The NZ selling market is a mess. What is going to happen?

We all know about Trademe.  They have recently raised their rates,  Trade Me said the fee for selling an item valued at $50 – about its average trade – would rise from $3.75 to $3.95, an increase of 5.3%.  The highest rise would be for items priced at $1500, for which success fees will increase by 8.1% to $79.50. There will be lower increases on higher-priced items and no change to the maximum $149 success fee.

Some users reported indignation as a couple months ago Trade Me reported an 8.4% jump in its annual profit to $75.6 million.    But it is hard for rivals to offer much competition as they lack a critical mass of buyers.

Who are the players in this market?

• Sella
• Wheedle
• Knomee
• and the one everyone thinks of:  Trademe
• What about Ebay?

Trademe

I will start with Trademe because they are the biggest player in the New Zealand market.

Looking today, they have:

• 61,481 cars
• 121,502 properties and houses
• 11,000 jobs
• 60,996 People online right now
• 3,069,281 active members
• 2,218,319 current listings

So, clearly they have good volume.  It is fair to say their volume is bigger than everyone else combined.

What are their fees like?

• Basic listing     Free
• Gallery     55c (25c for books and CDs)

Then if you sell, they charge a success fee:

• Up to $200     7.9% of sale price (50c minimum)
• $200 – $1500     $15.80 + 4.9% of sale price over $200
• Over $1500     $79.50 + 1.9% of sale price over $1500 (max fee = $149)

This is the major area of contention for users and competitors, as most competitors starting up new businesses are advertising lower fees or no fees.

Sella:

Sella.co.nz has a web page that lists the pros and cons, comparing them with trademe but obviously some of this may be marketing hype.  The primary difference is Sella is free of commissions or success fees.  Their description is:

Pure and simple, it’s free to buy or list. Our business model is to make money selling advertising on the site as well as offering featured listings, where for a small fee, users can buy priority ranking (ie: display their listings above others).

Having said that, while the listing may be free, the volume is a lot lower than trademe.  Here are their stats:

• 550,000 members
• 480,000 listings
• 415,000 users per month

Wheedle

Mainfreight co-founder and Rich-Lister Neil Graham is taking on Trade Me with a new online auction and classified site, Wheedle.co.nz.  Wheedle promises to be a lower cost alternative to trademe.

But after opening, and trading for a couple of days, Wheedle announced it woud close its online marketplace while it carries out a ”thorough update” of its systems and processes.   Managing director Carl Rees did not give an indication of how long that might take.

He said Wheedle would not reopen until its management team were ”completely confident its performance and processes meet the standards expected by New Zealand consumers”.   Wheedle’s website went offline after a blogger identified a fault that let people change the reserve price of other members’ auctions.

Asked in October when the site would reopen, general manager Carl Rees told NBR,

“At this point in time I have no idea. Hopefully before Christmas but it could be the New Year.”  “The fixes are minimal compared to the size of our entire source code and development. We identified the areas where we had problems and we have engaged an independent company to do the fixes … for peace of mind.”

It is not clear what fee if any will apply for under $20. Sellers won’t like a fee if it does not sell at all. But the fees are a lot cheaper than Trade Me. However the major factor is price. Say your item sells for $50. Then it is $1 on Wheedle and $3.95 on Trade Me making it a net $49 vs $46.25.

Knomee

Knomee.co.nz promises to be another alternative, with free listings.

http://www.facebook.com/Knomee is the only information at the moment until their site goes live.  Today is the day it is supposed to happen but no sign of life yet.  Sounds like it is supposed to happen at noon.

Knomee charges no commission on sales and no success fee.

EBay

The elephant in the room that nobody is talking about is Ebay.  Your guess is as good as mine why they do not have a presence here.

My assumption is that the market is just too small for them to care.  If they do try and gain a foothold here, I believe they will have an easier time (at stealing market share from trademe) than the other new players, because they have a proven website, and there will be no growing pains.  But until then, we need to pick from trademe or one of the newer alternatives.
Which do you prefer?

Triumph of the Nerds, Math and Modern Political Polling: Nate Silver Wins in 99 out of the last 100 States

Barack Obama may have comfortably won re-election in the electoral college, and squeaked a victory in the popular vote. But here is the absolute, undoubted winner of this election: Nate Silver and big data.

