GoDaddy Marketplace is simple, but what effect will it have on the market?
As Domain Name Wire reported earlier this month, GoDaddy is launching an online marketplace to buy and sell goods. It is now live, and over the weekend I had a chance to test drive GoDaddy’s new “marketplace”, which operates similar to eBay stores or Amazon. The process to buy something was relatively simple, and you’ll be happy to hear that there are no upsell/cross-sell pages during the checkout process.
OK, so GoDaddy Marketplace works. But what is GoDaddy’s motive for launching it, and what effect will it have on competitors such as eBay?
Why did GoDaddy launched Marketplace?
We don’t know for sure, but I suspect it has less to do with incremental revenue and more to do with building its brand. GoDaddy can push its Quick Shopping Cart, a product it has offered to web site customers for a while. Users can import their products from Quick Shopping Cart to Marketplace.
When you think about it, web sites like eBay and Yahoo Stores use their paying customers to deliver traffic to their web sites. These customers (sellers) tell people about their products on these sites. It’s nice to have your customers e-mail a link that includes your web site to friends or buy pay-per-click ads to promote their products listed on your web site.
GoDaddy is using shops.godaddy.com as its marketplace URL; it is not using a unique domain name. While they’re on the site, users are just a click away from buying a GoDaddy product.
Will it Work?
That’s the million dollar question. There are a couple things working against GoDaddy here.
First, people visit GoDaddy to buy web services such as domain names and web hosting. They don’t go there to by tangible goods. Making the leap to tangible goods is hard.
Second, GoDaddy has to get a lot more listings for Marketplace to work. When I need to buy something I can’t find on typical sites, I usually go to eBay. I typed in some of these items on GoDaddy Marketplace and got zero results: Norelco, Sega, etc.
It would take a great consumer mindshift to add shops.godaddy.com to the list of places they go to find bargains and hard-to-find items.
After all, what does “the best yogo pants ever” have to do with web services?
eBay need not worry about a competitive threat yet. But judging from sellers’ disdain for the heavyweight, people are pulling for GoDaddy — or anyone else — to succeed.
Rob Sequin says
If Godaddy thinks they can take marketshare away from ebay or amazon, they are mistaken.
They can be a niche marketplace for like small and medium business products and services but ebay sellers are not going to list on godaddy.
I started selling on ebay in January 1997 before it was even called ebay. I have seen competitors come and go.
Marketplaces grow slowly with just the right amount of buyers and sellers. You can’t force either one too quickly.
So, unless Godaddy spends LOTS and LOTS of money or goes niche, they have nothing to offer.
How many people really know what Godaddy even is really? Adding a marketplace isn’t going to work. Maybe if they want to build out tdnam for hiring web related services and stuff, fine but general merchandise?
DOA.
EM @ KING.NET says
The business needs to expand, I just hope they can manage it effective.
If they can extend this service to WWD resellers, this might work.
EM
Tim Davids says
Who better to get a foothold and then buy a domain like cars.com or something?
AND Godaddy already can afford superbowl ads!
Rick says
I bought an external USB hardrive last nite from newegg. So I go today to see what the price for it would’ve been on the godaddy market. I click the ‘computer storage’ link and, wow, I’m presented with only two products – two fake zebra skin laptop bags. 🙂 Uh, ok, right.
Rob Sequin says
Sounds like godaddy has no idea what makes a good marketplace if they are letting this crap in and they are the only things listed.
If sellers and buyers visit a dead or tainted marketplace, they will never go back and godaddy marketplace is done forever.
Steve M says
I said it before, and I’ll say it again…a general marketplace given the maturity of such in today’s Internet world is a poor choice for GoDaddy.
There are far, far better and more profitable ways to leverage their high visitor count.
John Colascione says
In my opinion, they are straying a bit far from the table with this new idea. It’s a completely unrelated business and it almost seems like it will dilute their brand. As of now, there’s no question what GoDaddy in the event that someone has heard of i. They have done an excellent job promoting their brand.
I think they arer in an excellent position to build and maintain something like this but I would have rebraded it as something else, with a great name, and advertised GoDaddy on it, but not made it a part of Godaddy… But this Bob Parsons is no fool, so if it can work, he’s likely the one who can do it.. But still feels a little far reaching to me…..
ZiggyZool says
I certainly respect GoDaddy as a domain name provider but I personally would be hesitant to subscribe to their new service considering how far out of their normal realm this venture will be. Only time will tell..
Do yourself a favor and give Bonanzle a close look first. Bonanzle.com launched in September of 2008 and in less than 6 months has 1 million unique items and over 23K registered users, In what SmallBusinessComputing called “a runaway,” Bonanzle was named the “Best eBay Alternative” of 2008.
GoDaddy will charge you $ 4.99 per month before you even get a sale. Bonanzle has zero upfront costs; you will only pay when you sell an item. For me it’s a no brainer to stick with Bonanzle.com and hang on for the ride.
Angelarts1 says
Well, for those who this ebay sellers will not move to go daddy ……..they better think again! Maybe someone forgot that sellers are BUYERS and when we feel as if we are being pimped like cheap hoes by ebay…… we are going anywhere we can to find an alternative. I have been researching alternatives to ebay since our last boycott & ebays policy changes. http://www.powersellersunite.com gives ratings for acitivity on all online auctions. I know many many eaby sellers that are fed up with ebay & some of the nasty buyers who have now been given cart blache to kill our business with ebays stars rating! So if someone thinks that sellers won’t move from GREEDBAY…then they are lost in outer space! To get off greedbay & paypal is a blessing!
Dee says
I agree angel!!! I have an ebay store. I have had it for several years. Because I sell items that are over 100$ each my fb numbers are not high but my DSR rating is 4.9999% and much higher than the ebay average. Recently ebay held 135.00 for a sale. I was livid !! They do this just to make the interest off the money they hold and hide behind their “just keeping Ebay a safe marketplace” BS line! The desire to find another place to sell is HUGE, just read the seller forums at greedbay.We have begged google to open an auction,at least godaddy is one more alternative and they may have the bucks to advertise which hasn’t been done with ebay in forever!!
CabinFever says
I spent all of last year surfing and listing on many of the top alternatives. There are a lot of questions that come up for me when looking at the godaddy site and as a seller, I would not jump on it. First off…like the others have commented, I wonder how the marketplace idea works with their domain business. Diversifying is one thing…but staying within your expertise makes more sense for branding purposes.
I agree with the person who talks about powersellersunite – a great resource that I have been using for a year now. Their auction count list is very helpful and something to keep an eye on to see what is happening with the alternatives: http://www.powersellersunite.com/auctionsitewatch.php
I am no longer on the bay where I was a powerseller, but I list on several venues. So far, http://www.bonanzle.com is the only place that has given me steady sales, even though I am only working the business very part time right now. It is so easy to use, which is helpful since I work full time.
Mendozam says
Right now, GoDaddy is a bit like raw egg dropped on the floor- going in a dozen directions at once and really messy. I’ve looked into it and found more complaints than anything about GoDaddy in general.
Ebay sellers looking for a new place to sell should find another functional venue easily. Bonanzle, mentioned a few comments up is neat and tidy and does the job -and costs nothing up front.