Review - TradeMe.co.nz

Introduction
If you live in New Zealand, you will have heard of TradeMe. This website is New Zealands equivalent of US Online Auction Giant Ebay. Out of a population of 4 million, 1 million people are a member of this website. The numbers are staggering and the story behind TradeMe's rise is one of the little guy beats the big guy.

History
Started back in 1999 by Sam Morgan. Trade Me started out of a simple problem. Sam needed a small heater for his cold and draughty Wellington Flat. He decided to have a look online to see if he could find a nice cheap second hand heater. After much searching he stumbled across the Trade and Exchange website. This was the online section of the popular classifieds newspaper. The funny thing was that the ads on the website were a week old and by the time you called them the items had long been sold. Looking at the funny side Sam decided to have a crack at his own website where people could post ads for free, and best of all live.

He was getting into a bit of website design so started to create the site in his spare time on his dad laptop. He managed to get the programming to work and encouraged all his friends and family to sign up. It went this way for a few months, there were only a small number of members but slowly membership started to grow. Before long there were a few thousand members and things started to tick along nicely.

Things went well until Sam found the site runnng costs were starting to rise. He needed to get some revenue through the site. He tried and tried with banner advertising. It was mildly successful but never seemed to cover the costs. Also the long hours time Sam was putting into the site were not being compensated. After much indecision he decided to start charging for the service. At first he charged to post classifieds. This gave revenue a much needed boost, and was enough to cover costs and pay have a little left over.

After looking at what the Early Ebay site was doing in the USA he decided to add online auctions to the mix. He charged a small success fee around 5% of the sale price if the auction was successful. The auction phoemoenena worldwide was set to boom and online auctions took off. This was no doubt in part to the convenientce and addictiveness of this new craze.

The site was starting to make money. Some old colloeagues heard about Sams venture and could see the metrics of ebay. They decided to back sam and invested 70,000 and provided some office space. A few staff were hired and the business was able to buy much needed computer hardware to keep the site loading fast.

I recommend checking out the website, and if you are in New Zealand or Australia consider signing up at www.trademe.co.nz

You can also find out more information about Trademe on the TradeIt website:

www.tradeit.co.nz

Auckland, New Zealand