trekgate502 Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 I am thinking once I start to list things that I will list on Brickpicker things I want to move. Generally when I am moving stuff I am best price or close and get the best match box on eBay. I am hoping that I can price things on Brickpicker at or slightly below my eBay price and then I can recoup the 7-8% difference between eBay and brick classified pricing. If I can save that large of a percentage and help out brickpicker I am all for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
waddamon Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 I don't know waddamon. It sure sounds like you're saying, "I'm happy to get in on the ground floor, and I plan to profit nicely once the site is better known, but I won't be sacrificing 5 cents to help it grow." But maybe I'm misunderstanding? Not at all. The site will not be more well known because someone charges less all the time. The site will be more well known because it moves to the top of search engines when people search for "lego". Selling to brickpickers as the primary group of buyers is not my objective nor should it be for anyone else. It should be the millions of people who have never been to brickpicker before. I sold some minifigs because some one wanted them at the price. Were they cheaper somewhere else, who knows. To the buyer it made sense and that is all that matters. Stupid pricing which can be found, here, amazon and ebay will never yield results. That is not what I am talking about here. I will also say as a brickpicker member I would rather buy from this site since I know the group of sellers. I have higher expectations of the quality of the seller, which so far has proven true on my purchase through the site. A sale is made by a price a seller is willing to accept and the price a buyer is willing to pay, plain and simple. Price discovery, which will not happen until the site goes fully live. I check it everyday as a buyer to see if there is anything I need or am interested in. The more people list up the better. In the early days of ebay I may piles of money on the top of the market selling, as well as bought cheap and not so cheap many times selling and buying comics. Once the site goes fully live to the public and listing count goes up I will monitor and update pricing. I really doubt brickpickers are going to load up on my Friends listing, even with a free poly bag thrown in. The public most likely will. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KShine Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Have the listing dates been removed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonysbricks Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 waddamon is right. It has already been established that BC has the lowest fees in the business. Those fees come with risk, not having BC back the buyer and seller in dispute. So why would you lower your prices to pass on the fee savings to the customer when you are paying for those savings with risk? This should become the first place people look for lego deals regardless of price, and should eventually fetch higher prices than other places as it should be the premier place to safely buy from sellers who know what they are doing. Lowering prices is just asking for long term failure for the sellers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
waddamon Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 A few more thoughts. Right now I see 289 sets listed. Many are the same for various sellers. Once this goes up to a few thousand and it goes live to the public we should get a better idea of price action. I am in a business in which my primary product is intellectual capital. I charge flat fees for this capital to a certain target market. This market is made up of business owners, professionals, doctors, or wealthy folks. They pay fees based on the expected value or received value from my service. I don't care to be the cheapest and it does not matter. They pay for the value added. I do not market my self to folks who do not meet those titles. They usually cannot see the value because they do not have the problems or issues, thus they won't pay the fees. Taking that logic to this site, if one wants to market to brickpickers then your primary attractant is beating the lowest available price, knowing your buyer is primarily motivated by price. How many times in the the daily deals do people send money to shady listings or companies simply due to price. Even when it seems the fraud is known. Those are not my target audience and I do not need to price to attract that market. If I wanted to get out of some holdings quick, then I would do that if Brickpickers see it as a wholesale opportunity. Again, that is not my objective. I want the non-brickpicker consumer. That is why this is in BETA. It is not in front of the primary audience, I am also glad it is not associated directly with brickpicker. I actually think I am going to have my brickpicker badge removed but add my ebay badge. Anyway those are my opinions and thoughts. Everyone is different and buys/invests for their own reasons, as well as sells for their own reasons. I always stand by free market price discovery, it works out in the end. Santa workshop is a perfect example, I would never pay 156.00 for a 70 retail brand new set, nor would any brickpicker. the public did though and that is all that matters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DadsAFOL Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 This should become the first place people look for lego deals regardless of price, and should eventually fetch higher prices than other places as it should be the premier place to safely buy from sellers who know what they are doing. That sounds great, but how many BP members actually meet that criteria? 20? 50? I'm not anti-noob since we all start somewhere, but just about every day we see a post from a new member that asks "what does SaH mean?" or says "I just bought a 7965 for $100 and can't wait to make $500 profit" :exaggeration: Those sellers most definitely don't yet know what they are doing. I expect that once fully live, the BC demographics will be much more like BrickLink. <5% serious sellers, and 95% hobbyists. I'm 100% supportive of BC, but I think we should temper expectations. A year from now there will be a 100-page BP thread about bad experiences on BC, questionable practices, "too good to be true" deals, etc. edit: funny, I tried to type S @ **** without the spaces and it autocorrects is to "LEGO Shop at Home". I never knew we had autocorrect in this forum. Guess I'm still a bit noob myself Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
