check this out !@!!!!!

[Mike Wilbanks]

Gave the site a look-over, speaking from purely a technical point-of-view and as someone who buys & sells on other auction sites, I would very much like to see the following features added as I've found they're very useful:
- You need a better search function. Ideally when creating a listing the seller could enter individual data elements such as species, sex, age, base morph(s), price, etc. Users should have an easy way to filter on these, and just as easily be able to filter out certain values. As an example, if I'm looking at hypos or pieds, and don't want to see hets, give me a way to exclude those animals from my search. Similarly if I want to see two-gene animals with Mojave but not Spider, that would be great.
- As a seller I want to be able to block certain bidders from bidding, both based on overall feedback (e.g. no one rated D or less), and specifically by username (because some people's reputations precede them).
- Auction sites run differently and users may be used to certain policies. As an example, eBay permits sellers to cancel a bid, GunBoker.com does not. I don't care either way which you choose, but be warned that bidders used to eBay's policies will be in for a nasty shock if bids can't be retracted.
- Get a valid CC from all registrants before they can bid as it helps keep scammers away. There's a reason scammers abound on ArmsList but not GunBroker.

All good advice and I appreciate the feedback. As for sellers, we have a "pay to play" setup so a seller has to give us a credit card or paypal before they can list an animal for sale. This should keep out most of the spam unless they want to pay to list it. Also, people just trying to mess with the site will be reluctant to give us good payment info just to cause trouble. At least we will know who all the sellers really are. As for scammers, a buyer has to do the same due diligence as they would on any site. Fauna BOI is full of people who slipped through the radar and I'm not sure how we can cut that out except to deal with people that have built reputations for delivering and ban people as they come up.

Bids cannot be retracted and we are on a simple bidding engine. So, unlike the proxy engine a bidder will most likely have to make several "mistakes" to successfully win an auction. This means if you bid $200, then $200 is your bid unlike Ebay where it continues to bid up to your max. We decided to go this way because I want active participation. As a bidder, I would prefer to know someone is sitting at a computer bidding against me, not just a proxy engine outbidding me. That frustrates me about ebay, but again they have different goals than I do. We will ban bidders as necessary and the admin can delete a bid if necessary. For example someone emailed me and told me they live in Europe and accidentally bid on a US only sellers auction. They did not read the description and assumed it was mine. I retracted their bid for them. It is unlikely that a single bid would ever win anyway. We had these same abilities in the FB environment and these same problems. We just banned the trouble makers and deleted the mistake bids on FB so I guess there will be no fixing every problem.

I am going to add a couple of things to the search like sex, for instance. If you do the advanced search, I think you can narrow it down from there, but I will look at some of the search features. As I said, I really appreciate the feedback as it will help us develop the site into a place people will love to use.

[Mike Wilbanks]

I know a lot of people hate auctioned because they feel like they hurt the market, but maybe this site can help solve that problem. I mean, I grew up around horses and in the thoroughbred industry there are a lot of breeders who will only sell at auction because there is this feeling that auctions are the best way to gauge market price. Of course, thoroughbred auctions are advertised and have good participation....I guess my point is that I don't think auctions are inherently bad. The problem is more with the way they are happening now. Mike, you summed it up pretty well. I also have heard of plenty of auctions after the fact where I would have gladly paid more.

I set up an account, and may try listing an animal or two to check it out. I do have one question, though. I selected "accept instant checkout." Is that all I need to do to be able to accept credit cards?

No, you cannot accept credit cards through the site. "Accept instant checkout" will give the winning bidder on your auction a paypal button he can push and pay you for your auction directly from the site. We have nothing to do with that part. It takes them to paypal, the address that you setup and send you the money, then brings them back to the site. You will need to provide a link with payment instructions if you have a credit card gateway setup somewhere.

[adamsky27]

Thanks for the responses Mike, I'm glad to hear the reasons you started the site in the first place. I could have an awesome animal I wanted to auction on my FB, but I have very few likes and followers. Nobody would even see it. With your site I may actually get market value for my animals.

At first I was against auctions due to the market recently, but this may have changed my mind.

[Pythonfriend]

its nice to hear from Mike Wilbanks himself


i agree that there is a place for auctions, and that facebook is not the right place for it. (accounts can get banned and vanish in an instant for reasons that have nothing to do with the reptile auction, and people can also make their own comments and accounts disappear. so, bad things can happen, and then you would rely on getting someone from facebooks support staff to sort it out, and they might say: "sorry, this is a social network, not an auction platform".)

i hope you can manage to get some more sellers on board people appear to be placing lots of bids and the prices look fine, now there need to be more sellers.

[Derrick]

Auctions could be used to sell low end animals. Keeping the high end morphs off will keep the market right. Or youll have a bunch of idiots trying to sell cheap and destroying the market. Personally I think auctions will destroy the bp market and the business as a whole.

[JMinILM]

Great to hear from Mike on this. I appreciate what he is trying to do. I think the key to success will be getting a large customer base to participate. I think that was the key to EBay's success. Having a large breeder like him will certainly help, but I think it will take a lot of good marketing too.

[PitOnTheProwl]

Auctions could be used to sell low end animals. Keeping the high end morphs off will keep the market right. Or youll have a bunch of idiots trying to sell cheap and destroying the market. Personally I think auctions will destroy the bp market and the business as a whole.

How do you figure if the market sets the price?? Yes if you put something up for auction and only one or two people are interested in it then you might get screwed BUT if you have a group that is interested in an animal then the bidding wars start and the price is how high someone is willing to go. I don't see a problem there.

[CryHavoc17]

Keep up the great work mike! I absolutely love the idea, Facebook auctions have major issues and I think is a very logical next step in the evolution of the auction format, which should be a selling format that is here to stay. I really hope this becomes the standard bearer for the online auction format.

Btw im still mad I didnt land that platty daddy!!!!

Sent from my SM-G730V using Tapatalk 2

[ZacharyPoller]

Wow that sight will make me bankrupt ...

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[steve_r34]

well u heard from the man himself .. now its up to all of us to get this thing going in the right direction and to spread the word ..

just like bp.net got started many years ago and look how it flourished over the years ..

we can get reptilebay the same way ..

and keep this hobby/business headed in the direction

peace... Steve