Defining the future of collectibles with more data
Collecting and analyzing data is worthless if you can't draw conclusions that directly help you improve your business. In my last post I showed some interesting search data that will definitely impact the way that the new SportsLizard functions. I dug deeper and found out two more things that will help define the way I grow SL:
How to market...
Since I haven't done any marketing in like a year, the majority of the traffic is search traffic. The majority of that search traffic comes from customs related searches (I dominate search results for anything Custom McFarlane related), people searching for a specific announcer (the announcer ratings work great because most sports announcers don't have a ton of web sites about them), and "long tail" searches for something collectibles related that I wrote an article about.
People don't find SportsLizard by searching for the items because items are listed and unlisted frequently (similar to eBay). That leads to indexing problems - Google spiders the site and sees an item and the next time they come back it's gone. I've essentially conceded that no one is going to find items through search, and that the sources of search traffic will continue to be the collectibles articles, customs, and announcers. It's easier to get an article about Topps Baseball Cards to rank high than it is to get a specific set of cards to rank high.
And while I expect this search engine traffic to contribute heavily, I realize that for SL to succeed it's going to have to draw traffic from elsewhere. I'm going to have to get collectors on the site through other techniques - I haven't sat down and planned it all out at this point, but I think it will primarily forum marketing at this point (sponsoring forums so that I can interact with collectors where they "hang" out).
How to flip the industry upside down...
I also studied what collectibles terms are being searched in the industry (using an internal tool that automates the SEO-Book KW Research tool....which Pure Adapt plans on making available sometime soon). My intent was to use it to help brainstorm ideas for topics to write about on the site, the idea being that if something is searched a lot and I have an article about that very topic, I'll rank high and get a lot of traffic...a technique I've used countless times in the past.
But I found something I didn't expect: a TON of searches for a free price guide. For anyone not familiar with collectibles pricing, it's pretty much been dominated by magazines like Tuff Stuff and Beckett for all of time. They each have online pricing, but Beckett charges for theirs and Tuff Stuff just makes free .PDF's available. And the data used in these magazines and online is out of date and taken from a small sample of card shops. Everyone knows that price guides are extraordinarily inaccurate and out of date. That's why you only get $20 for your card that books at $120.
After some thought, I figured out how SportsLizard is going to launch a free, online price guide that pulls from live market data. The price guide will be based off of:
And the best part is - the community feeds the price guide. The more items listed, the more accurate it is. The more people searching and buying through the site, the more accurate it is. It serves the greater good of the hobby to participate in SportsLizard's price guide.
I hope to launch the price guide by May 1...it's basically contingent on us building up enough data to start with. Man, this just keeps getting more and more exciting. I'm waaaay ahead of schedule and should be able to launch the site by weeks end.
How to market...
Since I haven't done any marketing in like a year, the majority of the traffic is search traffic. The majority of that search traffic comes from customs related searches (I dominate search results for anything Custom McFarlane related), people searching for a specific announcer (the announcer ratings work great because most sports announcers don't have a ton of web sites about them), and "long tail" searches for something collectibles related that I wrote an article about.
People don't find SportsLizard by searching for the items because items are listed and unlisted frequently (similar to eBay). That leads to indexing problems - Google spiders the site and sees an item and the next time they come back it's gone. I've essentially conceded that no one is going to find items through search, and that the sources of search traffic will continue to be the collectibles articles, customs, and announcers. It's easier to get an article about Topps Baseball Cards to rank high than it is to get a specific set of cards to rank high.
And while I expect this search engine traffic to contribute heavily, I realize that for SL to succeed it's going to have to draw traffic from elsewhere. I'm going to have to get collectors on the site through other techniques - I haven't sat down and planned it all out at this point, but I think it will primarily forum marketing at this point (sponsoring forums so that I can interact with collectors where they "hang" out).
How to flip the industry upside down...
I also studied what collectibles terms are being searched in the industry (using an internal tool that automates the SEO-Book KW Research tool....which Pure Adapt plans on making available sometime soon). My intent was to use it to help brainstorm ideas for topics to write about on the site, the idea being that if something is searched a lot and I have an article about that very topic, I'll rank high and get a lot of traffic...a technique I've used countless times in the past.
But I found something I didn't expect: a TON of searches for a free price guide. For anyone not familiar with collectibles pricing, it's pretty much been dominated by magazines like Tuff Stuff and Beckett for all of time. They each have online pricing, but Beckett charges for theirs and Tuff Stuff just makes free .PDF's available. And the data used in these magazines and online is out of date and taken from a small sample of card shops. Everyone knows that price guides are extraordinarily inaccurate and out of date. That's why you only get $20 for your card that books at $120.
After some thought, I figured out how SportsLizard is going to launch a free, online price guide that pulls from live market data. The price guide will be based off of:
- SUPPLY - The current item listings on SL (we're going to launch with between 3k and 5k collectibles, and hopefully be over 10k in the first month). eBay has over 800k for reference.
- DEMAND - search data from Yahoo
- DEMAND - search data on SL (over time...so a hot collectible that's being searched frequently will get a boost)
- DEMAND - purchases made through SL (again, over time)
And the best part is - the community feeds the price guide. The more items listed, the more accurate it is. The more people searching and buying through the site, the more accurate it is. It serves the greater good of the hobby to participate in SportsLizard's price guide.
I hope to launch the price guide by May 1...it's basically contingent on us building up enough data to start with. Man, this just keeps getting more and more exciting. I'm waaaay ahead of schedule and should be able to launch the site by weeks end.
posted by Adam McFarland at
3/19/2007 09:00:00 PM
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