who bids the highest but charge him the second highest bid (known as the 2nd price auction), then people are incentivized to bid what they think the item is worth.
I'm not claiming that you should necessarily do any particular auction format because the theoretical results are for scenarios that typically dont hold in practice. However, I do recommend reading a bit about auction theory to help guide your decisions.
Who is that? It looks to me like it's local-transaction buyers. This could definitely make craigslist selling a lot better.
It wasn't clear to me what you did -- obviously I read "auction" and I think eBay. But you're much different. The marketing copy didn't explain it well to me, but the video gave me that 'ah-hah! Nice!' moment.
We've found that most users won't read much on a home page so we kept the copy short and focused on the video. We'll try and clean it up, but getting people to watch the video seems to be working out the best.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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!
We have the ability to select different monetary units for auctions and will be implementing that feature shortly. What do you mean that you didn't really get a bid?
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?
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?
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.
Can sellers specify "methods of payment accepted"? I can definitely see myself selling some things to local people (couches, for example), but other things I would place on forums where there are aficionados for those products (baseball cards, for example), and where I'd rather receive payment via some online method (Paypal, etc.) and not be constrained by locality.
Not sure if that's your vision or not, but I would totally use Bidkat for collectibles as well as local sales. Of course, in your value proposition you state your purpose is to make local sales a lot easier, so I guess that's not the current vision.
We definitely want to see BidKat used in these scenarios. Currently payment is completely between the seller and buyer. Feel free to add information to your description on what payment options are available.
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).
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.
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?
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?
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?
We can definitely look into this if we see this happening a lot. This should be a relative edge case and only kicks in for more expensive items, but you are right that there are other options.
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?
No, BidKat doesn't work like that. He works with each buyer individually to come up with the price that they find fair and that meets the sellers price requirements.
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.
58 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 49.5 ms ] threadWhat's the differentiator between BidKat and that option?
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.
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?
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.
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.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/good-news-craigslist-d...
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.
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.
For the seller, showing the top bid means that people will bid no more than they have to. Witholding the top bid (except to those who are interested) means buyers offer what they think the item is worth - which could be a lot more than top bid + 1$.
It's definitely a different approach and may fail miserably. At which point we'll pivot and come up with a better one :)
That's not true. I'm not going to put down what I believe the item is worth because then you will charge me that amount. If I believe this item is worth 100 and you charge me 100, I get a final value of 0. What I actually do is bid under my value and its not exactly clear what I do.
If you sell the item to the guy who bids the highest but charge him the second highest bid (known as the 2nd price auction), then people are incentivized to bid what they think the item is worth.
I'm not claiming that you should necessarily do any particular auction format because the theoretical results are for scenarios that typically dont hold in practice. However, I do recommend reading a bit about auction theory to help guide your decisions.
Good luck!
Who is that? It looks to me like it's local-transaction buyers. This could definitely make craigslist selling a lot better.
It wasn't clear to me what you did -- obviously I read "auction" and I think eBay. But you're much different. The marketing copy didn't explain it well to me, but the video gave me that 'ah-hah! Nice!' moment.
Take that for what it's worth. GL!
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.
Did you have any control on how readily/quickly/aggressively you discount your price when creating a new auction listing?
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!
"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?
Not sure if that's your vision or not, but I would totally use Bidkat for collectibles as well as local sales. Of course, in your value proposition you state your purpose is to make local sales a lot easier, so I guess that's not the current vision.
Also, make it clear when and how the payment part of the transaction happens -- that's not clear either.
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?
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?
A suggestion is for a short text field for comments, to differentiate tie-breakers for the seller maybe?
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.