View Full Version : eBay as a model for hobbying board
The brilliance of eBay is that it's a remarkably efficient way to bring serious buyers of products and services together with sellers. The typical advertising model, the so-called "mall" (eros, CL, etc.) has the obvious shortcomings that we've discussed to death on this board. So I'm wondering what it would be like to set up an online hobbying marketplace based on the eBay model instead.
Here's one way it could work: A provider posts a description of herself and her services plus a photo or two on the board and her schedule. Interested hobbyists then bid for an appointment at a certain time. The market would set the price.
Obvious distasteful associations with slave auctions and other exhibits of human trafficing asside, this could work (although, I'm sure there are millions of reasons why, in fact, it couldn't).
Thoughts? Comments? Any models of your own you'd care to share?
Barnabus
10-05-2007, 09:50 AM
It truly would add new meaning to "sniping a auction"
and Does she take PayPal?
Barnabas
jseah
10-05-2007, 10:02 AM
I think the problem of auctioning services is that it puts the site directly into the act of negotiating/facilitating an illegal act (remember, prostitution still is illegal). Cause after all, the "ebay" model is that the seller pays a portion of the selling price to the site as a commission, so in effect you could say that the site was pimping out the girl.
justlooking
10-05-2007, 10:10 AM
Agree with jseah.
jseah
10-05-2007, 10:25 AM
solicitation....that was the word I was trying to get at. that was the basis behind the whole Big Doggie board thing down in FL. an ebay model, with the website actively profiting from the solicitation of illegal acts, would definitely be a target for LE.....and forget about all the crap with roses, kisses, pencils, or candles.
Samuking
10-05-2007, 10:43 AM
So I guess there would also be a BUY IT NOW option for the really horny guys!!!
What if the provider simply buys an "ad" on the site, so the site doesn't take a commission on the transaction? In this way, the site won't be profiting from the transaction. Or is that too subtle a distinction?
beeker
10-06-2007, 06:59 AM
host the site from NL or Hungary
There's a local PMB here in So Fla where they give the supply side free ad posts. But they offer the consumer the option of becoming a High Roller or VIP by charging a monthly or yearly fee for the right to get a discounted rate from all the supply side that advertises there. Then in each ad there are two rates. One for regulars board members and a reduced rate (usually 10-20%) for the HR's and VIP's. So the girls basically pay for their ads by taking a cut in their rate which goes directly to the board-op via the VIP membership fee.
On a side note: This typical rate reduction is pretty substantial in the grand scheme of things compared to what one would pay here at UG on a much bigger board in a town where advertising $'s should be a premium. For example... My Peruvian friend charges 350 in fla with a VIP rate of 300. So if she sees 10 VIP's in a month her right to post ads on that local PMB cost her about $500 for the month. Here on UG she gets a steal at $100 for a month of ad posts.
Now I'm assuming the conflict here is just as great as the ebay idea if not greater. But if our resident lawyers see a loophole in this scheme maybe it's something UG could look into as an alternative advertising tactic. Seems like it would be easier for Bender to collect from some horndogs in search of constant discounts and it would certainly lure in more supply side posts.
UG Staff
10-06-2007, 01:10 PM
Problems with this model:
A) Reserve prices: on eBay, most items have reserve prices. This is the lowest price the seller is willing to go to get rid of the item. In this business, almost all the time that number is the same as the rack rate.
B) Market for each item is too small: an auction for her services 1PM Tuesday, and auction for her services 2PM Tuesday, etc. It wouldn't work for the supply side because the prices offered spread amongst such a large number of available "goods" would result in much lower bids than they are currently charging.
C) Product differentiation: on eBay, people are selling a lot of product which are seen as truly interchangable. A NWT Rawlings PRO24 baseball glove.
D) Size of market place: one of the things which eBay brought was a very large market for things which used to be too expensive to market otherwise. To get rid of your "junk" before eBay, you had to take out an ad in the local Pennysaver, have a yard sale, etc.. And even then, you probably wouldn't be exposed to the "best buyer", who was probably too far away (even 50 miles), etc. Since you can't ship the session to a guy even 100 miles away, you lose one of the biggest plusses of eBay in the first place.
E) Who the buyer is matters (self explanatory).
