Bought out GameGavel.com, need community input.

[CPUWIZ]

I have/had a lifetime account as well.

 

Sent from my phrenologists waiting room.

 

I had one of the very first accounts, lifetime for free as well. Not honoring that, is like Tivo all of a sudden getting bought by another company and your lifetime subscription to it going away. Behind the starting line for sure.

 

I am grandfathered into a unlimited data plan on AT&T, because they bought Cingular, they can't touch that. In fact, I have 2 cellphones with unlimited data.

 

If they had kicked me, I would have gone to another provider out of protest.

 

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

I have attempted to reach the GameGavel site with 3 latest versions of Internet Explorer / Firefox / Chrome but I get a warning about expired security certificate. Below is the Internet Explorer example -

 

 

Otherwise, all I have to say is GameGavel a few years back is actually the only site I ever sold anything on to date. I also got in early with lifetime free membership and having never sold anything online ever admittedly I was overwhelmed with the idea of Ebay so to test the waters

I put my little minor item on GG and sold it a short time later. So that was my ONLY experience with it as it was, no problem. Yes for some time now I have notice very sparse listings as well as more and more everything seems to be BUY IT NOW as well not really seeing a lot of value in what is even listed. Hopes that GG would ever even be a minor player in the video game auction business were dashed over the years. It seems like despite the problems and complaints Ebay is to auction as Facebook is to Social Media and Google is to Search Engines as Windows is to operating systems, YES you can bitch and moan about all the downsides but they are all the Kings in their field as far as user awareness and being the default that the masses will use first. Giant corporations run everything so it is very tough for challengers in any given service to find a presence in the market. I do not envy anyone trying to take them on let alone compete in a profitable way.

[Shawn]

 

I had one of the very first accounts, lifetime for free as well. Not honoring that, is like Tivo all of a sudden getting bought by another company and your lifetime subscription to it going away.

 

 

Yep, I have a free for life account as well. Not that I'm using it. It looks like Eli is going to take whatever might be left that could be a positive asset (like the member base) but ditch anything that could be considered a negative liability to him (like the previous obligations associated with lifetime free memeberships to the sellers that built that memeber base) cause that won't fit in with his plans.

 

Both GG and RM are toxic properties. I have no clue why he would even consider buying them as it will no doubt spill onto the Piko Brand which is not a good thing.

[PikoInteractive]

 

I had one of the very first accounts, lifetime for free as well. Not honoring that, is like Tivo all of a sudden getting bought by another company and your lifetime subscription to it going away. Behind the starting line for sure.

 

I am grandfathered into a unlimited data plan on AT&T, because they bought Cingular, they can't touch that. In fact, I have 2 cellphones with unlimited data.

 

If they had kicked me, I would have gone to another provider out of protest.

 

 

 

 

I suppose I do get what you guys mean and feel as you paid Mike a lifetime membership. If I were in your shoes I would also feel like I should keep my grandfathered account. If you were in my shoes I bet you wouldn't be so thrilled to give away free accounts.

 

But I thought of a compromise that should work pretty well. What I am going to do is to grandfather any free account that has listed/sold items up to 4 months prior the cutoff date. Cutoff date is when we move to a new platform so it should be a while from now. So there is plenty of time for everyone that wants to keep their unlimited account to list stuff for sale and be active.

 

Win Win!

Edited May 27, 2017 by PikoInteractive

[PikoInteractive]

 

Yep, I have a free for life account as well. Not that I'm using it. It looks like Eli is going to take whatever might be left that could be a positive asset (like the member base) but ditch anything that could be considered a negative liability to him (like the previous obligations associated with lifetime free memeberships to the sellers that built that memeber base) cause that won't fit in with his plans.

 

Both GG and RM are toxic properties. I have no clue why he would even consider buying them as it will no doubt spill onto the Piko Brand which is not a good thing.

 

Piko Has nothing to do with this though.

[Shawn]

 

Piko Has nothing to do with this though.

 

You know that's not how people will see it. Myself I think your Piko,ect. stuff is great. Buying GG though? Dumbass move dude. Stop before you start. Do whatever plan you had just ditch that name and stain before you can't wash it off.

