Sell your records in Vinyl Collective's store

[skumbucket]

it certainly would make the co-operative more co-operative.

there's a couple of things i might list, but i'm not sure it would be worth it if i'm only looking to get rid of 2-5 albums.

[alertthemute]

Waiving the commission to give store credit sold me on it! Now just open this up to other countries

[Guest Admin]

So then what? Do you tell them to fuck off or do you let them sell one of your records for an inflated price?

I would not tell them to fuck off because they can sell anything they want at any price they want. It would be bad of me to allow them to sell reords they got from other distros/mailorders and not ours.

[Guest Admin]

friends, we got a ton of interested parties and I am even more excited about this project. I am working out the kinks and will keep you all posted. Hope to have it all figured out by next week.

[kirbypuckett]

I like the idea of it, but 15% seems a bit steep, as others have mentioned.

How much do eBay and Paypal take off for your basic transaction?

[andyfuckingthomas]

This is a great idea and i'd be into it. I'm not to crazy about the 15% but i'd definitely be into it!

I don't think 15% is as much of a cut as you guys think it is. If you sell a used record for $12, which would be still pretty high, that's only about $1.80 that we take. I think that sounds pretty reasonable to me.

[mrc]

is the 15% pre or post shipping charges?

[wannabepunktony]

I'd be up to be a guinea pig Virgil and since I have a lot to sell, I might make a better subject than most.

I realize that 15% is pretty much status quo out there for sites like Amazon, Half.com, etc. but remember that those two sites ALSO give a shipping credit to cover shipping costs (or they did last time I used them). If VC isn't going to do that, then I think 15% is definitely too big of a cut.

[Guest Admin]

I'd be up to be a guinea pig Virgil and since I have a lot to sell, I might make a better subject than most.

I realize that 15% is pretty much status quo out there for sites like Amazon, Half.com, etc. but remember that those two sites ALSO give a shipping credit to cover shipping costs (or they did last time I used them). If VC isn't going to do that, then I think 15% is definitely too big of a cut.

we will give a shipping credit, too. And depending on how you do things on ebay, there is a listing fee, a final value fee, and a fee associated with paypal. I think that 15 percent is fair and there will be work involved on our side of things and we need to make sure our people are taken care of.

[kirbypuckett]

According to this:

http://www.rolbe.com/ebay.htm

If I were to put up a record for Buy-It-Now at $15.00 w/ $3.00 shipping eBay would take $2.15 and PayPal would take $0.82. My profit would be $12.03.

That's about 20% of the sale going to PayPal and eBay.

If you sold a record for $50 on eBay w/ the same shipping it comes out to a $41.81 profit. eBay gets about 16% here.

[impact]

maybe as a reference,

sellers should post their ebay id, or a list of people they traded/sold to

[flood]

dudes with labels who sell records are always waiting at least a month to get paid... virgil just happens to be one of the rare distributors (besides interpunk + cdbaby) that actually bothers to pay their suppliers on time (or at all in some cases)

[mediocore]

Excited for the potential. eBay is a royal pain in the ass.

[melikecheese]

This is a huge huge undertaking. If VC is going to be the merchant of record on these sales they will be responsible for the action of the sellers so they need to be very careful who is selling. A few crappy sellers and a chargeback or 2 can make a mess of your merchant account fees.

How will VC confirm the customer received the record in order to pay the seller?

How will VC setup these bi-monthly payments to the sellers?

How will they handle chargebacks or refunds / unhappy customers?

Who would a unhappy customer contact? VC or attempt to contact the seller? How do they resolve a problem an issue a refund?

How will they facilitate communication between the seller and a potential buyer with questions?

This is US only sellers but how will they really be sure of this. Will sellers need an account, who will verify that information?

Can you financial backend handle the commissions and payments to multiple sellers? After a few years some sellers will undoubtedly not receive their money for some reason, are you ready for the nightmare that is unclaimed funds law?

yikes, tread with caution.

[wannabepunktony]

The more I think about this, the more I'm beginning to feel like this will turn into another eBay competitor that fails to go anywhere (stoosi.com, wigix.com, etc.).

You have to think about what you get for the price. Its no secret that eBay's last price hike was, and still is, taking far too much money from the sellers. But the amount of exposure each listing can and does get as well as the ease of use and reputation as being generally safe to use are unrivaled.

Amazon.com and Half.com both are nowhere near as powerful as eBay, but again, they offer sellers the oppurtunity to sell items under a well-known moniker that attracts millions upon millions of visitors. Their selling pages are simple yet professional and their back end is acceptable (lol).

There are quite a few new "eBay killers" out there that have failed to make any real dent in eBay's armor that I have attempted to use. Wigix.com is my favorite when it comes to cost of use as they charge very reasonable fees and anything sold under $10 (I think that's right) doesn't incur a fee at all. Stoosi.com opened up their doors to start letting users sell items on their site for a lower than standard fee (I'm on my Sidekick or I'd get the real numbers) and sounds a lot like what VC would be doing. Both sites have failed to be usable in my experience because their back end lacks both power and creative openings as well as neither bring in anything more than a fraction of the buyers that eBay/Amazon/Half do daily.

Now if VC gets into it, what will be offered to justify a 15% cut when compared to competitors? Using the existing VC store as a starting off point, the look of the listing I would assume would be usable at best (and no more than on par with what VC uses themselves, which is effective but not much else) and the back end would be a reflection of that. (Unless there's a big visual overhaul coming.) For all the traffic Vinyl Collective brings in for itself, how much of that will actually give the user-sold items a look, let alone a buy? I don't know the answer to that other than it won't be as much as the real store gets and nothing compared to the competition. What kind of customer service will this have? Will there be people there to reply to questions, comments, issues in a timely manner? And the list goes on and on.

I'm not trying to be over critical of this idea, but I like it and I want it to work, but at the same time I feel like creating a poor man's used marketplace (again, assuming it won't rival the VC store) yet charging a fee similar to the real deal is not only counterproductive to the thought that "eBay is currently too expensive for sellers" but is overselling VC's reach and ability to host a successful user-based marketplace.

I have no problem giving a cut of my sales to someone else for providing me with the ability to do so, but I find it hard to get excited to pay the standard for significantly less. It just seems like the idea is to make money to cover the immediate fees of transactions and the cost to create this marketplace at the same time to create profitability as soon as possible instead of covering the transaction costs plus making a smaller, yet more likely to be sustainable in the long run, profit is a doomed plan.

[Guest Admin]

thanks again for everyone's ideas/concerns/questions. We are working out all the details now and will launch soon.

as I have stated before, if you have had success and are happy with Ebay/Amazon/whoever, keep doing what you do.

We are really excited at some of the prospects we will be able to offer, but in no way will we be able to out ebay ebay. Someone called it VCbay which is pretty cool in my book.

One thing I think right off the bat that we will be able to offer is posting someone's for sale records on our blog and getting lots of attention in that manner. Compared to ebay's fragmented search and inability to focus on all of your records, could be really helpful. and we are not trying to sell everything, our emphasis will be on vinyl.

We won't really know til we get it going, but I am excited. If you are not into it, don't sell through us. not a big deal.