We are all nostalgic by nature as online sellers. Whether you sell for hobby, for extra money, or for your primary income, you remember the days on now-dead marketplaces you loved.
I started a small marketplace for some friends from these old marketplaces, such as Wagglepop and Plunderhere, and named it Quest for Bids. Check it out sometime: http://www.questforbids.com
My first installment is Wagglepop. View the site at the internet archive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20061108032948/http://www.wagglepop.com/bin/Auction
While Wagglepop looks very amateurish by today's marketplace standards, in 2006 when it launched it was the "cat's pyjamas" of eBay alternatives. $10 a month got you a store, hundreds of shoppers a week, and for me, over 500 sales in a year. There was a vibrant community, active members, great seller tools, over 900 stores at it's peak, and the admin was far ahead of the Google game that businesses now cannot survive without.
The store layouts were almost identical to the eBay store layouts at the time. It was a phenomenal clone of eBay built on a stable platform, with all the potential of being the next big thing.
View my store shortly before I left the site:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070610120726/http://www.wagglepop.com/stores/movieaddict?
In fact, this was directly on my "About Me" page on Wagglepop from 2006:
"While I don't plan to talk about why I left that other site this year, I will tell you why I am at Wagglepop. Wagglepop has a community unlike any other I have found online. The sellers, while competitive, are always looking to help other sellers. In other communities, it's every seller for themself, but at Wagglepop, it is every seller for the greater good of the site and community!"
So, why am I talking about a site I left in 2007? Because, it holds a special place in my heart. It was my first non-eBay selling experience, and it was a damn good one. It was so good, that I fell in love with smaller marketplaces and really never returned to eBay or Amazon again except for a few items here and there.
Sadly, the owner of the site began raising store fees dramatically, as high as $60 for the lowest tier store, when sellers flocked to sites like Bonanza and eCrater, and the site dwindled to a slow, expensive death in 2009. It was,however, probably my favorite "St Elsewhere" site, and always holds that nostalgic feeling in my heart when I submit a new item for sale on a marketplace.
What was your favorite "St Elsewhere" site?
My favorite St. Elsewhere was Bonanza. But it was the community that made it my favorite St. Elsewhere, not the site since it was really dead in sales. Too bad because the site owners really have set the site up with a lot of perks for sellers to list. In the end, it was the glitches that killed it for me. Now the site is a ghost town via the Community link. I will ALWAYS remember how much the Bonanza community taught me as a seller.
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