I want to submit my online auction website

Hi

I would like to submit my online auction website to your directory.

The site is an online auction site offering an alternative to Ebay in the respect of not charging commission on end of auctions.

You can revieve my site at <URL removed>

Not sure if you are aware but the link on your site to submit urls is out of order and has been for awhlie?

Hi bid5,

yes, we know that the script to suggest a site isn't working -- worse than that, the entire editor server is down so we can't get in to edit at all. All information we have about the technical problems is found in the announcement at the top of each forum here. As soon as the announcement is updated to say that site suggestion works, you can suggest the site for review to the most relevant category for it; you can't use this forum to suggest sites.

Thank you.

And please, don't submit your auction site until such time as it is viable with a rich selection of products and active auctions.

Pleae do not submit it if you are just getting off the ground and need the DMOZ link to drive the initial traffic to your site.

We see this all the time. people submit forums, classified ad and auction sites and similar sites that depend upon visitor participation for real viability, and when we go to review the site, there are 39 products, 14 members and not much else. Then we parkthe sites and return in 6 months and they have 48 product, and 17 members. Now we don't only use product or post counts, and membership number is determining listability -- but they are a factor unless there is other uniqueness we can consider.

Such as?

If there were a forum for people who had only climbed Mount Everest, we would recognize that the potential universe of memberhip is quite limited and instead would consider the quality of the posts and the uniqueness of the information there. Post evaluating guides, equipment and routes, robust weather discussions, etc would be valuable.

ok point taken, I was wanting to submit to get my site off the ground. However it is unique in the fact that there are no end of auction commission fees, these are what normally hits the seller in the pocket and also the buyer as the selling price is normally marked up to cover the commission.

now my point:

how are new sites supposed to get up and running when the likes of Ebay and Ebid are the only sites that can get reasonable rank in any search engines. Why would you look in google for Ebay, surely everyone knows it exists unless they have been locked away for years!

ow are new sites supposed to get up and running when the likes of Ebay and Ebid are the only sites that can get reasonable rank in any search engines.

Click to expand...

I don't know how to answer this without sounding cold and callous. The fact is that the question you pose is not our concern. We are building a directory of viable websites with rich, unique content. We are not business consultants and are not in the role (within the context of the dirctory) of telling people how to build and grow their website. Helping a website successfully navigate the critical time between its birth and either death or viability is not what we are about. Nor are we in the business of promoting fledgling webistes in the hopes they will eventually grow and take wing.

I understand your concern -- how exactly does one compete? I am the owner of three mostly non-commercial websites and a blog, and sometimes the inability to go play with the "big boys" frustrates the he** out of me. I've had adsense on two of the websites and the blog, and have an average weekly income of less than a dollar. seems I spend more time battling spammers than growing content.

Good luck with your site, don't give up on it, and I personally hope it takes wing and becomes listable.

Yes, by all means, think of the ODP as a means for editors to recognize sites that have already gotten up and running. eBay is listed, not because it needs help but because it doesn't need help--because even without the ODP it would do just fine.

All aggregate-content sites (including the ODP) are a combination of three things: process, product, and community. The website simply implements the process, which is the most trivial part. But without the other two legs the website is useless.

All the successful aggregate content sites I know about, tackled the product, the "content," up front -- building enough that even without a community, they were significant enough to serve users--and those users were what provided the nucleus of their community. The Project Gutenberg and CCEL webmasters posted the first fifty or so BOOKS -- say, ten thousand pages of typing from their own fingers -- before significant public contribution. The ODP added a few hundred thousand sites before outsiders really started volunteering to help. I understand that Wikipedia came out of the box with a solid core of content from public-domain references. Obviously, most successful classified-ads sites are sponsored by some entity, such as a newspaper, that has a ready source of content. And so on.

I ALWAYS say, if you don't have a plan for competing even without an ODP listing, then save yourself a lot of trouble: take the site down immediately, and go on to something that's not obviously futile. But that's probably not the only option. Any other option entails finding someone who knows what you don't, and who can do what you can't, to provide the full set of skills and necessities for a successful business.

>> How are new sites supposed to get up and running when the likes of Ebay <<

The problem is, is that your site dilutes the sum of human knowledge.

If I want to get my hands on an authentic Elbonian left-handed hand-crafted antique rotating widget, then my best chance would be to look at ebay because everyone knows to look there first. Additionally, most sellers, knowing that most people look there, are likely to offer their product there first.

If I have to look at 100 sites to find the one that has what I want, then 99 of those sites are not offering a service that is useful to me. That is a dilution of information...