Digital Card Marketplace is Live -- Sell for Free All July!

[DigitalCardMarketplace]

Those of you in the BUNT community may be aware of the site that I launched a few months ago called Digital Card Values, which tracked a reported BUNT card sales over $5 from eBay in a searchable database, with the goal being to have an accurate measure of the market value of cards (rather than just trade value). Yes, I was manually entering all of that data myself for months...

I put the project on hold a few weeks back for a few reasons:

1. It was super time consuming and using data that was from a third-party, plus the database got too large to display quickly in most phones
   
2. Selling digital cards (and many digital goods) on eBay is technically against their terms of service, which is why you see weird listings with stuff like "cap" and "paperclip" in the title
3. eBay charges a huge transaction fee (10%) on top of what PayPal charges, and doesn't even have an actual category for digital card items
   The combination of these factors motivated me to build DigitalCardMarketplace.com -- a site dedicated solely to buying and selling digital trading cards from the Topps apps. Functioning very similarly to Etsy and other marketplaces, users setup their own shops, policies and manage their entire inventory, including shipments (trades).
   

I know there are some other sites out there offering similar services, but I don't think any of them support individual PayPal transactions from user-to-user as well as virtual credits that you can maintain in your own balance to avoid PayPal transaction fees. I would love any kind of feedback you might have as this is designed to benefit the entire digital card collecting community!

To celebrate the launch, DCM is offering FREE sales (no fees of any kind) for the entire month of July. Cheers and happy collecting!

VISIT DIGITALCARDMARKETPLACE.COM

[DigitalCardMarketplace]

A thread on the /StarWarsCardTrader Reddit was posted yesterday that has more than 20 comments with answers to various questions: https://www.reddit.com/r/starwarstrader/comments/3c1fkt/digital_card_marketplace_is_live_sell_for_free/

[keithwilliams]

I just created an account, but to be honest it is a bit of a turnoff to see that the entire first page of BUNT cards listed for sale are all from your personal shop. How can a seller feel like their cards are going to get any visibility to someone who is just browsing the marketplace?

[keithwilliams]

A few other thoughts, if you don't mind.

1. It would be very nice to have a section that shows items that have sold and for how much, along with the buyer and seller names and ratings. This would give both buyers and sellers more confidence that transactions on the site are real events, like on eBay.

2. Sorting the available cards by other variables than recently listed and/or "featured" (whatever that means) would also be great. I'd like to sort by price, for example, to see cards going for comparable prices in order to scope out a deal or list more competitively.

I didn't mean for my first comment to sound so aggressive; I realize it probably isn't intentional to have your own cards listed first like that, and I realize also that it is a very new site with a small group of people listing cards right now. I think it is a great idea and hope it is wildly successful, truly. I'll probably have some stuff listed by tomorrow at the latest.

[DigitalCardMarketplace]

Thank you very much for the feedback. Please feel free to send any ideas our way that you think will help improve the experience. Seriously. BHK(SW) is a leader in this space and I genuinely value any input from this community!

#2 will be addressed in the next major update of the site, and was originally part of the launch version, but still had a few bugs. Plus, until the inventory is HUGE, it only has minimal value to sort and filter.

#1 is a very huge factor to the growth of the site, and the part that connects to my original "Digital Card Values" project. At this time, the primary focus is getting the site off the ground and growing the inventory, then after a few months of sales, I plan to release "sales data" in a format that benefits the community most (think price guides rather than just "sold listings"). At this point, the only reason I go to eBay is to get an idea for the recent "market value" of a card. In due time, the goal of DCM is to become just as good or better a resource for this data than eBay. eBay is not the enemy (much the opposite), but there is no way they will be able to cater to the digital card community the way that DCM does in the long-term. Much like BHK...

[DigitalCardMarketplace]

Jul 6, 2015 12:07:02 GMT -5 keithwilliams said:

I just created an account, but to be honest it is a bit of a turnoff to see that the entire first page of BUNT cards listed for sale are all from your personal shop. How can a seller feel like their cards are going to get any visibility to someone who is just browsing the marketplace?

This is a great point.  Since the time you posted this, my personal BUNT inventory has become less than half of the overall BUNT inventory, and SWCT has been loaded with tons of high quality cards.  I understand it can be a turnoff to see a limited amount of cards, but I hope that in a few months you have a fond memory of the days it felt like that. 

3 other huge points:
- There are no plans to have LISTING FEES on the site ever (transaction fees of 5% are planned after 8/1)
- If you want a card to be "featured," just shoot us a message on the About > Contact page and let us know -- as long as it is a quality cards ($10 or more, 500 count or less, brand new, etc.) we will make sure to feature it.  In the future, this type of "placement" will be available at a fixed price, but for now, just send a message and it's our treat
- My professional background is in digital marketing, generating exposure and content for the site is something I have a great plan for, but am always open to partnerships and input on all levels at any time! (we are all "in this" hobby together)