Briarbid Still Has Not Taken Off Eh?

damnyak · Feb 26, 2013

Hey gang, not posting as frequently as I would like to,. Gosh darn life!
So I recently came into a dozen or so New Old Stock of some fantastic pipes. and I was thinking of putting them on Briar bid, however the traffic seems nil.
@kevin, any word on the happenings? Are you still promoting it, or is it twiddling away slowly. and if so are you going to bring back trading on here?
Seem we use to do a lot of trading etc, but none of that seems to be happening, not even on briar bid?
Kind of sucks.
Thoughts anyone?

Perique · Feb 26, 2013

Small quantity trading is tough to monetize, largely because the audience is so small. One alternative idea would be a members-only trading sub-forum. Small annual fee to the site, age verification, and waiver of Kevin"'s liability for rogue traders. What do you thnk?

hfearly · Feb 26, 2013

I've sold a pipe on briarbid.com once, but it was a very irritating experience. I didn't know which steps to take to post the auction to my liking and no help that would take me through the process. There were no updates as the auction was going. Nobody bid on the offered pipe until the very last second and basically scored it for the starting price which I had set a little low to attract buyers. And the post-processing (sending messages/invoices) to the winner and organizing the Paypal/payment/shipping thing was also not straightforward at all, with lots of these things buried in complex menus. So, based on my overall experience, I'd rather not use briarbid.com again if I can help it. Sorry if this sounds really bad, I really don't mean to completely diss the site and system. Just an explanation why I personally am not using the site much.

dukdalf · Feb 26, 2013

Tried it, won't do it again any time soon...

mp31guitar · Feb 26, 2013

I check it out about once a week to see if there's any pipes I like. Thing is, there's never more than a few pipes listed. Just doesn't seem worth it.

shaintiques · Feb 26, 2013

I've used it and had many good experiences, I think that if it got promoted especially to some of the big name ebay sellers, it might really take off.

captainsousie · Feb 26, 2013

So I recently came into a dozen or so New Old Stock of some fantastic pipes.

Briarbid or not, this has me interested. Please give us (me) a heads-up when they sell.
Not touching the briarbid part of the discussion with a 11' pole. EDIT: except to say this. I'll probably be trying it. Don't know when but I'll try almost anything once.

shaintiques · Feb 26, 2013

The thing about briar bid is that it took the place of the buy/sell/trade part of the forum, we used to sell pipes to each other on here, you knew when you listed them that the guys on the forum were going to bid or buy them, I think it is important to not compare it to ebay, though I would love to see more of those guys selling there, but rather to use it to sell pipes to the guys on here who you would have sold to before on the b/s/t/ link. Also it allows you to sell tobacco, which is awesome, and pretty much the only place where you can do it especially loose.

ejames · Feb 26, 2013

I have bought and sold on BriarBid. Don't have any problems making up the listings,especially since the allowed pic size was increased. It does seem like BriarBid is getting no promotion or that there is even anyone "home" around there. It appears the 'Contact US" link does not work, I've yet to get an answer to a question.

I'd really like to see this work but I'm not so sure it will. It's not getting support it needs from the pipe community or the site owners.

pitchfork · Feb 26, 2013

damnyak,
Nice to see your post. I was wondering whether you were still posting to the forums or not. Hope all is well.
--pitch

pstlpkr · Feb 26, 2013

New sites take some time.

This one took a couple of years before it really started to take off.

sparroa · Feb 26, 2013

I never used the B/S/T forum. Not once.
I used to find comfort that is was there, however, and I had no qualms about using it.
I would be less inclined to use Briarbid for the same purpose. I don't know why, it just doesn't draw me. Perhaps that will change with time.
I am a longtime eBay user, but I have only bought a handful of pipes on that - all low value.
I guess you can say I am not a big spender. I believe in tobacco before pipes, 110% of the time.
Anyway, I am not trying to sound negative. Best of luck to Briarbid.

rhogg · Feb 26, 2013

Hard to compete with time tested methods of selling like eBay.

hfearly · Feb 26, 2013

Well ... eBay had decades of time to collect experience and hundreds of developers working on the product to perfect the online-auction experience. A garage-project like briardbid just can't be comparable, that's for sure. However, if the original intention was to be a substitute for the B/S/T forums, why not keep it "neighborhoodly" and user friendly? You know, small things would go a long way then. Need to keep it simple and casual, instead of trying to overcomplicate and trying to copy eBay. You know a couple of checkboxes (new pipe/estate pipe/tobacco), an input box for start price, an input box for optional buyout price, fix the duration to 1 week, and 1 box to describe the item and shipping stuff. And after the auction is done, skip this whole invoice management stuff ...
Right now, I see a bunch of people to list a thing on Briarbid and then start a discussion thread about the item in these forums here, which imho. is no different than having a b/s/t forum in the first place, which in turn is just a lot less overhead than using 2 different sites and platforms. Maybe a [briadbid] tag for this forum would be cool, so you can just inline your item like an image in a discussion thread?

lestrout · Feb 26, 2013

I like the concepts and the people behind Briarbid. I've bought both pipes and tobacco on BB and am quite pleased with my experiences.
hp

les

uberam3rica · Feb 26, 2013

So I recently came into a dozen or so New Old Stock of some fantastic pipes. and I was thinking of putting them on Briar bid, however the traffic seems nil.

I put stuff up recently, and it was bought out after not too long. I think there are more people looking then there are people selling.

taerin · Feb 27, 2013

I think it is that with briarbid after something sells, you no longer see it, it only seems like a lot less is being sold because you only see the couple of items currently selling... With the added pipe tobacco it does really rock, being the only avenue you can sell/trade it easily (loose), certainly can't do that legally with Ebay. I think you really gotta keep in mind that it was designed to be used with PM forums and not to replace Ebay.

ejames · Feb 27, 2013

I think you really gotta keep in mind that it was designed to be used with PM forums and not to replace Ebay.

Briarbid,IMO.needs more than the members of this forum to survive. Although it has been talked about on some of the other forum,and one even has a section for Briarbid and Ebay listings it needs SELLERS.This forum doesn't( or hasn't yet) provided many sellers.If there are no listing folks are going to look elsewhere.

But part of the problem may be the fact that other forums allow selling and trading. Can't sell here it here,OK,I'm a member of XYZ and the ABC forums so I'll try there,for free.

damnyak · Feb 27, 2013

All good Points.

peckinpahhombre · Feb 27, 2013

My perception is that briarbid is withering away. From a marketing perspective, I wonder if one approach to kickstart it would be to (a) streamline the user interface, and (b) make it free or at least dramatically lower the fees for using it. The idea would be to get a critical mass of people using it, and maybe eventually some of the big ebay sellers, who would be attracted from a cost perspective. If you can get it to become popular through such an approach, then you can gradually escalate fees upward to start making some money off the site. I'm not a marketing guy, so I fully admit that I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Briarbid Still Has Not Taken Off Eh?

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