F) Self esteem of sellers (self explanatory)
UG Staff
10-06-2007, 01:12 PM
On a side note: This typical rate reduction is pretty substantial in the grand scheme of things compared to what one would pay here at UG on a much bigger board in a town where advertising $'s should be a premium. For example... My Peruvian friend charges 350 in fla with a VIP rate of 300. So if she sees 10 VIP's in a month her right to post ads on that local PMB cost her about $500 for the month. Here on UG she gets a steal at $100 for a month of ad posts. .
More proof that most supply side in the business use irrational pricing methods and are as cheap fucks as they complain the guys are.
masquerade
10-06-2007, 02:30 PM
I like the idea that once the customer placed a bid, he'd be entering into a binding agreement in which he had to pay for the girl's time, since the majority of guys who respond to these types of ads are giant flakes who have zero qualms about wasting a provider's time. Plus, it would become much easier to black list certain customers since we'd be able to use the feedback section. Same goes for the customers - providing reviews would be extremely efficient in this model.
Didn't we try something like this on UG a few years back. I don;t think it involved bidding but the supply side made an offer or membership made an offer..... I don't recall how it worked, but it didn't work for long.
Problems with this model:
A) Reserve prices: on eBay, most items have reserve prices. This is the lowest price the seller is willing to go to get rid of the item. In this business, almost all the time that number is the same as the rack rate.
B) Market for each item is too small: an auction for her services 1PM Tuesday, and auction for her services 2PM Tuesday, etc. It wouldn't work for the supply side because the prices offered spread amongst such a large number of available "goods" would result in much lower bids than they are currently charging.
C) Product differentiation: on eBay, people are selling a lot of product which are seen as truly interchangable. A NWT Rawlings PRO24 baseball glove.
D) Size of market place: one of the things which eBay brought was a very large market for things which used to be too expensive to market otherwise. To get rid of your "junk" before eBay, you had to take out an ad in the local Pennysaver, have a yard sale, etc.. And even then, you probably wouldn't be exposed to the "best buyer", who was probably too far away (even 50 miles), etc. Since you can't ship the session to a guy even 100 miles away, you lose one of the biggest plusses of eBay in the first place.
E) Who the buyer is matters (self explanatory).
F) Self esteem of sellers (self explanatory)
All good points:
A) I though about this. My answer would simply be that, to elicit a decent response, the provider would have to realize that starting at a lower initial reserve would attract more attention. It's only to her advantage to encourage a bidding "war" to develop, so the more attention she can attract up front, the better.
B) I don't entirely agree. How many times have you tried to book a popular provider at a popular time and not been able to secure a booking? It happens to me all the time. Consequently, times such as 7-9pm would be in most demand and cost the highest. Times such as 2-4pm would probably be in much lower demand, and end up costing less. (I've always thought a pricing structure that took this into account would generate more business for providers in this industry, regardless.)
C) I'm in total agreement here
D) Would the size of the market be any different than, say, with any of the so-called "mall" sites now?
E) I thought about this too. Obviously, there would have to be a caveat that the provider would have to be comfortable with whomever wins the auction. She would state up front what type of screening would be required. If, for whatever reason, she didn't want to see the auction winner, the auction would be won by the next highest bidder, etc. (This could, obviously, become somewhat problematic and probably be the downfall of the entire scheme.)
F) I'm in total agreement here, too. There are plenty of providers who would find this so demeaning as to not agree to participate. It's the ultimate "meat market".
UG Staff
10-08-2007, 12:11 AM
a) And what do you think the chances are that anyone will be able to do this?
b) All that you will get is essentially a "bumping fee" where guys will bump eachother off if they want a time slot, and the girls won't take the appointments at the lower numbers.
d) Wrong comparison. The issue is "how did eBay get so sucessful?". One of the biggest ways they did it was to astronomically increase the market exposure of people who had essentially none. My point was that you probably lose the single biggest thing that caused eBay's success. It's not whether the market would be smaller than the mall sites, the issue is that it wouldn't be much, much larger, and that's what you need for success in this model.
e) They will "screen" out all the low paying appointments.
a) And what do you think the chances are that anyone will be able to do this?
b) All that you will get is essentially a "bumping fee" where guys will bump eachother off if they want a time slot, and the girls won't take the appointments at the lower numbers.
