Recently i have been through a lot of articles about how & how not to make an auction website for Pakistan (few startups in this direction are Nilaam, Lootmaar, B4bid). I might be commenting on few of these but this article doesn’t intend to specifically criticize any of them.

What

An auction website: something on the line of eBay is a platform where you can sell or buy stuff after bidding on it, the highest bidder takes it. You can either bid or buy the merchandise at a certain price right away.

Why

There are few obvious points like

• Big players like eBay etc are not really into Pakistani market.
• Its a proven business model.
• Internet growth in Pakistan is tremendous (3000% in last 3 years).

There are some special things to be taken in consideration

• Trust factor
  We are actually entering into the market where people have started trusting contents and services provided on web (regardless of the fact that there is still a lot of ill-usage). I strongly disagree with people who claim that its not possible because people LIE and everyone is a FRAUD. They really need to get there facts corrected because the moment has already started and there are quite a few informal platforms who are already doing it. Its only a matter of coming up with a mechanism. 4 years ago we started of a platform which was a simple forums (WCCFTECH). In all those years it took many twists and turns from being a general platform to a technical and from a Computer hardware review website to a general reviewers Hideout. One thing that really had me was the way WCCFTECH succeeded in building Trust Factor in there Classified Section and now people sell and buy stuff through that platform, its quite successful.
• Market for second hand stuff
  This is again a point where I completely disagree. Market for second hand stuff is so strong in Pakistan that in few cases it has made a great impact on the sales of new stuff (e.g. second hand cell phone business in Hafeez centre). Bidding provides a platform that ensures price control, User interest in products, Variety in your reach and seller/buyer credibility. All of these ensure success for a second hand stuff market.

How

• Well obviously the platform is to be well built but you would really have to get to the actual Users who would want to use it and things could really go wrong in your approach.
• Get to know where its being done: You should know where Pakistanis are buying and selling stuff because you might find your first few hundred users on those websites(as most of them are doing it informally)
• How WCCF did it:
  • Building trust factor by introducing Post count factor (if your post count is less than 50 and people on that platform don’t really know you much then SORRY you can’t sell).
  • Trusted members kick started it by putting stuff for sale.
  • Administrators themselves kept an eye on the sellers and they actually did tracked few frauds and kicked them out of the loop permanently.

Lets just take an example of lootmaar: its good that you start many 1Rs auctions but i guess the wrong end of the market is being targeted.

It doesn’t matter if there is a lot of stuff up for sale what actually matters is that people are doing business.

Now most precisely what it means is that you are not creating a platform where You sell (any site like beliscity and shophive) instead you are creating a platform where people do the business and the only way you are going to build the trust factor is by showing that there are real people doing some business so piece of advice would be to Engage some people for the mentioned purpose.

Just my 2 cents about this post

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