[PikoInteractive]

 

You know that's not how people will see it. Myself I think your Piko,ect. stuff is great. Buying GG though? Dumbass move dude. Stop before you start. Do whatever plan you had just ditch that name and stain before you can't wash it off.

Hopefully you are mistaken; However It would take me about 1-1.5 years to get a website rank organically how GG is ranked on google now. Or several thousand $ in advertising to get it where the domain is now ranked to get it in some reasonable time frame (more than 6 months).

 

I do think customers are smart enough to figure out that a website is under new management and other entities are not scamming them.

[CPUWIZ]

Make sure to scrub it of all graphics, especially that hammer character.

[PikoInteractive]

Make sure to scrub it of all graphics, especially that hammer character.

 

Not a fan of that thing. Logo is not that bad, but I less is more. So a simpler one would be best. Kind of like Ebay and Google de-made their logos a while back.

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

 

 

 

I suppose I do get what you guys mean and feel as you paid Mike a lifetime membership. If I were in your shoes I would also feel like I should keep my grandfathered account. If you were in my shoes I bet you wouldn't be so thrilled to give away free accounts.

 

But I thought of a compromise that should work pretty well. What I am going to do is to grandfather any free account that has listed/sold items up to 4 months prior the cutoff date. Cutoff date is when we move to a new platform so it should be a while from now. So there is plenty of time for everyone that wants to keep their unlimited account to list stuff for sale and be active.

 

Win Win!

 

None of that will matter until I can reach the site and login, is that INVALID SECURITY CERTIFICATE issue going to be cleared up anytime soon or will it be fixed automatically after the move? I am not a techy guy all I know is none of my browsers currently allow me to the site let alone log in. THANKS.

 

Admittedly, I am simple minded when it comes to business and I know nothing so just my very uneducated observation when I say this but isn't it funny when a business or service is under new management if customers are in debt or owe something not much changes for the customer BUT when the business / service had a prior agreement with the customer it's all "Well we are not obligated and it has nothing to do with us" lol. Throw the customers a bone and we should be thankful, ah well.

Edited May 27, 2017 by OldSchoolRetroGamer

[Pipercub]

Hopefully you are mistaken; However It would take me about 1-1.5 years to get a website rank organically how GG is ranked on google now. Or several thousand $ in advertising to get it where the domain is now ranked to get it in some reasonable time frame (more than 6 months).

 

I do think customers are smart enough to figure out that a website is under new management and other entities are not scamming them.

 

New management of a dumpster fire is just that, a new guy standing next to a burning trash heap. The poison and stain won't go away, people inside the community will avoid it for many reasons, but the simplest one is that they don't want to see a scammer rewarded, and they will continue to warn people from outside the community (person who finds a high value item and wants to know where to sell it). You (Eli) are not a scammer but you put money in MK's pocket and people are going to be dead set against rewarding you for that or helping to facilitate it. There have been many posts were people have expressed their opinion about making sure not one dime goes to him and that will include it passing through you. As your already seeing the former sellers granted accounts for "life" that they haven't used since the site went abandoned are not happy about it restarting with their accounts terminated, so you loose them too. The eco system also makes no sense today but did 5-10 years ago. Today there are so many no-obligation no-fee services like Facebook and Craigslist that people can use for things that don't need a national audience, and for things that do your just not going to beat Ebay for visibility.

 

Same with Retro, the burned writers and contributors won't come back and the readers have already jumped ship and move on, Patreon could barely break 300 people willing to consider one issue. Even if you staff it out with great people somehow the moment is gone.

 

I have liked your other ventures and been impressed by your ability to see value in things such as the faith based media, but I am certain you will be spending a lot of time and effort in the future trying to wash this stink off. Out of all the reactions to your decision has there been one positive one, how would you gauge the interest?

[PikoInteractive]

Pipercup, posting stuff like that or derailing the subject is the best way to lose my respect; I don't have much left for you to be honest. If I buy something It ends up being a trashcan in flames, I'll just sell heat.

