Ask HN: rate my startup idea - the anti-ebay
Hello all

I was hoping to get some feedback from people about my startup idea. I've thought about putting up a landing page and using adwords to guage interest but it's not the sort of thing people search for.

The idea is a marketplace for enthusiasts to buy and sell their (mostly used) items. It works on a negotiation model rather than auctions, with all negotiations taking place in public. The idea is to establish lots of these marketplaces, each targeting a specific niche and operating under their own subdomain. So for example, hackernews.marketplaces.com would only show items of interest to HN readers, but www.marketplaces.com would show items from all the marketplaces combined.

Each marketplace is moderated to ensure the items are of interest to its visitors, and related to the niche the marketplace serves. Marketplaces can be started and moderated by anyone subject to a small application - I'd want to know that they have some meaningful association with the niche they're interested in - e.g. they have a blog or forum about the topic, or they're considered an expert in that particular area.

Sellers would be charged a flat fee if and when a sale is made, between 5% and 10% of the selling price. This commission would be shared between myself and the moderator of the marketplace the item was posted on.

So what problem does this address? Namely, ebay is no longer what it used to be. It was a great place for enthusiasts to find items at good prices and that still happens but it's much rarer. Ebay is now full of drop-shippers, cheap, mass produced items, counterfeits, scammers and fraudsters.

Here is how I would address specific problems with ebay:

- bid-sniping: wouldn't happen. The seller has to choose a winning offer, not necessarily the highest one.

- low price, high shipping cost: all items on my site would have to be available for local collection is that's what the buyer chooses. Low price + high shipping would be risky for the seller if the buyer chose to collect.

- drop shippers, box-shifters: all items would be required to have at least one actual photo of the item to be sold. This, along with the requirement that all items must be available for pickup would discourage most bulk sellers. Also, there would be no option for any kind of integrated payment or invoicing. This would pose no problem to a casual buyer or seller, but would be a nightmare for anyone trying to earn a living by selling online. There are much better venues available for high volume retailers.

- fraud: items can only be listed via a marketplace and moderators have final say over the items listed in their marketplace. If you choose the right moderators to start with, chances are they'd care enough about the community to scrutinize and weed out anything inappropriate.

- feedback blackmail: my site would allow both parties to leave feedback after a transaction and it would be double blind. The feedback isn't shown until both parties have left it or 30 days from the date of sale - whichever comes first.

This would lead to many high quality marketplaces with high quality items for sale by casual sellers. Enthusiasts and hobbyists mostly, not people looking for the highest or lowest priced item to be found. There are several online shop builders available for people to sell goods as a retailer, but as far as I know there's no existing place where people can set up their own, branded classifieds marketplace. I think there's plenty of demand based solely on the number of discussion forums that have buy/sell/trade sub-forums, some of which are very active. If ebay was everything people needed, those forums wouldn't exist.

So that's the gist of it. I've worked on this on and off for the past 3 years but never really put my heart into it. All feedback welcome.