Marketing a penny auction site

Discussion in 'General Marketing' started by bigdad, Mar 14, 2011.

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  1. #1
    Im thinking of starting a penny auction site that specializes in only auctioning off visa gift cards. How would somebody market something like this? I would of course want to drive traffic fast because I need people bidding. I cant be giving away visa cards. haha. Let me know if you guys can help

    thanks
     
    bigdad, Mar 14, 2011 IP
  2. 1812

    1812 Active Member

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    #2
    A few years back I helped launch a penny auction site for a client. His first month's advertising budget was £35,000, + My fee... A site of this nature needs instant success from day one to work. I hope you have a high budget. If you do.. you know where to find me...
     
    1812, Mar 14, 2011 IP
  3. Bret

    Bret Guest

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    #3
    As 1812 says, it's going to take a lot - but I'm sure you can get relative success without the £35k price tag, if you have lots of friends and frequent many forums I'm sure you can get a fair amount of traffic to the site from there.
     
    Bret, Mar 14, 2011 IP
  4. 1812

    1812 Active Member

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    #4
    You need to be averaging at least 3-5000 visitors a day to get this kind of site off the ground. That won't come cheap.. Lots of PPC campaigns. I can offer you a very good tip though... Yahoo PPC will do you better than Google in this case.
     
    1812, Mar 14, 2011 IP
  5. Avesel

    Avesel Peon

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    #5
    As said, you are going to need an initial base on both buyers and sellers and they will need to be big (e.g. no one wants to use a site that only 10 other people use). How much do you think it will take to convince a single seller to post?
    Maybe start a contest on your website to drive some buzz. And maybe use another contest to convince people to continuously bid and post.
    Or put it this way, forget starting this with 0 marketing budget (like many dream of).
     
    Avesel, Mar 14, 2011 IP
  6. Oceanus

    Oceanus Member

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    #6
    Are you hoping that these visa gift cards will go for more than their worth or do you have a way to get them at a discount?
     
    Oceanus, Mar 14, 2011 IP
  7. techslip

    techslip Peon

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    #7
    You need some mass marketing and advertising right away my friend. Try to find someone with a very popular site to help you advertise to get the word out quick, if you don't have a high budget.
     
    techslip, Mar 14, 2011 IP
  8. krishnaegurus

    krishnaegurus Peon

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    #8
    Build an attractive website with clean design features which attracts the crowd. Start off with SEO and advertising budget. Advertising will give you instant traffic and results and SEO will help you in short(not instant) and long run. But if the strategy is well prepared i don't think you need a massive amount of £35k. Also budget depends on which location you are targeting too. It would have been better if you have sent across budget details too so that it would be clear for us to understand how to deal with that accordingly
     
    krishnaegurus, Mar 15, 2011 IP