 

You can question my gut all you want, at the end of the day I'm the one losing money aren't I? Like I "lost" with Noah's Ark, Duke Nukem Genesis, Wisdom Tree, etc etc etc etc.

 

 

 

None of that will matter until I can reach the site and login, is that INVALID SECURITY CERTIFICATE issue going to be cleared up anytime soon or will it be fixed automatically after the move? I am not a techy guy all I know is none of my browsers currently allow me to the site let alone log in. THANKS.

 

Admittedly, I am simple minded when it comes to business and I know nothing so just my very uneducated observation when I say this but isn't it funny when a business or service is under new management if customers are in debt or owe something not much changes for the customer BUT when the business / service had a prior agreement with the customer it's all "Well we are not obligated and it has nothing to do with us" lol. Throw the customers a bone and we should be thankful, ah well.

 

I just got login details like 2-3 days ago, sounds like the secure browsing certificate has expired. All that will be fixed once we start working on the site. You should be able to log in with no problem then.

 

Also, on your comment about credit etc. I didn't buy a business entity, so any debt anybody may have towards Game Gavel LLC I have no stake on it.

Edited May 27, 2017 by PikoInteractive

[+5-11under]

I checked out GameGavel a few years ago or so, to see if I should start selling/auctioning there. There were virtually no auctions going on.

 

Therefore, I think the first thing you need is customers (buyers and sellers). I wouldn't worry too much about the lifetime memberships - If it was me, I'd probably give them 2-3 year free memberships, and maybe after that start charging them (probably still at a lower rate? - I don't know the full rate structure, but I'd make sure they're happy).

 

Without customers, the site is useless, so might as well get the ball started with some good deals. Don't try to make money during the first 2-3 years, just build up the base.

 

/just my opinion.

[icemanxp300]

I have tried to sell on GameGavel a few times w/no success, mainly because I only do bins and such. I even listed my items at 10% discount of ebay as I have (had) a lifetime no fee account and still no sales. It has been a few years since I made a listing because there is just no traffic at that site.

 

I purchased my account for $20 back in May 2010, I still have my confirmation upgrade email from Mike on May 17th. I purchased back then in hopes the site would turn into a good competitor to Ebay, sadly it did not.

 

When I used the site I though the listings tools were very poorly designed and not easy to navigate. I would suggest a more straight forward listing tool, that any monkey can use so as to make selling easier. It's design last I used it was very generic on confirming auctions and such.

 

However none of this matters if you do not get traffic. Like already mentioned Mike has a bad rep, and as such you have a lot of work to try and make this site operable again. If you want this site to succeed you really need to advertise it a lot. Gaming forums such as these is not going to cut-it.

 

Also are you making this a pure game auction site as was intended or are you going to open it up across the board? If you want to compete with Ebay you can't do just games and expect competitive traffic, you really need to make it a full service site that sells everything. Games in general is just a small category and you will never get ebay status if you limit the site like that.

[Flojomojo]

 

I'm sorry, but this is literally impossible for me to take seriously. I admire your moxie but I'm going to go negative.

 

If you don't want it to be associated with Piko Interactive, I suggest you stop talking about it from your account called PikoInteractive.

 

If you want to try and start a reputable buying and selling site, don't call it GameGavel. If it ever had any good karma, that boiled away years ago, both because of the Scameleon saga, and because it wasn't that great an idea to begin with. A website like this grows because of network effects, getting better the more people use it. We've all seen "alternatives" to Twitter, Feedly, Facebook, Reddit, and Ebay come and go. They've all died because they can't get enough mass to sustain themselves. The site, the name, the technology itself is worthless, it's the community that matters. GameGavel hasn't had significant traffic in years. As others have said, you're starting out underwater if you don't plan to do something nice for the "lifetime" members, and there are a lot of them.

 

You bought the contact lists from GG and RR. We know you've already sent out at least one unsolicited commercial email to that list, promising great things. I'm no marketing genius, but if it were me behind the wheel, I wouldn't send links to a "coming soon" page, I'd wait until I had something interesting to offer, then bring people in to see that. Overpromising and underdelivering is the way of the Chameleon, and we've all had just about enough of that (look at RetroBlox and Lythium for some other vaporware peddlers).

