[78-L] Venerable Music Auction Site Moving to Beta Testing

[Malcolm - Venerable Music]

Hey Everyone -

 

After 2+ years (and buckets of money) working on this, I am finally moving to the beta testing stage of the Venerable Music auction site!

 

http://www.vmauctions.com

Beginning on Monday, June 8th, we will be opening up the auction site fully for beta testing. During this testing session, we will run 2-3 weekly mock auction cycles (to simulate the monthly cycle that will begin in July) in which we encourage all of our future customers (both buyers & sellers) to participate in. Again, this will be a beta testing Mock auction & no real money or records will be changing hands. This will be the final test for the admin to make sure that we have all of the possible issues identified & corrected before the real auctions live.

During these cycles we will still be making minor changes to the system, so as a buyer or a seller - if you think something could be done better, please let us know! There is a forum link at the upper right corner of your screen that will take you to a monitored message board where you can ask questions & make suggestions.

The cycle beginning on Monday the 8th, will be populated with just a few items that I have set up beforehand. As a buyer, you may submit a few bids, add items to your bidsheet & test payment options. This auction will be set to close on June 13th, with the next Mock auction cycle beginning on the 14th. If you sign up as a seller during this first period, you can test the system for listing your own Mock records for sale. Then on the following period other buyers will be able to bid on them & when it closes we'll have a better understanding on how the overall system is working.

 

As of now, we are scheduled to begin listing real items for auction (and store sales) in July, with the first real auction running all of August. Records listed for sale in August will go live in the September auction and so on.

 

If this is your first time hearing about it - in brief, about 2 years ago, being fed up with Eboy (as if it wasn't bad enough then), I started developing a multi seller/buyer platform that takes some of the best things about traditional mail auctions and melds them with an Ebay type online site.

 

The biggest difference between the Venerable Music auction site & Eboy, is that we take responsibility for all of our sellers & buyers. Our goal is not to replace Eboy, but to reduce it to the garage sale it is (I will always be looking for those poorly described gems!). We aim to attract the long-time collectors & dealers who know how to pack & grade records & will stand behind that! On top of that, if the seller will not stand by this guarantee, then we will & they will no longer be selling on the site. The same tough standard will be applied to non-paying bidders!

 

Unlike Ebay, auctions will run on a monthly cycle all opening & closing at the same time. Everything a seller lists on auction in July - will actually be live in August, while everything listed in August will be live in September and so on.

 

Some other benefits -

 

All sellers will also have access to their own set sale store which has no monthly fee. There is a listing fee - but rather than recurring monthly if an item doesn't sell, it is only a one time fee per listing as long as you wish to keep it available. This is great for listing common records as you will not keep racking up a bill for keeping the item available. None of these records are common when you're actually looking for them!

 

All items will be sortable by label/number, artist etc. So instead of trying to find the records hidden on Eboy, a buyer can sort the entire auction as he likes & go through the static listings once a month. As a seller, you will not have to worry about your perspective high bidder being on vacation the week you decided to list your valuable records.

 

Sniping & Proxy Bidding will be eliminated, while bidding wars will be encouraged! Personally, I believe Eboy is trying to please the wrong party! The sellers are the ones that pay the fees to keep them in business, yet it seems they take every advantage to try to leverage you into lowering the price making a better deal for the buyers. I suppose the thinking is that the sellers will have to go where the buyers are; because that is the only place they will receive any attention. As a buyer, honestly, I'll bid wherever the record is & if the sellers are selling the records I want on one site rather than the other - that's where I'll be putting my money. One way this is done is by falling back to the ye old method of buyers paying the price that they bid. You bid the maximum amount you are willing to pay for a record & if it is the highest, that is what you'll pay. I believe that this truly makes everyone happy in the end.

 

This first phase is incorporating the major functionality for running the auction and the store, but as we fine tune all of these details we will be adding many more features - and yes, you can pay with a check!

 

If you have not yet signed up for the newsletter, please do so from the home page.

More details will follow.

 

You can also sign up for a buyer or seller account at any time, but seller accounts will not be activated until Monday. Plus, if you sign up for a buyer account, please refrain from placing any mock bids on items till then as I will still be testing over the weekend!

 

I really hope this does well for everyone in the future. I am really proud of how nice it is turning out!

 

Thanks,

Malcolm


Venerable Music - http://www.venerablemusic.com/
Venerable Radio - http://www.venerablemusic.com/samphpweb/index.html
On Myspace - http://www.myspace.com/venerablemusic