The UK's first eco friendly auction site

[Stellar]

As a green alternative to ebay, a friend and I have created the UK's first auction site that focused soley on ethical and eco friendly products and services. It is called Ecocentra.com.

Take a look and let me know what you think. And if you have anything to sell that is ethical or environmentally friendly, then please register and list your products! We are waiving the commission for any products listed before Jan 31st (after that it is only 2% of the selling price).

[drivetowin]

On the positive side - your site looks nice

On the negative side - like all auction sites apart from eBay your difficulty is going to be to reach the critical mass of items for sale that people a) want to buy and b) think it's worthwhile to list their items for sale.

It's good that you're waiving commission until Jan 31st but I would have thought waiving commission until say June 30th would be a better move - at the moment what you need is items for sale, and thousands of them, so don't put any disincentive in the way - short term pain is the only way to long term gain with any site which requires user participation

[HarveyC]

Site looks nice

Just a suggestion - would be good if there were a few products listed on the homepage to give curious users something to click on - perhaps even to reassure the user it's a busy site. Look at ebay for example, even if you're not wanting to buy something there's always an interesting creative (eg. "Play hard" with gaming, musical and football gear advertised at the moment).

Did you know you can also get "green" hosting??! Might be nice to put in a press release

[futureweb]

Looks good nice idea to focus on somthing a little different - Let me know if you want to swap links with the Pig

[Stellar]

On the positive side - your site looks nice

Thanks

On the negative side - like all auction sites apart from eBay your difficulty is going to be to reach the critical mass of items for sale that people a) want to buy and b) think it's worthwhile to list their items for sale.

Yes this is true. To be honest, that did put me off doing this at first. But then nothing ventured nothing gained. And I think our auction is very different to all the rest and we have already got some good PR, so hopefully that will lead to a lot of people listing products.

It's good that you're waiving commission until Jan 31st but I would have thought waiving commission until say June 30th would be a better move - at the moment what you need is items for sale, and thousands of them, so don't put any disincentive in the way - short term pain is the only way to long term gain with any site which requires user participation

Agreed. We have actually just decided to extend the free commission offer until the end of Feb and will continue to review it on a monthly basis.

Just a suggestion - would be good if there were a few products listed on the homepage to give curious users something to click on - perhaps even to reassure the user it's a busy site. Look at ebay for example, even if you're not wanting to buy something there's always an interesting creative (eg. "Play hard" with gaming, musical and football gear advertised at the moment).

Yeah we did think about that. In the end we decided that it made the home page look too cluttered. And we have some other cool stuff to put on the home page in the near future. Although I do agree, a few products on there could be a good thing.

Did you know you can also get "green" hosting??! Might be nice to put in a press release

Really? Do you know who the provider is?

[Stellar]

Looks good nice idea to focus on somthing a little different - Let me know if you want to swap links with the Pig

I would love to swap links with a Pig!
I haven't added the link page yet, but when I do, I'll let you know.

[Flightmapping]

"As a green alternative to ebay"

I'm sorry for being a bit cynical here, but isn't ebay already one of the greenest sites on the internet, although they don't choose to go out saying so.

The whole idea of ebay is that it exists to match surplus items to people who want such products, thus playing an essential part in the whole reduce / re-use / recycle process.

They might be a "big, nasty, publicly traded corporation", but just because they don't go round telling people "excuse me, but I’m considerably more ethically correct than yow", doesn't mean they aren't.

Good luck with the business, but I hope you can grow it on its own merits, rather than comparing yourselves with Ebay.

[Stellar]

James,

Fair point. I think ebay could be considered green in the past because orginally it was a place to buy and sell second hand/reused products, but a large number of goods bought and sold on ebay are now new products and most of those are not ethical or green in nature. In fact you could say they are the opposite.

Our comparison with ebay is that we are an aution site/online market place like them, so it is easy for consumer to understand how our site works. And if a consumer wants to buy something that is ethically or produced environmentally friendly, then we are catering for that market. Ebay is catering for the mass market.

[neilranatunga]

Really like the look of the website Stellar.

Hope it all goes well for you as it's always nice to see an ethical website do well.

[Flightmapping]

Stella,

Good points, however:

"And if a consumer wants to buy something that is ethically or produced environmentally friendly, then we are catering for that market. Ebay is catering for the mass market."

I've always questioned the effectiveness of environmental products which identify themselves as niche. In so many cases, everyone - or at least the majority - needs to change for any real effect to take place. Otherwise, aren't people just satisfying their own conscience?