The Fivethirtyeight.com analyst, despite being pilloried by the pundits, outdid even his 2008 prediction. In that year, his mathematical model correctly called 49 out of 50 states, missing only Indiana (which went to Obama by 0.1%.)

This year, according to all projections, Silver’s model has correctly predicted 50 out of 50 states. A last-minute flip for Florida, which finally went blue in Silver’s prediction on Monday night, helped him to a perfect game.

What does this victory mean? That mathematical models can no longer be derided by “gut-feeling” pundits. That Silver’s contention — TV pundits are generally no more accurate than a coin toss — must now be given wider credence.

The great thing about a model like Silver’s (and that of similarly winning math nerds, such as Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium) is that it takes all that myopic human bias out of the equation. The ever-present temptation to cherry-pick polls is subverted.

You set your parameters at the start, deciding how much weight and accuracy you’re going to give to each poll based purely on their historical accuracy. You feed in whatever other conditions you think will matter to the result. Then, you sit back and let the algorithm do the work.

Silver may be a registered Democrat, but he learned back when he was doing baseball analysis that he’d never get anywhere if his models weren’t absolutely neutral, straight down the line between feuding teams.

By 2016, if the networks are paying attention, don’t be surprised to see that the talking heads are all Nate Silver clones. Every media organization will now want its own state poll-based algorithm, especially given how much traffic Silver has driven to the New York Times‘ website. We’ll see more about that kind of model, and less stories about individual polls, which are almost always misleading unless you aggregate them.

Statistics, big data, neutral mathematical models — this, it turns out, is what people want. Who knew?

Well, we geeks knew, but we’re starting to get used to having the rest of the world follow our lead. We had the smartphones first, we read the fantasy books before they became blockbuster movies and TV shows, and now we can boast that we stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Nate Silver’s data before it was popular.

— repost of http://mashable.com/2012/11/07/nate-silver-wins/?utm_source=twitterfeed

Day 30 of 30 (in 30 days of Geek) – Where do you see technology advancing in the next 20 years – and where will you fit in?

Day 30 – Where do you see technology advancing in the next 20 years – and where will you fit in?

I believe the next 20 years will bring a lot of new and exciting technology.  But that is too long to predict what will occur.

• I think HTML5 will finally be here, and the iPhone/Android wars will be over.
• Java will still be in use.  And so will COBOL 🙂
• We should have cool virtual reality glasses by then, or a system that will project as a hologram instead of  requiring a monitor.
• The idea in movies of not needing a keyboard or mouse (and manipulating objects in the holographic projection) seems really cool.  Can they pull it off?  No clue.
• All monitors will be touch screens.  And all glass will be tough like iPhone screens.
• All cars will have integrated technology, a monitor for communication, traffic, GPS and more, instead of a stereo.

Where will I fit in?  I am most happy when I am working with others, communicating and managing.  I am good with technology, and I will stay involved with tech topics, but I do not see myself doing much active development, except as a hobby.  I see myself as a CTO or Business Technology Manager for a large firm in 20 years, somewhere I can focus on strategic planning and guiding others into successful decisions.

That’s it for the 30 Days  of Geek series of blog posts.   I will now move on to some topics in other areas, but it has been fun !

Day 29 of 30 (in 30 days of Geek) – Looking back (at geek life), would you have done anything differently?

Day 29 – Looking back (at geek life), would you have done anything differently?

If I did things differently, I probably would not have met Linda and had 2 wonderful daughters and gotten to New Zealand.

So , I would not want to trade my current life.

Having said that, I did make a few decisions that in hindsight might not have made sense as a young adult.  I spent too much time playing and partying when I was in school.  And I changed majors multiple times.  But I have always loved technology, so in hindsight, going right into the technology sector would have made my live easier.  If I had gone straight into Computer Science for my BS, I probably would have gotten my Masters Degree at Duke or UNC (in Computer Science) and maybe my PhD too.

Instead, I got a more business oriented in my approach, and my Masters Degree is an MPA (Masters of Public Administration) with a concentration in Information Technology, from North Carolina State University.

So, things worked out well, I just took a roundabout way of getting where I am.

