Wednesday, December 31, 2008

iList Online Market Emphasizes Accountability

As we've all watched eBay, the king of online auctions, fall from its perch above the rest of the online markets, new auction sites hope to gain from eBay's loss. Frustrated members are searching for sites with a friendlier user experience, such as iList. 

Credibility and transparency are the core principles of iList. Unlike eBay and Craigslist, where you only have one source of info about the person you're dealing with, iList requires each member to link to a major social networking sites.

Social networks facilitate the transactions on ilist, which means your personal reputation and information is available for praise or scrutiny. Once you post an item and set your price, its sent to Facebook's livefeed, for everyone to see.

To rank member credibility, iList employs a unique feedback system, known as Karma- which encourages you to spread the word about your friend's product via your social networks. Some other activities also allow you to earn karma, such as

    * Promoting your friends listings on Facebook
    * Inviting friends to iList
    * Completing your profileNone of my friends had any active listings, so I will invite some of them to join.

Your Karma ranking elevates when you post friend's items on Facebook or Myspace,when you invite friends to iList, and when you optimize your profile.  Evidently, those are just the first elements factored into karma.A note on the site reads:

We are currently discovering all the ways users can earn Karma. Thanks in advance for your flexibility with us as we adjust any imbalances in the Karma system. If you have ideas for Karma, let us know.

Other appealing aspects of iList include a platform to upload videos showcasing your listed item. There's also a company blog with updates on new features and tools, customer testimonials and company developers commentary on the iList's plans.

Personally, I think Karma's format was designed with better foresight than eBay's feedback scoring system. I placed my first item on facebook, because it's designed to increase your odds of selling the item.

By Matt O'Hern at 12:25 PM | Comments (3)

(3) Thoughts on iList Online Market Emphasizes Accountability

Nice article. If you get a chance, you might take a look at one of the most promising upstarts called Bonanzle. Wonderful friendly interface with live chat, free to list until sold, low final value fees and lots of other bells and whistles.

Comments by Sandy Courtney : Thursday, January 01, 2009 at 11:01 AM

Thanks for the kind words Matt and for making us your last post in '08. Happy new year!

Comments by brad : Friday, January 02, 2009 at 11:25 AM

This is a very good time to woo sellers off of ebay. One idea might be to also link up with auctionbytes and their site where sellers list all the places they sell in. It's very nice, and a very supportive site for ALL sellers everywhere.

I would think, the more expanded your network is, the better you will do in attracting customers, that being said, if you had a picture hosting service that had the nice template formats such as the ones on Seller Sourcebook, or Auctiva, you would really be able to grab the sellers! Remember, most of them are familiar with using these products to list, so if you could integrate them in your site for sellers to use, you would be ahead of any of the other sites.

Just my 2 cents (us nurses are problem solvers at times!)LOL!

Comments by o.c.d.collectibles : Sunday, January 18, 2009 at 02:16 PM

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