waddamon Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 That sounds great, but how many BP members actually meet that criteria? 20? 50? I'm not anti-noob since we all start somewhere, but just about every day we see a post from a new member that asks "what does SaH mean?" or says "I just bought a 7965 for $100 and can't wait to make $500 profit" :exaggeration: Those sellers most definitely don't yet know what they are doing. I expect that once fully live, the BC demographics will be much more like BrickLink. <5% serious sellers, and 95% hobbyists. I'm 100% supportive of BC, but I think we should temper expectations. A year from now there will be a 100-page BP thread about bad experiences on BC, questionable practices, "too good to be true" deals, etc. Let's hope not, but your probably right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JosephMali Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Regarding pricing: if you want to see low prices on items then you do it. Don't tell other people to do it. People have very different reasons for listing the price they way they do and I don't presume to know why. It is none of my business. For instance, my MF is priced at 224 plus shipping. Now I doubt it will sell this month for that, but if it does great. I am in no hurry and the price, will probably, only go up for this set. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KShine Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Regarding pricing - It isn't the sellers who price items too high that hurts the market, it's the ones who price them too low. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trekgate502 Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 I wrote the FAQs...probably 10 times over with all the different versions we had. I'll have to take a look. But on your point, the Brick Classifieds were created to give people a place to list items at a fair price, for a very low fee. It is not Amazon or eBay. If you want to charge those prices, then the Brick Classifieds might not work for you. Bricklink has worked very well, for a long time with a base of LEGO fans that charge fair prices. We will be cheaper than them, with the same if not better features, given some time to work out some issues. All we can promise is that we will work very diligently on current issues and that new features and improvements will be added with time. When the site is ready to go, we will make a huge push in advertising to let everyone know about it. But if you are the type of seller to charge double the MSRP for a set currently available at retail, then Amazon or eBay is the place for you unfortunately. I am not trying to be rude or demeaning, but that is how we view this site. Cheap commissions...fair prices... Respectfully I could absolutely care less about what people price their items at. It appears to me if your going to use Brick Classifieds someone does care. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spanky Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Registering for the site is a simple fraud prevention measure. Most retailers put you through hoops is some form regardless. In the time you spent writing your post, you could have registered 3 times. Just sayin'.,, I'm not just being a special flower here. Roughly 26% of consumers will abandon a checkout if required to register first. Eight out of ten top online retailers offer guest checkout. Most of the information you want to collect you will get automatically via the PayPal checkout process. Creating an account is a hurdle that I don't want to go through for most websites. I lurked here quite awhile before creating an account to post with, and there are websites that I've visited for over a decade and never bothered to create an account on. Your store, your rules, but at least one bricklinker didn't make a sale last night. Just sayin'... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gregpj Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 I'm not just being a special flower here.Roughly 26% of consumers will abandon a checkout if required to register first. Eight out of ten top online retailers offer guest checkout. Most of the information you want to collect you will get automatically via the PayPal checkout process. Creating an account is a hurdle that I don't want to go through for most websites. I lurked here quite awhile before creating an account to post with, and there are websites that I've visited for over a decade and never bothered to create an account on. Your store, your rules, but at least one bricklinker didn't make a sale last night. Just sayin'... I'm sure that it could be something looked at in the future, but even EBay didn't offer guest checkout for years after they launched. Releasing a platform like Brick Classifieds with every feature known to the world would simply be impossible. That article is also almost four years old. I wonder how relevant it is now? Also, one has to ask if that is across all product types? People who come to BC looking for retired sets or rare sets are probably more computer savvy and less afraid to register. If you really wanted the item, you'd probably have registered. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matt1147 Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Is anyone having problems adding product to BC today? I've tried a couple times and my product won't save/upload. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roxio Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Is anyone having problems adding product to BC today? I've tried a couple times and my product won't save/upload. I'm in UK using Chrome and it's working ok for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mack Posted January 10, 2015 Author Share Posted January 10, 2015 For those shops that are not in the USA, the currency module is now active and ready to be selected. You can set your currency in the shop area here: Let me know how this works out for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terrymc4677 Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Ok gang...I just created a store and would like to start listing a few items. I'm at the step where I have to verify my paypal info. I enter my name and paypal address exactly as they appear in my paypal account, and it keeps giving me a red error message to "please check your paypal credentials and make sure they match your paypal account exactly" on the paypal account email line. I've checked and double checked, and keep getting the same message. Anyone else have this problem when creating an account? Am I missing something? I just read through the entire thread and didn't see anything similar posted. Thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matt1147 Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 I had the same problem and had to change my name from "matt" to Matthew so it's pretty specific. