What will online sales be like in the very near future? Perhaps this article gives us a clue:
Yardsellr Is Turning Facebook Into eBay 2.0
eBay is a sprawling market today, but when it was founded in 1995, it was based on a simple idea: Collectors love to gather to trade their wares and hobnob about their passions. The Internet, Pierre Omidyar knew, was a way to get those folks out of parking lot flea markets and into a place where they could more efficiently find buyers and sellers, and chat about the items that delighted them.Yardsellr, which launched earlier this year, is built on the same premise: the Internet can be a way to efficiently connect collectors. But Yardsellr’s big idea is that standalone websites—like eBay—are passé. The best way to connect buyers and sellers today, says founder Danny Leffel, is within their Facebook News Feeds.
One unique thing is the fee structure: there’s only a fee when something is sold and here’s how that works…
Sellers pay nothing to list or sell on Yardsellr. Sellers specify the purchase price of their items and can add shipping cost in a separate line. Sellers can also opt to invest in additional marketing (through Twitter, facebook, google, etc) but that’s 100% optional. Yardsellr adds a small fee to the buyer’s final cost which is displayed at checkout.
They’re thinking that social networking will save advertising costs and increase leverage to buy and satisfaction in the transaction. The question is will this cause enough volume to keep the investors happy? It’s certainly an interesting concept. What will they do when big stores or even medium sized stores want to sell there?
There’s no affiliate plan I can see – probably because affiliate plans are meant to drive traffic and the idea is that (for now) social media does that. Keep an eye on it. It could be a great way to sell things.
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