Patent ID: 7958018

Claim:
A method for selling goods or services, comprising: (a) receiving at a central computer a request from a buyer for a good or service, said request including a predetermined plurality of criteria related to the good or service and criteria related to sellers of the good or service; (b) selecting by the central computer, sellers from a predetermined group of at least two sellers that offer the requested good or service by screening sellers from said predetermined group of sellers based on the received predetermined plurality of criteria related to the good and service and said rating information of sellers, and ranking said selected sellers in order of amount of time since receiving a last previous request; (c) transmitting, over a network that the central computer can communicate with, the request of the buyer including said received predetermined plurality of criteria related to said good or service to the selected sellers of the good or service; (d) receiving, within a predetermined time interval, responses from at least one seller to the request; (e) compiling information provided in the responses received from at least one seller within the predetermined time interval; (f) selecting sellers based upon an evaluation of the compiled information including the plurality of criteria; and (g) transmitting the selected sellers and respective responses to a computer accessible by a buyer.