Beating the buyer/seller Catch-22

...when starting up a c2c selling site.

[eugenebarnes]

I have a prospective client wanting to set up a "classified ad" type of website where sellers list items for sale and buyers can get good deals buying from private individuals. (Think eBay without the auction process).

One problem that comes to mind is the Catch-22 of not being able to attract many buyers until you have lots of items listed for sale... and not being able to attract sellers until you have lots of traffic from prospective buyers.

Has anyone here tackled this problem? What did you do to overcome it?

[GilbertZ]

If you build it they will come. I had a Classifieds page put up in 1999. Was wondering the same exact thing. First item was up for sale within a couple of days and sold within 2 weeks. I knew we had a winner.

Build great content, be patient and they will come. Do it with the philosophy of Brett's article...build the page, don't worry about it, keep building, let the search engine food bring you traffic, one day people will use what you built...But I do know what you mean.

[eugenebarnes]

"Build great content, be patient and they will come."

Even with content, I assume the emphasis is on PATIENCE.

I get the impression this client thinks the site will take off within a few weeks. I would assume that months or even a year or two could go by before such a site generates a decent revenue stream.

And, of course, if the site doesn't make them rich within a year, it will be my fault. :(

[Crazy_Fool]

seed the site to make it look well used. add a few items to sell and a few that have already been sold. of course, these will be your own items etc, but you'll be advertising and buying in lots of different names.

don't over do it though - make it look very natural.

[tony1999]

I can relate to everything said so far - my site is also a c2c and all I do is plug away delivering content, content and content, in the hope, as originally stated, the buyers come looking, which then attracts the sellers, which then attracts the buyers, again. At least that's how I think it should work. Then I start charging a small subscription fee (and lose them all.)