Quote:
Originally Posted by Collect Equity
There is no way that WhiteWhaleCards can compete with the B/S/T on Net54, nor is that our goal. We are offering an additional avenue for showcasing and finding your favorite vintage cards.
13% was chosen because a) 3% of this covers the PayPal fees and b) 10% of this covers our development costs (which are significant since I'm not a programmer).
Regardless of whether you choose to buy/sell on the site, we hope you will use it to showcase your collection and contribute to the community encyclopedia of vintage baseball cards.
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I get that. I just don't see how it's a sustainable business model. I don't mean to be rude - I'd love to see your site succeed, and there's definitely demand, but making it work is hard. I
am a programmer, and I've toyed with the idea of a site something like yours. The programming is technically very challenging. Hundreds of thousands of cards, each site member has tens of thousands in his/her collection - it's very difficult to store that kind of data in a way that's easy to work with. And that's not even getting into image hosting.
And once you overcome all that, you have to figure out how to get it to pay for itself. I think the way ebay does it is smart - they hide the fees at the time of the transaction. At the moment of purchase, no one pays any fees. It's only later that the seller has the fee deducted. People are funny, and we as a species have a hard time accurately valuing events in the future. I bet that people would pay more for a card with a 13% fee charged in a week than a card with a 13% fee charged at time of purchase.
Anyway, best of luck with the site. I hope I'm wrong about your business model.