d) Wrong comparison. The issue is "how did eBay get so sucessful?". One of the biggest ways they did it was to astronomically increase the market exposure of people who had essentially none. My point was that you probably lose the single biggest thing that caused eBay's success. It's not whether the market would be smaller than the mall sites, the issue is that it wouldn't be much, much larger, and that's what you need for success in this model.
e) They will "screen" out all the low paying appointments.
a) Be able, or be willing? lol
b, e) Don't the high bids on eBay represent "bumping fees" now, to some extent? If you want something more than another bidder, you bid at a higher price, bumping him out of the "high bidder" slot. Obviously, the only way for something like this to work (and it's the biggest reason why it won't work) would be that there would have to be some sort of assurance that the provider would agree to see the auction winners, as long as there were no realistic security concern on her part in seeing a particular monger. Similarly, by bidding, mongers would some how be held to their commitment. Policing this, of course, would be next to impossible.
As for the differential between her "rack rate" and a potential high bid, if she started the bidding at something like $X-25 (just to pick a number) she would almost be certain to achieve her normal price, if not more. After using the board to set up just a few appointments, pricing strategies would be refined pretty quickly, I'm sure.
As far as the provider's accepting different fees for different times, I don't see it as being that different from what happens now. Let's say that a provider's rack rate is $X. Monger A calls her up and offers her $X-100 for a time when she normally doesn't get many appointments, so she accepts it. Then Monger B calls her up and offers her $X-50 for the same time. So she calls Monger A up and cancels. But then, after screening Monger B, she realizes that she doesn't feel comfortable seeing him. So she calls Monger A back up and says, "I was able to rearrange things just for you and so now I can see you after all!" (Don't tell me that this isn't going on all the time right now -- I know that I've experienced it from time to time.)
d) My thought was that, right now, each provider has to answer tons of em and calls, yielding a much smaller number of appointments. But, if she could offer up a certain number of times when she was available on an auction board, then a lot of her back-and-forth would be eliminated. This would be the attraction of such a format for her. For mongers, the attraction would be to secure appointments at desired times and more transparent pricing.
All of this said, I doubt it could work, both for legal reasons (as stated above) and in terms of holding both the providers and hobbyists to their word and following through on the transactions.
justme
10-09-2007, 08:47 AM
I tend to think that E-bays affect on the transparency of markets has been very overestimated for most of the goods sold. On the other hand, I think it performs very well on the subset of goods that it originally serviced. That is, e-bay is great for C to C transactions of goods without a pre-existing mature market.
Everyone knows what an I-pod should cost and so there isn't really any price setting going on with e-bay I=Pod transactions. In fact, I generally see worse prices (for buyers) on consumer products than I do at specialty on-line discount retailers.
On the other hand, I'm not terribly sure what an out of print copy of some esoteric Blue Note record should go for. Fifteen years ago, I pretty much had to pay whatever price the record dealer in town was charging or take whatever price they were giving. Sure there were pricing books, but they didn't do a lot of good. What E-bay did, as Slinky points out, is to create an actual marketplace for that particular commodity (as he also points out, "commodity" is important too) which led to better price transparency.
To be honest, these days gemm.com does a much better job of that for records. In general, specialty online shops that have good size tend to be more efficient than E-Bay where both consumers and sellers are less sophisticated.
The other major strength of E-Bay besides creating large markets for previously boutique commodities is the easing of the angst of C to C purchases. Since by necessity E-Bay had to increase the geographic span of the transaction to increase the size of its marketplace, it became very necessary to secure that transaction. Back when I just drove out to some dudes house before I bought his used speakers, I didn't really have to worry about being scammed. E-bay's review system and Pay-Pal were the necessary innovations to make the transactions more like a B to C transaction.
I tend to think that PMB's have solved issues of transparency and confidence of the consumer far better than an online auction could. Indeed, I'd much rather buy from sites like Audiogon where there is an established community of buyers and sellers that interact on more than just a commercial angle than I would on E-bay.
JM
You make very good points. It's worth noting that eBay, at a certain point, made certain choices as to what types of communities it would focus on based on their business plan. And it's impossible to be all things to all people.
As for price transparency, the iPod isn't the best example, since it was just introduced and it's availability in the marketplace is extremely restricted. A better example would be used cell phones in general. You can pick up a basic used cell phone on eBay for around $20, which, in the scheme of things, is probably about what they're worth.