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terrymc4677 Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 I had the same problem and had to change my name from "matt" to Matthew so it's pretty specific. Yeah, I'm entering it exactly as it appears in my paypal account info, but still get the message. Does your account show "matt" but it accepted "matthew" since that's your legal name? I'll try "Terrance" instead of "terry" and see what happens. What about your middle initial? My PayPal account shows it so I included it as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deadfraggle Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Jeff, You'll have to forgive me a little because I've only recently tried to start selling some of my extra sets, although I've been collecting for awhile. Do you think the Brick Picker database price is a fair starting point for setting sales prices in Brick Classifieds? I know I personally use those prices when determining the value of sets I'm purchasing on Ebay, as I probably spend as much time looking acquiring collectable sets as I do bargain hunting on new sets. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mack Posted January 10, 2015 Author Share Posted January 10, 2015 Jeff, You'll have to forgive me a little because I've only recently tried to start selling some of my extra sets, although I've been collecting for awhile. Do you think the Brick Picker database price is a fair starting point for setting sales prices in Brick Classifieds? I know I personally use those prices when determining the value of sets I'm purchasing on Ebay, as I probably spend as much time looking acquiring collectable sets as I do bargain hunting on new sets. Do I think they are fair, sure. They for the most part are the going rate. I am not going to tell people what to sell for, it's your own business. But if you are trying to get the prices that are on eBay and Amazon at this point of the game, then I really don't know what to tell you. To say you are going to leave the price as is until the site is ready is not a great game plan in my opinion. You never know who is looking at the site and looking for something. As each day goes by, the listings will start to appear in Google more and more. We will be starting to advertise and market. Why not be ready for when those eyes come to the site to do business instead of have them look and then go look somewhere else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenxxx Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Do you think the Brick Picker database price is a fair starting point for setting sales prices in Brick Classifieds? In my opinion the the database price IS "in the ballpark" and is very useful for helping you look at a particular set you may not be familiar with just to see if pricing is interesting or not. But when setting my sale prices, I feel the database numbers may lag the current market a month or two... and also don't always tell the whole story. I generally look at Amazon and see what's there. Then search the item on ebay; search "sold" listings and look at the last 5 or 10 sales (take into account shipping costs vs. free shipping), and finally look at current, unsold "Buy it Now" prices. I put all that info together and then decide where I want my pricing to be. When selling on Brick Classifieds, I'll take the additional step of taking my target price, calculating the ebay (or Amazon) "take home" value (after fees + shipping), and then calculate the BC price needed to get the same "take home" value, or maybe a few percent more. And that's where I set my price. Just my method... others here would strongly disagree. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JosephMali Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 When I calculate prices I go to Ebay to see what the item has sold for over the past month. And then I check Amazon as well. I usually don't go with the lowest price or the highest. A lot depends if the set is retired or it I am trying to flip the set. Usually I am not in much of a hurry, so that influences my decision. I would also see how prices end up on BC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
belljohn Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 I just received my first order that I placed on Jan 7. Quick shipping and great transaction. It raised a few more questions: 1. I didn't receive a notice that the item had shipped. Is there and automatic message sent? Does the seller have to write an email to indicate shipping? 2. There was tracking on the package, but I never had access to the tracking number. Same questions as above. 3. I left a positive review, but it doesn't show up on his store page. It takes a few hours to update? 4. Why is there only 14 days to leave feedback? Overall good experience. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bold-Arrow Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 I just received my first order that I placed on Jan 7. Quick shipping and great transaction. It raised a few more questions: 1. I didn't receive a notice that the item had shipped. Is there and automatic message sent? Does the seller have to write an email to indicate shipping? 2. There was tracking on the package, but I never had access to the tracking number. Same questions as above. 3. I left a positive review, but it doesn't show up on his store page. It takes a few hours to update? 4. Why is there only 14 days to leave feedback? Overall good experience. Thanks. 1. seller has to mark it as shipped then u get notified 2. They upload tracking number when they mark it shipped. 3. For now Jeff/Ed has to approve feedback before it is public 4. No idea :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brickshopper Posted January 11, 2015 Share Posted January 11, 2015 I just received my first order that I placed on Jan 7. Quick shipping and great transaction. It raised a few more questions: 1. I didn't receive a notice that the item had shipped. Is there and automatic message sent? Does the seller have to write an email to indicate shipping? 2. There was tracking on the package, but I never had access to the tracking number. Same questions as above. 3. I left a positive review, but it doesn't show up on his store page. It takes a few hours to update? 4. Why is there only 14 days to leave feedback? Overall good experience. Thanks. I think you were the customer that bought the statue of liberty from us I am glad you received it...I printed the label at the post office and when I was going to update that it had been shipped we had to add the tracking number to update the status...Because the site was still tweaking the payments now the payments have the address so we can print labels through paypal as normal and easily transfer the tracking into Brick Classifieds...I would suggest the option to mark it as shipped even without adding a tracking I did see where I could update the shipping status I do not know if or how you would be notified Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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