New Rc Auction Site

[r6stu]

There were talks recently on here about TC Auctions.

I have now started to develop and auction site that can be used for the buying and selling of RC items.

What categories would people be interested in seeing?

Maybe Chris would be interested in an "official" / "un official" "TC Auction" based site??

I would propose no end fees for users, just maybe a 10p insertion fee for listings, to cover server fees what are your views?

I have installed the system and am now working at the design and layout of the site, I would imagine it could go live mid may, seeing as im away next week on hols!

Feedback?

[dready]

Bring it on

Great Idea

Where do i sign up?

No more Epay woes.

Just make sure that it is open to TC Subscribers only, so we sift out the Scammers.

Maybee a Feedback system to show Good Transactions would be helpfull.

A simple spreadsheet design of who's traded with who. and a short comment?

I like smileys as much as i like this idea.

Neil

[r6stu]

Bring it on

Great Idea

Where do i sign up?

No more Epay woes.

Just make sure that it is open to TC Subscribers only, so we sift out the Scammers.

Maybee a Feedback system to show Good Transactions would be helpfull.

A simple spreadsheet design of who's traded with who. and a short comment?

I like smileys as much as i like this idea.

Neil

Feedback system is already in place, and there are options for different levels of member types

[dready]

as for catagories i suppose you'd have to cover pretty much everything.

So either go down the idividual makes, or simply catagorise everything into types

Cars

Trucks

Boats

Helicopters

Planes

Electrics/Radio

Anything else

If you list every different make could it make searching hard? (thats one of my ebay gripes, you can never find anything!)

I'm no genius when it comes to setting something like this up, but i'm guessing start small and elaborate when it takes off.

Neil

[mikeapowski]

I think this is a superb idea, but...

Dready, you mention making it a TC subscribers only feature? You raise a valid point about sifting out scammers, i completely agree. But what about those of who are genuine members of TC but don't subscribe?

Would this simply be another perk for those that subscribe and something for non-subscribing members to miss out on? To be honest when i think about it, i do have a poor excuse for not subscribing, i'm a student. I use what little money i have to buy tools etc when i can, so perhaps i can start my NIB tiger I some time this decade Being new to RC i use TC for advice and tips, so far people have been nothing but helpful, but since i don't have any complete RC kits, i don't see the point in subscribing at this moment in time. Surely you could use the purposed feedback system to eliminate scammers?

Also, would there be some sort of payment system like paypal for example, or would it be down to TC members to sort it out between themselves?

Mike

[pagedm_f350]

Sounds like a pretty good idea, here's my input, not taking sides to subscribed or unsubscribed users:

as for catagories i suppose you'd have to cover pretty much everything.

So either go down the idividual makes, or simply catagorise everything into types

Cars

Trucks

Boats

Helicopters

Planes

Electrics/Radio

Anything else

My first reaction would be limit what could be listed to name brand or clearly legitimate stuff, e.g. Tamiya, Kyosho, etc, etc and anything not gets rejected, we all know how unbelievably annoying chinese junk keyword spamming is on ebay= cheep dodgy set of wheels - like Tamiya, Kyosho, HPI, etc, etc but this also opens another point, what about some of the chinese made hard bodies and other things that are of good value to members, particularly scale builders?

And who would moderate all this? I guess it could become a full time job surprisingly quick?

I think this is a superb idea, but...

Dready, you mention making it a TC subscribers only feature? You raise a valid point about sifting out scammers, i completely agree. But what about those of who are genuine members of TC but don't subscribe?

Would this simply be another perk for those that subscribe and something for non-subscribing members to miss out on? To be honest when i think about it, i do have a poor excuse for not subscribing, i'm a student. I use what little money i have to buy tools etc when i can, so perhaps i can start my NIB tiger I some time this decade Being new to RC i use TC for advice and tips, so far people have been nothing but helpful, but since i don't have any complete RC kits, i don't see the point in subscribing at this moment in time. Surely you could use the purposed feedback system to eliminate scammers?

Also, would there be some sort of payment system like paypal for example, or would it be down to TC members to sort it out between themselves?

Mike

Thats a valid point too, I guess limiting it to Tamiyaclub members, subscribed or unsubscribed is some sort of control, but imagine the workload caused by people registering just to make a quick dollar and never really having any input to the core purpose of Tamiyaclub

[Gruntfuggly]

Count me in.

As far as restricting it to subscribers, surely the easiest thing is to make it optional, like the current traderoom.

Good luck with this!

[dready]

Count me in.

As far as restricting it to subscribers, surely the easiest thing is to make it optional, like the current traderoom.

Good luck with this!

Hadn't thought of that, good plan :-)

So you would say whether the auction was open to everyone or just subscribers.

You might limit your audience but you would get some peace of mind.

[Mad Ax]

Sounds like a good idea

Just something to be careful of - have you considered legal implications? You may want to consult the advice of a solicitor for any special disclaimers or warnings as the last thing you want is an auction going bad, and you being held responsible! Ebay get around this by being a big company with big coffers and able to insure themselves against this kind of problem. Some simple wording on the Terms of Use would be helpful.

You would also need to make sure you've got the time to moderate it regularly, or get a team of people to help, to make sure that whatever is being sold via your servers is legal in the place the server is located - the world of internet law is a dodgy one and the server owner can get in trouble if a scammer signs up to sell illegal material.