 

Retro Magazine can only go up from where it sits now, and the name is generic enough that you might get some forgiveness if you do something truly special with it. Do you have writers, editors, something unique to offer that isn't covered better or more thoroughly by UK's Retro Gamer? Are you going to follow Mike's "print-or-bust" philosophy? Personally, I think that medium makes exactly as much sense as $50+ ROM cartridges in 2017.

 

I'm sorry you've put some time and treasure into this, and hope it was money you can afford to lose. It makes me "mildly nauseous" (that's a little James Comey understatement for you) to think that Mike Kennedy is doing anything but suffering from the crap he tried to pull, and I certainly hope he didn't make significant money from you. If it's not too late, I would kill the deal and get as much money back as possible. If not, I suppose one good outcome is that MK is out of the business of "cornering the retro market" and going back to his day job.

 

I have mixed feelings about whaling on someone like this, but I really feel this is a uniquely terrible idea. I'd wish you luck, but it would come off as hollow and insincere because I'm not sending you a nickel. Sorry.

[PikoInteractive]

I checked out GameGavel a few years ago or so, to see if I should start selling/auctioning there. There were virtually no auctions going on.

 

Therefore, I think the first thing you need is customers (buyers and sellers). I wouldn't worry too much about the lifetime memberships - If it was me, I'd probably give them 2-3 year free memberships, and maybe after that start charging them (probably still at a lower rate? - I don't know the full rate structure, but I'd make sure they're happy).

 

Without customers, the site is useless, so might as well get the ball started with some good deals. Don't try to make money during the first 2-3 years, just build up the base.

 

/just my opinion.

 

It is definitely not intended to make money. My approach is traffic wise.

 

 

I have tried to sell on GameGavel a few times w/no success, mainly because I only do bins and such. I even listed my items at 10% discount of ebay as I have (had) a lifetime no fee account and still no sales. It has been a few years since I made a listing because there is just no traffic at that site.

 

I purchased my account for $20 back in May 2010, I still have my confirmation upgrade email from Mike on May 17th. I purchased back then in hopes the site would turn into a good competitor to Ebay, sadly it did not.

 

When I used the site I though the listings tools were very poorly designed and not easy to navigate. I would suggest a more straight forward listing tool, that any monkey can use so as to make selling easier. It's design last I used it was very generic on confirming auctions and such.

 

However none of this matters if you do not get traffic. Like already mentioned Mike has a bad rep, and as such you have a lot of work to try and make this site operable again. If you want this site to succeed you really need to advertise it a lot. Gaming forums such as these is not going to cut-it.

 

Also are you making this a pure game auction site as was intended or are you going to open it up across the board? If you want to compete with Ebay you can't do just games and expect competitive traffic, you really need to make it a full service site that sells everything. Games in general is just a small category and you will never get ebay status if you limit the site like that.

 

I think past management failed to advertise in outlets that would really bring people. I do have several places I want to explore to bring sellers. The site is nothing without sellers and the site is nothing without buyers. So that is definitely my main concern.

 

 

 

I'm sorry, but this is literally impossible for me to take seriously. I admire your moxie but I'm going to go negative.

 

If you don't want it to be associated with Piko Interactive, I suggest you stop talking about it from your account called PikoInteractive.

 

If you want to try and start a reputable buying and selling site, don't call it GameGavel. If it ever had any good karma, that boiled away years ago, both because of the Scameleon saga, and because it wasn't that great an idea to begin with. A website like this grows because of network effects, getting better the more people use it. We've all seen "alternatives" to Twitter, Feedly, Facebook, Reddit, and Ebay come and go. They've all died because they can't get enough mass to sustain themselves. The site, the name, the technology itself is worthless, it's the community that matters. GameGavel hasn't had significant traffic in years. As others have said, you're starting out underwater if you don't plan to do something nice for the "lifetime" members, and there are a lot of them.

 

You bought the contact lists from GG and RR. We know you've already sent out at least one unsolicited commercial email to that list, promising great things. I'm no marketing genius, but if it were me behind the wheel, I wouldn't send links to a "coming soon" page, I'd wait until I had something interesting to offer, then bring people in to see that. Overpromising and underdelivering is the way of the Chameleon, and we've all had just about enough of that (look at RetroBlox and Lythium for some other vaporware peddlers).

