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New Comic Book Marketplace Now Open: ComicSwap.com

46 posts in this topic

Is the engine programmed to display something if there's no results?

 

The only thing I could get to work was your "example" on their (Hellboy).

 

Also, who are the "handful of dealers"?

 

The latest dev push will include "similar" results if there isn't any results displayed. Good catch!

 

The dealers - there are about 25 of them I think from eBay and comic cons that I've invited over the months from buying there myself. I'm working on a way to display them as featured and so on so you can shop directly from them if you'd like.

 

I'll PM a mod and ask for a move! Sorry about that!

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Few questions: First, if i register, will i get signed up for junky newsletters?

Will I be charged anything to sell or be a dealer?

Are there commissions for the company runner people like you?

Do I pay a penny to someone other than paypal on buying or selling?

Sorry if this comes across rude...

 

 

I get like 10 cents per click on the ebay listings when you click them. That's it. The only monetization on the entire site (just to pay for hosting which is ~$50 per month). I could add an opt out button if you'd like. That would take all of 5 mins.

 

You do not pay a penny to anyone except the seller and paypal fees. That's it. I promise!

 

Sorry, can you further explain this? I don't understand the 10c thing

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Is the engine programmed to display something if there's no results?

 

The only thing I could get to work was your "example" on their (Hellboy).

 

Also, who are the "handful of dealers"?

 

The latest dev push will include "similar" results if there isn't any results displayed. Good catch!

 

The dealers - there are about 25 of them I think from eBay and comic cons that I've invited over the months from buying there myself. I'm working on a way to display them as featured and so on so you can shop directly from them if you'd like.

 

I'll PM a mod and ask for a move! Sorry about that!

 

No worries! Good luck with everything, cool idea, but it is a tad confusing! :) I like the swapping concept, but the rest of it is throwing me off....it almost sounds like you're site is an eBay middle-man? Forgive me for saying that, I'm just trying to understand.

 

 

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Sorry, can you further explain this? I don't understand the 10c thing

 

Sure, eBay gives me 10 cents for every click on one of those links. Anytime someone clicks on an ebay listing (which are on the comic listing pages along with our own user listings) they track that and at the end of the month I get 10 cents per click from them. The user has no idea and it doesnt change their ebay experience at all.

 

And yes, anyone can become a dealer if you'd like! You can register and then shoot me an email and I'll get you made into a "dealer" account.

 

I can't figure out how to contact a mod... i see a big list of them but I'm not sure who is appropriate. Anyone have any idea who to PM?

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Is the engine programmed to display something if there's no results?

 

The only thing I could get to work was your "example" on their (Hellboy).

 

Also, who are the "handful of dealers"?

 

The latest dev push will include "similar" results if there isn't any results displayed. Good catch!

 

The dealers - there are about 25 of them I think from eBay and comic cons that I've invited over the months from buying there myself. I'm working on a way to display them as featured and so on so you can shop directly from them if you'd like.

 

I'll PM a mod and ask for a move! Sorry about that!

 

No worries! Good luck with everything, cool idea, but it is a tad confusing! :) I like the swapping concept, but the rest of it is throwing me off....it almost sounds like you're site is an eBay middle-man? Forgive me for saying that, I'm just trying to understand.

 

 

No worries. Not an ebay middleman -- we actually have our own listings. Just when there are none, we show some ebay results too just to help people find the book they're looking for. It's not a major focus at all. Not even a minor focus :)

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When you complete a search and it brings you to the page after you view it and would like to do another search you either have to got back to the home page or just page back. You might want to put something on the end page.

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Quite honestly, there are not enough comics on here to really satisfy ANY want list. I searched about 30 different things (all quite common, YTLM, GI JOE, etc) and couldn't get a single none bay search result. Also, I could only find things by clicking browse and going from there.

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When you complete a search and it brings you to the page after you view it and would like to do another search you either have to got back to the home page or just page back. You might want to put something on the end page.

 

Good catch. I'll get that fixed up this afternoon. Thanks!

 

Quite honestly, there are not enough comics on here to really satisfy ANY want list. I searched about 30 different things (all quite common, YTLM, GI JOE, etc) and couldn't get a single none bay search result. Also, I could only find things by clicking browse and going from there.

 

Yeah, that's why I'm here! The thing about the want list -- basically I'd like users to add what they're looking for to that list.

 

That list is then sent to the dealers (if they opt-in) once a comic has 5+ likes on it and the dealers are encouraged to list that item for a quick sale. Once listed, any users with the comic on their wantlist get an instant notification to go buy it.

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When you complete a search and it brings you to the page after you view it and would like to do another search you either have to got back to the home page or just page back. You might want to put something on the end page.

 

Good catch. I'll get that fixed up this afternoon. Thanks!