In the sex for hire industry, my point was just that in a relatively open digital marketplace, price for service at key times would be more transparent than it is today.
I would just add, though, that in some B2B transactions, eBay has proven to be a very useful marketplace. I personally know some people in the specialty construction business who built their shop by finding used specialty equipment on eBay and saved themselves many thousands of dollars. Could they have saved even more by finding some sort of specialty Web site community/sales board that serviced their industry? Perhaps (if it existed).
justme
10-09-2007, 09:36 AM
Perhaps (if it existed).
That's more or less my point. I think specialty marketplaces for prostitution do exist.
The creation of viable used markets is another strength of E-Bay that I didn't really touch on, but you did. But again this doesn't apply to the sale of services.
Actually, how big of a marketplace for services is there on E-Bay? I haven't used it in years ('cause it got really lame for the things that I wanted to buy) but I don't remember there really being any kind of service market...
Well, you usually don't commoditize a service in one hour segments, so it's more difficult to auction off (unless the auction simply sets your hourly rate and the job takes as long as it takes). Plus, there are geographical restraints. (I mean, you could probably auction off a service for which there is normally a set price, like a muffler job. But it would only appeal to those living within, say, a 30 mile radius of your garage, so eBay wouldn't really be particularly useful.)
UG Staff
10-09-2007, 02:16 PM
Well, if it ain't useful for a muffler job, how's it going to be useful for a blow job?
This will work when there are National Chains of brothels but will be a lot closer to priceline than eBay. In fact, if you started this discussion with the priceline model I think it would be more interesting.
Well, if it ain't useful for a muffler job, how's it going to be useful for a blow job?
This will work when there are National Chains of brothels but will be a lot closer to priceline than eBay. In fact, if you started this discussion with the priceline model I think it would be more interesting.
Be my guest!
justme
10-10-2007, 11:38 AM
Priceline doesn't solve the issue of whether prostitution services are a commodity.
UG Staff
10-10-2007, 12:21 PM
Is the use of a hotel room for a given period of time a commodity?
justme
10-10-2007, 12:59 PM
I'd say it is (up to star level) for customers of Priceline.
I don't think that users who exhibit a strong preference for Marriot, Say, over Hilton will be as inclined to use Priceline because there's too much risk of getting a bad "value".
UG Staff
10-10-2007, 01:46 PM
Well, couldn't you use that same argument in the instant model?
a) Yes, the priceline model assigns you to a room of a quality, and guys may not want that in a hooker,
b) There aren't that many guys who show the kind of prefence you state, and if they do, they just don't use priceline.
c) I wouldn't use an exact priceline model in this case, just like I wouldn't use an eBay model. I think, though, that one closer to priceline would have a better chance of success than one closer to eBay, for a plethora of reasons.
I see a lot of the same screening issues with the priceline.com model. Many providers would feel uncomfortable accepting a booking from an unknown, unscreened client.
On the client side, wouldn't most clients prefer to know which provider they're contracting? I seldom want just "any old blonde" -- I want a specific girl at a specific price.
Maybe if there were a list of several available providers, you ticked off the ones you were interested in and then made your offer -- that might work. But then it starts looking like sites that already exist, and the site itself starts to become an agency.
UG Staff
10-10-2007, 11:42 PM
No, I'd see it more as a guy bids a certain amount for a session at a certain time, and the providers "bid" or accept it and the guy pick from those who make the offers.
justme
10-11-2007, 07:47 AM
To the extent that some guys commodities some commercial sex acts, a reverse auction Priceline model could be successful. Of course, you'd have to get a pretty large population of suppliers. My priceline bid is accepted about a third of the time. I don't think I'd use the service if that number fell below a fifth.
JackT
10-11-2007, 09:05 AM
No, I'd see it more as a guy bids a certain amount for a session at a certain time, and the providers "bid" or accept it and the guy pick from those who make the offers.
Would the potential bidders (and potential suppliers) be part of some pre-screened database? Practically, I see all sorts of problems with that.
And if not, how does this differ from (or improve upon) Craigslist, which already exists? If I post an ad "Seeking BBBJ for $150 this afternoon in manhattan, incall," I may get a few responses and then I get to pick from those who make the offers. And the "screening" is done on an individual basis, according to each party's own comfort level.
UG Staff
10-11-2007, 01:42 PM
Huge diference between a matrix and point to point.
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