For zero knowledge of the industry, you’re dead on

Ultimately, collectors want trading environments and it seems like basic vBulletin forums are what they flock to. The only people I’m aware of that have really been able to draw people away and compete with those on a huge level are the big card companies, big show promoters, and the big magazines…mostly because of how many resources and connections they have. Not saying it’s not possible, but just that I’ve had a really hard time with it over the last 4+ years.

“I know ads don’t really amount to much, but do you have any kind of guess as to what will happen to your user-base if premium accounts were free?”

This site is a step in that direction. Prior to this, the Free Account required a sign up and only allowed you to price out 3 items per day. Now you can use the tool unlimited times for free without logging in http://prices.sportslizard.com/. Granted, the features like saving a collection require a Premium Account. My hope with making it more available to use for free is that more people will flock to the site. If that happens, I will definitely consider making it all free.

And we’ve actually had pretty high CTR and CPM on the eBay affiliate ads with the widgets since I try to display items relevant to the page the user is on. For example, if they price out a Michael Jordan card, it will display eBay listings for that card.

Nice work on the redesign. Looks Great.

If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your focus for the site? Free visitors & ad revenue or premium accounts?

I know ads don’t really amount to much, but do you have any kind of guess as to what will happen to your user-base if premium accounts were free? I ask because it seems the primary value of the premium account is being able to keep tabs on an entire collection. That kind of locks them in to being regular users. You know what items they own. That could be a valuable starting point for different monetisation ideas.

Once you know what they have, there’s all sorts of things you could offer. Maybe you give them a feed of big movements in their price or an automated monthly mail that shows the up & down movement or other analysis stuff. Maybe you let them have some sort of store with items displayed in the general pages if people search for them.

With my zero knowledge of this industry, it seems like a fair guess that the creating a trading environment is the big ticket item.

Anyway, I don’t think you are really interested in this line. Your focus on down to earth retail makes sense. It’s a lot less BS then this game.