Name of your website?Reggae Auction
Your name?
Renaud grandin
Your Location (city, etc)
paris
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Reaggae Auction is an online auction website for Rare Reggae Vinyl records, Collectors, CD's...the jamaican music from the 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's, styles like rocksteady, ska, dub, roots, digital reggae, rub a dub, dancehall and dubplates. You can buy items or sell your items for free.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
Reaggae Auction was launched and made for one main purpose, give the ability to all reggae lovers and collectors to have a site where they can put their records for auction for FREE. Ebay is a big giant asking ridiculous fees for the service it provides, that are constantly raising, they are in an economical strategy as a lot of others that can be resume by "everytime more", We are not, On Reggae Auction you will always be able to sell an item for free, unless it sells and we take only 3%! This, we hope will make the site the biggest online reggae record market for collectors and recent releases.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
Well Reggae Auction Was the first Website we launched!
How did you decide on a name for your website?
Well it was quite simple, it was an auction system for reggae music, so it just popped really quickly! ReggaeAuction
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
The Real Similar offering is ebay...Our goal was to make a better system with crucial options for reggae record sellers and to offer a service as we would expect for ourselves. So We have a user support that is really answering and helping you quickly, A development team always improving the system with new features to make sure everyone gets the best service possible, Simple categories that make it quick and sensefull for users, to find what they want, The secured ebay* feedback importer (for ebay users) makes it easy to gain trust and confidence from your buyers even with 0 feedback - this one was a great thing to come up with!, An ULTRA low fee system with NO CREDIT CARD NEEDED for registration and after..., all you need is a paypal* account to pay your site fees if any. Paypal* is directly implemented on Reggae Auction* but you can choose 9 other payment methods if you want. From what ever country you're listing your items, you get the exact same exposure as others!! not like on Ebay...
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
Our Goal is to keep it for income but with the fee system we set up, it is not really about money as with only 3% of any sold record...knowing the majority goes between 10 and 20, only to pay for what it cost to maintain we would need around 500 records sold per week...we are far from that:)
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
What success? for now we have enjoyed working and developping the site, but the success will maybe for later, who knows?
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
Woawww...unlimited? well first we could set up our own killer server to increase overall speed of processes, but mainly, exept a lot of little improvements here and there, nothing will really change deeply!
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Well yeah sure, we are prepared...the only thing we will need: a big dedicated server!
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Hehe, a lot of bugs we didn't saw during testing phase, like some functions not working as expected, or sometimes creating a database mess, creating and maintening an auction system is not easy, it takes a lot of time, but when it's done and 99% bug free, you can breathe...
What has been your biggest challenge?
Our biggest challenge is right now, we are creating a function into the system that is total crazyness, the way it work has never been seen on any auction system around, but i think it's very specific to the reggae collectors community! can't tell you more, it's not finished yet...
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
The best promotion for Reggae Auction is good records been listed for sale on the site, for the community nothing else really matters, and hopefully some rare gems are up and i know (from my seller friend) some killer tunes are coming...
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
really i just thought more people will quickly see their interest in the long run...
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
It's been One year now that Reggae Auction is up and running, we have 3 years Budget and that's why we offered one year to our members and future members. Really The plan is to keep it up definitly, but if the income to maintain it isn't sufficient we will think of different options to control the costs.
Your Last Words?
I really think the seller community needs to unite in one safe and respectfull place with honest fees, as they all already know they need one, It is clearly Reggae Auction goal and i hope that in this shark business world, the honest people trying to bring the best value for the bucks will make a difference!
What is your website address?
Reggae Auction