Another thing you might consider is how you might be held responsible if the server goes down. Obviously nobody can guarantee that a server will remain active 24-7, but the more money you spend, the more reliable your site will be. If you go with a cheaper provider you could have regular server failures. This could affect people's auctions. I know for a fact I would be pretty miffed if Ebay went off-line 30 minutes before the end of an auction - I'd be very angry if the "last price before crash" was deemed as the sale price; I'd also be annoyed if I'd reached a good price and then all bids were disqualified and I had to re-list. Again, Ebay gets around this problem by being a very big company and having a huge set of servers that can keep up with the enormous load that it experiences every day. As an ex-admin of several forums, I know how hard it can be to keep a popular site functioning, especially when it's started as a tiny project for a handful of people and expands to have over 5,000 members.

These are some things to bear in mind. If you're serious and want to invest the time and money to building a good platform then I really hope you succeed and I'll definately be checking out your new site to see what bargains I can grab

Best of luck

[r6stu]

The development version is hosted on a subdomain on one of my servers I rent. ITs a paid server and I host a few sites on them and so far the downtime as only been mins in the last 3 years.

As for limiting members I can choose to verify them, but that would mean a copy of the database from chris. otherwise it would be open to anyone to register. I spose the address could be limited to subscribers only, via pm?

In terms of team, it is just me at the moment, but if anyone would like to help out with the site testing and other site parts, then please pm me and I will send you the info.

[blakeatron]

I am no computer whizz, but i would like to help in anyway i can!

I would love an RC auction site!

[richytanimal]

I like the sound of this. Keep us posted on the progress.

Cheers.

Rich.

[r6stu]

Ok, just looking at the software and the version, i have is ok, but can do what i would like 100% I need to upgrade to the next version, which is $200 (100)

If anyone would like to donate towards this cost then I am willing to alow them free listings on the site for 6 weeks!

even If I get a total of $30 worth of donations I can put the rest in, I am also going to be purchasing a template for the site as well at a cost of $35

Total outlay is going to be around $275, and I dont forsee me making any money out of this in the 1st year. any fees will just cover server costs!

[netsmithUK]

Hi All,

No offence and this isn't meant to be a "Netsmith says No, so drop it" post but I just thought I'd add my experience in on this. I understand that the whole thread is because people mean well and want to improve things in the RC community. It is help/advice/opinion.

I toyed with the idea of adding auctions to Tc many times over the years, even had a half hearted go a while back (any one remember my countdown auctions - the codes still there) but in the end I always came back to the simple fact, that people that auction generally do so because they want the most money for an object (yes some people will say they do because they don't know what something is worth but thats basically the same thing, they want the market value for the item) The only way you get the market value is by having the maximum exposure. TC subscribers is no where near, TC members is closer but still no where near the exposure ebay gets. Also ebays feedback system flawed as it is, is also probably still the best you can find again because of the number of users (how many of us only by RC items? Surely feedback for these other items is just as valid) Then they also have the back up behind it, again some would say it was inefficient - but that makes me think if its inefficient with their massive workforce behind it what chance does a one man band site have? Sure starting off with subscribers might seem like a good idea but if it were successful then all it would mean is we'd get more scammers subscribing (infact if you were seen to be a small operation you'd be a soft target for them) Polcing would be a nightmare in no time. If any auction site does not improve exposure or security you have to ask if its worth it. Sure their fee's might be higher but if you are getting 10,000 more times exposure you are proably going to recoup that in your selling price. We'd all still have ebay accounts because we'd all still check it for new stuff.

It would be easy for me to automatically pull a list of every subscribers ebay auctions automatically and display them on the club, it would also be easy to make it so only subscribers could see those auctions on TC (although I'm not sure what the value of that is, a none subscribers money is as good as a subscribers) The one thing I'm not sure of is wether I could make it so only subscribers (if required) could bid (It might be possible there is a huge programmers interface I could plug into the club) I'm already quite someway to making posting new auctions to ebay automatic from the auction traderoom, complete with description and pictures. It was on the back burner because I wasn't sure there would be any demand.

From TC's point of view I could not exchange information with a third party site or in any way endorse it until I was sure that it was better/more secure than existing alternatives, so it would need to be established and have a proven track record. I also could not just hand out list of subscribers to any site that asked for it (its part of our data protection policy) So if you want to make it "subscriber only" you'd have to ask people to resubscribe for your site independantly.

Ebay has a lot of faults, but thats a large part of what makes me wary of trying to do anything on TC, if they are dedicated to it with a large team and still can't get it right what chance do you really have with one man and a $200 bit of software?

Sorry to pour cold water on the idea - I'm not saying it wouldn't work just giving you my opinion. Take it or leave it - i don't pass the forum very often so you'll get no more arguments from me.

BTW the threads had its initial splash of exposure - so I'll get one of the mods to move it to 'related websites' section in the morning. (sorry but we get loads of request to publicise new websites so thats why we have that section, just to stop the general board being taken over with website adverts)

Cheers

Chris

[scoobyryan]

i think an r/c auction site would be great.

i am not a tamiya club subscriber so i think it would be nice if it was open to non subscribers aswell.