 

Quite honestly, there are not enough comics on here to really satisfy ANY want list. I searched about 30 different things (all quite common, YTLM, GI JOE, etc) and couldn't get a single none bay search result. Also, I could only find things by clicking browse and going from there.

 

Yeah, that's why I'm here! The thing about the want list -- basically I'd like users to add what they're looking for to that list.

 

That list is then sent to the dealers (if they opt-in) once a comic has 5+ likes on it and the dealers are encouraged to list that item for a quick sale. Once listed, any users with the comic on their wantlist get an instant notification to go buy it.

 

Ahhh, now I really get it. You're helping dealers stay up-to-date on the latest hot books ;)

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Ahhh, now I really get it. You're helping dealers stay up-to-date on the latest hot books ;)

 

I suppose that's part of it, yeah! In reality, I spent a ton of time building out this system from scratch. It's my baby. I'm not sitting here trying to make money... I just want people to use this thing because I think it's a great solution for us comic collectors. Honestly! And I hope that I can get some feedback and make it better and better. I'm a pretty agile and responsive developer so I can get new features and bugfixes worked in very very quickly.

 

The dealer feed idea came from the exact problem described here. I have a ton of users (by my standards) but no-one really lists much. There are just over 180,000 possible comics to list on the site... and there are definitely some good listings in there but as GIJOEISAWESOME said, we have a lot of holes. I thought of that as a way to encourage dealers to list stuff that users want. Noone wants to use a marketplace without both buyers and sellers!

 

I seem to have both on the site registered and ready to go... it's just encouraging them to connect with each other. That's the major struggle here. Traffic is good and new signups happen every single day, multiple times. Just trying to get the ball rolling!

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Interesting site. It's very tough to compete with ebay, I wish you luck.

 

Could you give us a bit more information about buying and selling? Is paypal your primary payment method? How will you address transactions gone bad? How does your feedback system work?

 

Thanks!

 

Sure, I'll start by addressing the 3 questions you have first.

 

1. Paypal is the primary payment method. I know paypal has a bad rep in some cases but honestly, they have a fairly good dispute resolution system (though it very much does favor buyers). In fact, as it is now, the site (comicswap) does not do anything with the payment. That is entirely worked out between the buyer and the seller. At some point in the future I will be working in payment gateways and payment tracking, if it is desired and asked for by the users. I can do pretty much anything here, I just need to see that people want me to :)

 

2. User feedback is the primary form of policing. Additionally, this is why I like paypal or stripe or whatever for payments. They handle dispute resolution. For higher priced items I will be suggesting (and hopefully integrating a workflow) for utilizing escrow services. It's a tough balance here... how much do I involve us in the process? I'd like to do as little as possible as to still provide complete freedom for users but also ensure a safe experience. Any feedback here would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

3. Our feedback system has a few neat "gotchas" in terms of stopping fraudulent feedback and in the interest of keeping it as "real" and reliable as possible. I can't really talk much publicly here but there are several data points we look at.

 

If you remember the above posts I talked about a dealer feed. Well, I know dealers don't want to spend time with tire-kickers who want all kinds of comics and buy none of them... so we have a "buyer rating" there that tells the dealer a rating of whether the user will actually buy that item or not. It is based on their previous "wants" and "buy percentage" and a few other factors.

 

I can say that users with feedback and completed transactions are prioritized in our system. Also, users that fill bounties (upload much-wanted products) and complete goals (in the user profile section to help establish identity and "legitimimateness") too.

 

Does that help?

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So I see some of these banners popping up on the site here. This looks like a pretty good site but I found a couple of issues.

 

One is that someone is selling Fantastic Four #1 for $5.00 but they posted a picture of FF #1 from 1963 instead of the current FF run, which I believe is what it is supposed to be.

 

Two, when adding comics to the Wantlist, there is no option to say you want CGC graded and at what grade.

 

Right now it looks like I'm willing to spend $250 on a raw ASM #607.

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So I see some of these banners popping up on the site here. This looks like a pretty good site but I found a couple of issues.

 

One is that someone is selling Fantastic Four #1 for $5.00 but they posted a picture of FF #1 from 1963 instead of the current FF run, which I believe is what it is supposed to be.

 

Two, when adding comics to the Wantlist, there is no option to say you want CGC graded and at what grade.

 

Right now it looks like I'm willing to spend $250 on a raw ASM #607.

 

Meeklo, thank you for your feedback. We have been tossing the idea around of somehow tying in CGC. As you can see, since this thread was originally posted we have made many changes to the site.

 

Most of what we're working on right now has to do with the wantlist you mentioned, ( http://comicswap.com/dealers ) and getting dealers to fill users wantlists.

 

If you have any other feedback, please keep it coming!

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