GoDaddy plans to open online selling site.
In direct competition with eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY), Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), and Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), domain registrar Go Daddy is launching a marketplace dubbed “Go Daddy Marketplace” for people to buy and sell goods online.
Users can set up stores and upload products. GoDaddy will handle all payments and notify sellers whenever a product is sold. Marketplace will integrate with other GoDaddy products, such as allowing users of its Quick Shopping Cart to import product listings.
By launching the marketplace, GoDaddy hopes to capitalize on its massive web site traffic, which it describes as “millions of Go Daddy visitors”. GoDaddy would be smart to syndicate product listings across domains that currently have GoDaddy parked pages on them, too.
The service seems to compete with Yahoo! Stores, Amazon Marketplace, and eBay’s fixed price listings and stores.
The service costs $4.99 per month plus a 10% commission on products sold. Pricing seems fairly comparable to Amazon Marketplace, which doesn’t charge a monthly fee or listing fee but collects a per transaction fee of 99 cents, a sales commission of 6%-12%, and a variable closing fee. Both eBay Stores and Yahoo! Stores have higher monthly fees, although eBay does offer a pay-per-item fixed price sales option.
It’s unclear if the service will use a home grown platform or if it’s being outsourced. It also seems like it will demand a lot of time from GoDaddy’s support team as it deals with fraudulent transactions and consumer complaints that plague Amazon Marketplace and eBay.
GoDaddy plans to launch Go Daddy Marketplace later this month.
How do you come up with these stories? 🙂
This is great news and sounds like a nice fit with godaddy and now they can offer their small and medium sized business clients another sales channel.
Like any good marketplace though you need a balance of buyers and sellers. If domain owners and merchants load up all their crap in the first few days, buyers will be overwhelmed with crap and won’t have a desire to return.
So, I hope GoDaddy has a very big picture and long term vision for this marketplace. If they treat it like just another feature or GoDaddy product, it will be a failure.
They must be outsourcing this. They have had to push back the revamped Godaddy parking platform several times which has to be much less complex than deploying a retail sales system.
I was told yesterday the relaunch of the parking program is two to four months away…..so I can’t see how a new retail since was whipped together so fast and so secretly. They must have some help.
Good news, anyhow…..and excellet reporting. Like Rob above said, “How the heck do you get these stories?” You must have developed a network of snitches. 🙂
It was my understanding that everything GD did was in-house. I would imagine this is no different which means it will be a mess out of the gate and will slowly get improved.
I think this will be a failure unless they focus on a niche that relates to the people visiting GD.
“In direct competition with eBay”
I hope they do it right.
There are many,many unhappy Ebay Sellers
so a great opportunity awaits.
“GoDaddy will handle all payments”
You mean…No PayPal?
Yay!
I can’t take too much credit for getting this story…it’s being pushed out in GoDaddy’s monthly newsletter
why not? Everyone else did the auction thing and they did so well beating ebay. Why not just be the next linkedin too. .. oh wait godaddy already launched a “social networking” thing too. . . . I see FAIL
inevitable questions:
1. Will godaddy employees bid on these auctions?
2. Will godaddy create a subsidiary company to warehouse all the hottest pez dispensers they buy on the cheap
I wonder if reseller and affiliated sites such as DownDoggy.com will be able to add a marketplace to their product offering.
Bob’s proven himself to be a very astute businessman…but this is a big mistake.
Unless he’s going to outsource the whole operation, there are other, quicker, easier, higher-profit ways to leverage his huge visitor/user base.
As a longtime seller on eBay (Silver powerseller since 1999) i am hopeful to break away from the absurb!! ebay policies on: shipping/DSR/the distrust dept/lack of communications/No feedback ability by Sellers. . and on and on!! Go GODADDY!!! YOU WILL GET THE EBAY POWERSELLERS. . AS Google did not want a MarketPlace .. You And sellers and buyers are the WINNERS!!!
I have my website and e-mail through GoDaddy. They are a first class company with spectacular customer service. They should be able to give eBay a run for its money.
This is great news!
This is good news…but I am skeptical because after having my taste of using godaddy as my hosting plan it hasn’t gone very well. Their site is mass advertising, too confusing, & 50% their customer service is not very educated in what they are doing.
My hopes is that Godaddy can leave out all of that and mimick the ‘old’ ebay.
Seems to me it’s a platform created specifically by either ebay and/ or Amazon for those that are currently saturating their own sites and perhaps ‘bringing down’ their ‘reputation’
In my opinion, GoDaddy is okay for domain registration. But why would I pay high monthly fees when there’s a fast growing marketplace called Bonanzle? No upfront fees, great customer service and great community!