 

Retro Magazine can only go up from where it sits now, and the name is generic enough that you might get some forgiveness if you do something truly special with it. Do you have writers, editors, something unique to offer that isn't covered better or more thoroughly by UK's Retro Gamer? Are you going to follow Mike's "print-or-bust" philosophy? Personally, I think that medium makes exactly as much sense as $50+ ROM cartridges in 2017.

 

I'm sorry you've put some time and treasure into this, and hope it was money you can afford to lose. It makes me "mildly nauseous" (that's a little James Comey understatement for you) to think that Mike Kennedy is doing anything but suffering from the crap he tried to pull, and I certainly hope he didn't make significant money from you. If it's not too late, I would kill the deal and get as much money back as possible. If not, I suppose one good outcome is that MK is out of the business of "cornering the retro market" and going back to his day job.

 

I have mixed feelings about whaling on someone like this, but I really feel this is a uniquely terrible idea. I'd wish you luck, but it would come off as hollow and insincere because I'm not sending you a nickel. Sorry.

 

Sorry to me your post and thoughts are a waste of (my) time, specially if they are going off topic. I just see a worthless wall of text. Sorry to be harsh but is the truth.

Edited May 27, 2017 by PikoInteractive

[Flojomojo]

You asked for input. I don't care if you read it, but it was meant for you.

[UKMike]

 

New management of a dumpster fire is just that, a new guy standing next to a burning trash heap.

 

HAHAHA!

 

Sorry, but that is funny.

 

I just got login details like 2-3 days ago, sounds like the secure browsing certificate has expired. All that will be fixed once we start working on the site. You should be able to log in with no problem then.

 

Don't forget to remove the huge and annoying ads that Mike was running for 2 years after the contract expired because he didn't know how to remove them.

 

[PikoInteractive]

You asked for input. I don't care if you read it, but it was meant for you.

"But when it comes to the marketplaces, what would you like to see implemented? What would make you sell on the site?"

 

Your manifesto had nothing to do with the only question asked. Sorry again, won't read off topic.

[Flojomojo]

"But when it comes to the marketplaces, what would you like to see implemented? What would make you sell on the site?"

 

A large audience of paying customers with money, on a site that is not called GameGavel, that provides enough logistical assistance to make it more worthwhile to use them than just yardsaling things. I know of a place like that already, it's called eBay.

[PikoInteractive]

Off topic again ^^ lol I give up.

[UKMike]

To be fair, that wasn't so off topic, however, I think you've chosen a tricky audience to convince.

 

I think you need to attract the wider audience who are unaware of its history and notoriety, we know those people are out there in droves.

 

If you manage to do that and build a successful site with members who are either unaware or don't care, then people here would either have to acknowledge or entertain it, however reluctantly, or would still stay away on principle. That shouldn't be a loss to you as you will never win them over anyway and they are a tiny part of your potential audience.

 

There is an audience out there, you just have to find it, attract it and keep it.

[SignGuy81]

Off topic again ^^ lol I give up.

 

How was he/she off topic the second time? Looks like the question was answered pretty direct like.

Edited May 28, 2017 by SignGuy81

[Flojomojo]

How was he/she off topic the second time? Looks like the question was answered pretty direct like.

Because it wasn't what Eli wanted to hear.

 

When someone is asking you whether you want cat poo, dog poo, horse poo, or hamster poo for lunch, a reasonable person would take issue with the question.

 

It doesn't matter, he's already "invested" in this boondoggle, and I'm obviously not going to be participating.

[PikoInteractive]

What does it have to do ebay business model etc. With feature suggestions?

 

He basically answered "what would make you sell on gamegavel" by saying "not gamegavel". I not consider that the answer of thr question.

 

Anyways, last off topic comment I address.

 

I havent been able to address helpul comments in the thread.

 

Edit: and of course I am passive aggresively called unreasonable. Sigh.

Edited May 28, 2017 by PikoInteractive