Did Trademe get too greedy?

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#1051032 22-May-2014 13:00

Wheedle is so successful Adam can't even spell it correctly!

There is no hope of any other auction site ever succeeding in the auction space. Real estate however could be very different, especially when you have a great URL and the site is effectively owned by every real estate company in the country.

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#1051064 22-May-2014 13:56

Received a press release from Wheedle today. Yes...

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#1051072 22-May-2014 14:11

ajobbins: The reality is that even with the new pricing model, Trade Me is still incredibly cheap for agents compared to legacy forms of advertising like newspapers.

Agents had it good for a long time, paying as low as $1 per listing at one point in the past. And as always, they were billing their clients for the service, and usually at much more than their own cost.

$159 is NOTHING in the advertising budget, especially for the exposure Trade Me gets it - especially when you can pass the cost onto the vendor.

What would $159 get you in a newspaper? Probably not even a 4x3 ad in the local paper for 1 day.

Phew, thank goodness you don't run trademe or our fees would triple overnight based on your justifications :)

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#1051105 22-May-2014 14:35

surfisup1000:
ajobbins: The reality is that even with the new pricing model, Trade Me is still incredibly cheap for agents compared to legacy forms of advertising like newspapers.

Agents had it good for a long time, paying as low as $1 per listing at one point in the past. And as always, they were billing their clients for the service, and usually at much more than their own cost.

$159 is NOTHING in the advertising budget, especially for the exposure Trade Me gets it - especially when you can pass the cost onto the vendor.

What would $159 get you in a newspaper? Probably not even a 4x3 ad in the local paper for 1 day.

Phew, thank goodness you don't run trademe or our fees would triple overnight based on your justifications :)

What do real estate agencies earn per sale, possible 20k on an average house, and the advertising and listing fees are additional on top of that where they are also making a healthy margin. So the new fee structure, they are still getting a good deal, for the reach they are getting It is about the number of people viewing the listing anyway. I was looking at the stats for one property being sold by an agent who had it listed on their own agency website, on trademe, and also on the NZ property website, and I recall about 90 %of the website viewers were from tradesme. And the traffic levels would have gone up since the old fee structure was introduced. The price of online services do and will go up over time. Look at other services like spotify who have just raised their prices.

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#1051112 22-May-2014 14:44

sbiddle: Wheedle is so successful Adam can't even spell it correctly!

There is no hope of any other auction site ever succeeding in the auction space. Real estate however could be very different, especially when you have a great URL and the site is effectively owned by every real estate company in the country.

Not unless trademe somehow alienated the majority of its customers and I can't see that happening.

Whatifthespacekeyhadneverbeeninvented?

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#1051117 22-May-2014 14:56

ajobbins:
Geektastic: I think that the answer is yes.

Charging to list AND a success fee seems like two bites at the cherry to me.

Then Weedle is for you. Good luck with that

I'm not sure why the fact that I think double charging is bad is cause for me to use something else (I certainly would use Ebay if they ever opened here).

If I pay to list, what value have TM added by the time I sell that justifies another fee?

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#1051124 22-May-2014 15:05

This Real estate/ Trademe spat is annoying as we are just embarking on the process of selling our home.

Here is a crazy notion, lets give peace a chance.

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#1051130 22-May-2014 15:12

i think trademe does have reason for concern, not from wheedle ... from facebook

the BST groups on facebook have exploded in the last 6 months. the largest, hustle live, has over 70k members. dozens of items listed every hour. and hustle is one of many

imo trademe has greatly underestimated social integration. tagging friends on items you think they might like for example

plus of course the benefits of no fees and no restrictions on the items listed has helped made fb groups popular

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#1051131 22-May-2014 15:14

If a "friend" starts tagging me on Facebook for items I might like, it's removed. Enough of invitations to play stupid games.

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#1051136 22-May-2014 15:29

greenbone: i think trademe does have reason for concern, not from wheedle ... from facebook

the BST groups on facebook have exploded in the last 6 months. the largest, hustle live, has over 70k members. dozens of items listed every hour. and hustle is one of many

imo trademe has greatly underestimated social integration. tagging friends on items you think they might like for example

plus of course the benefits of no fees and no restrictions on the items listed has helped made fb groups popular

+1 My wife is a stay home Mum and uses this avenue to sell/give-away kids items that she used to list through TM. She sells faster now and more of her items using Facebook and does not have fees to pay...unlimited photos or videos for advertising and she sells completely local to her local Facebook groups.

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#1051137 22-May-2014 15:32

Geektastic: I'm not sure why the fact that I think double charging is bad is cause for me to use something else (I certainly would use Ebay if they ever opened here).

If I pay to list, what value have TM added by the time I sell that justifies another fee?

You're paying for different things. Success fees don't apply to 'classified' listings, right? So for a house, you pay one fee up front and that's it.

For general items, you can list for free as always, or you can pay extra for features like a featured photo etc. The value you receive for that is higher exposure and a statistical likelihood of a higher price and more likely sale.

A success fee on the other hand represents the value you got from the marketplace itself. You pay a percentage cost because, Trade Me believes (and most likely rightly) that you selling your item through their website likely resulted in a higher sale price than other mediums - and as always, you're paying them a commission for the use of their platform.

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#1051172 22-May-2014 16:06

freitasm: If a "friend" starts tagging me on Facebook for items I might like, it's removed. Enough of invitations to play stupid games.

Grrrr that's a pet hate of mine. My lady's FB news-feed is full of so much gaming rubbish I can't see how she finds postings from friends. I just disable notifications from each game as invitations arrive, but there is a new one every week.

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mattwnz

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#1051173 22-May-2014 16:07

ajobbins:
Geektastic: I'm not sure why the fact that I think double charging is bad is cause for me to use something else (I certainly would use Ebay if they ever opened here).

If I pay to list, what value have TM added by the time I sell that justifies another fee?

You're paying for different things. Success fees don't apply to 'classified' listings, right? So for a house, you pay one fee up front and that's it.

For general items, you can list for free as always, or you can pay extra for features like a featured photo etc. The value you receive for that is higher exposure and a statistical likelihood of a higher price and more likely sale.

A success fee on the other hand represents the value you got from the marketplace itself. You pay a percentage cost because, Trade Me believes (and most likely rightly) that you selling your item through their website likely resulted in a higher sale price than other mediums - and as always, you're paying them a commission for the use of their platform.

The only thing I really dislike about tradesmen that stops me using it, is that most listings don't show thumbnail images when you do a search as sellers don't want to pay for this each time, especially if they are listing lots of lower value items,. So this frustrates the buyer, so the buyer isn't getting the best experience. However if you use their mobile app, it will display them, so their website is a degraded experience over their app. You can also get a Firefox extension to display them. Trademes biggest threat apart from social media sites, is ebay, as if they enter the market, I expect them to be pretty ruthless in their marketing and pricing and eBay is a top global brand.

SteveON

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#1051183 22-May-2014 16:10

Yes. Yes they did.

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#1051184 22-May-2014 16:13

mattwnz: Trademes biggest threat apart from social media sites, is ebay, as if they enter the market, I expect them to be pretty ruthless in their marketing and pricing and eBay is a top global brand.

EBay came to NZ and failed miserably years ago.

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