Day 28 of 30 (in 30 days of Geek) – How many computers lying about the house?

Day 28 – How many computers lying about the house?

Too Many.

• I am typing this on a Dell Inspiron 1764, which has a nice wide 17″ screen for development.
• Linda has a Dell 15″ laptop, which she uses for her Vet applictions and financial software.
• The kids (and I) use a MacBook as a family PC, along with a 24″ ViewSonic LED monitor
• I have 3 older PCs of various speeds which are still alive.  One is occassionaly used as a media center, one as a print and file sever, and the last might become a PC for the garage or clinic.
• Our 2 old laptops are still alive, one is a HP, the other a Compaq.  The Compaq has not been turned on in a few years, it”s power supply connection is unstable and the USB ports are flaky.
• We also have a Wii and an XBOX but I guess those might not count 🙂

So, the count is something like 8 total, 4-5 are useful.

Day 27 of 30 (in 30 days of Geek) – Fix a bug in some open source software and commit the patch

Day 27 – Fix a bug in some open source software and commit the patch

hmmm.  I think this is a mirror of the previous post on open source software, and I refer you to that answer

Day 26 of 30 (in 30 days of Geek) – Apple – friend, foe or other?

Day 26 – Apple – friend, foe or other?

See my previous post about thoughts about Microsoft.  As I addressed there, I think both Apple and Microsoft (and Linux) all have their pros and cons.

One thing I dont love is their restrictions on publishing apps.  (You have to go though their app store).  I understand their reasons, security (keeps bad stuff out) and revenue (they want to make $) but I woiuld like to be able to make my own iPhone apps and put them on my own phone.

I have a MacBook and I use it as a family PC, it is great for FaceTime chats with Grandad in America.

I also have an iPhone, and I love it.  The design is perfect, and it just works, every time.

So, I am not an apple “FanBoy” as some call Apple users, but I do use their products a lot.

Day 25 of 30 (in 30 days of Geek) – Microsoft – friend, foe or other?

– Microsoft – friend, foe or other?

Both.  Linux sucks for games, and Mac is not far ahead.  Yes, they could be good if the vendors supported them, but at the moment, they dont, so Microsoft is the only alternative.

One thing I do NOT like about Microsoft is that developing apps for that platform means that you are locked into only that one solution.

But the development packages are generally easy to use, and the end product is pretty smooth.  I learned C++ under some of the early versions of Visual Studio and it has only gotten better.  I do think their version control systems are lame though, (Open Source) SVN and GIT are much better, and integrate nicely into Visual Studio.

I have used and administered so many different Windows products:

• MS DOS
• Windows 3.0 – 3.1 for workgroups
• Windows NT (3.x – Windows 2000)
• Citrix (Remote)
• Windows 95, 98, ME
• Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7
• Windows Server 2000 – 2008
• Windows CE (Mobile)

I have not yet tried Windows 8, but I am hearing interesting things.

Day 24 of 30 (in 30 days of Geek) – How do you feel about Open Source vs Proprietary software?

– How do you feel about Open Source vs Proprietary software?

This can be a very passionate topic.  Many of my (Linux using) peers feel very strongly about supporting ONLY Open Source software.  On the otherhand, I work with people in the other camp (alsmost exclusively Microsoft) who refuse to consider the possibility that there is any merit in anything but proprietary software.

I am not an ideological pusher of either, I believe both have their places.

When I need to do image editing and graphics work, or want to chat via facetime I go to my Mac (primarily proprietary apps).

When I want to develop a bit of Java code, I go to Linux and use an Open Source IDE.

When I want to play games, or have a business app that only runs on a Windows PC (our accounting package for example) I go to Windows 7.  Typically proprietary.

I will gladly use a Linux distribution that has lots of Open Source apps, and I find many of them equal to or better than their proprietary equivalents  But there are definately some situations where there is no Open Source options.  I find Photoshop superior to GIMP for example, and I like ARCInfo for GIS stuff and SAS for Statistical work.

So, there you have it.  I have my cake and eat it too.

Day 23 of 30 (in 30 days of Geek) – Post a review of an application that you use.

Day 23 – Post a review of an application that you use.

I am not sure if/when I will get around to doing this.  Maybe one day.

Until then how about checking out my next next post or my twitter account ?