We need to be able to provide potential investors a vision. Once we have a general consensus on the vision then the business plan can be done. I really think its the best way to go.
Lets face facts, revenue projections for a project would be shaky at best. Its going to be hard to calculate investment values with any accuracy. We really need to know whats it going to cost to start up and run for the first 12 months - at least those numbers will be pretty concrete.
The potential return for investors on this is pretty much zero. Think of your investment as a membership fee - it seems to be vision that Brett has. At the end of the day we are not asking people to invests thousands of dollars each.
Well yeah...... the main idea behind the site was to give people another choice and to have a site that is run by people that actually care about the hobby and not just their bottom line. Of course I would like the site to make a profit & generate some revenue and I definitely think it can, but who is to know when that will come!?
the original idea of a new, cheaper, all-round better auction site &
the idea of an Australian COMC
What if we have both???
Really, when you think about it, COMC is comparable to the 'Buy it Now' component of eBay, right? The only difference is that eBay is greedy and makes you relist every so many days so they get a new listing fee each time.
What if we offer 2 selling methods. Auction and Straight Sale??? We can have the seller holding and maintaining their own cards for the Auctions, but if they just want to list bulk cards at a fixed price, the can opt for Straight Selling which is like COMC where they would send us their cards for holding until they sell.
I know, I know.... who wants to scan 1 Billion cards??? Easy - Seller sends in their own scan with their cards. We are producing a cheaper alternative to the current systems and the only way to achieve 'cheaper' is to reduce costs!!
Hmmmmmm....... well I my vision of the site was to offer "Buy It Now" listings like ebay does as well as auctions. Whether these are permanent listings or run for a certain period of time can be discussed.
Now as for including a COMC style thing into the site... sure, the users could scan their cards but I really don't think this decreases the work load much if any; if you're scanning cards most good scanners will scan them and "cut them up" so you can scan like 9 at a time. If the users are providing the scan...... how do they provide it!? Then you will need to provide an interface for them on the site to upload it, then you have to also have a system to connect that upload with the new card you're going to add to the site..... TBH it's probably WORSE if the user provided the scan.
I don't think we should bite off more then we can chew to start off with; maybe down the track we could make a COMC like site and then we will have a good place to start promoting it off of.
Hey I've been watching this thread a lot and am enjoying all the talks about where this is heading. I am really liking the ideas and am was just wondering if this goes ahead could I be an Investor/Owner rather than a support? Cheers
Pretty much...... but my times may be changing to "standardish" times over the next couple weeks as I'm almost set to launch my web development business locally.
So anyway...... yeah, we should start getting together to have some formal chats about this...... late notice, but if anyone is available Sunday morning for a chat LMK and see who's around.
No official time..... if you're around in the morning just reply to this thread and we'll see how many are here I guess. If people would prefer to get the whole group together for a chat instead, then that's cool too..... but that is usually difficult.
In the mean time..... I've been thinking of possibly setting up a private forum or some such where we could discuss things in a more private matter; like topics we may want to discuss when we are not in chat and so we have our discussions stored on the forum.
Did you think something like this would be a good idea or do you have any other similar ideas!?