Can Wigix Outshine eBay?

Pretty much everyone who uses the internet has visited (or at least heard of) eBay, which has long been the top online auction marketplace. There are now thousands of business-minded people around the globe whose livelihood now depends solely on eBay and for good reason. Buyers can find the most rare of items, and sellers can find a buyer for the most obscure merchandise. But, eBay has been struggling since the explosion of the web 2.0 era, and other marketplace's such as Craigslist and Amazon have grown in popularity.

Now, the newly launched Wigix marketplace is looking to steal the rest of eBay's shine by creating a comprehensive database of items that is both interactive and web 2.0-friendly. You could say that the site relies on crowdsourcing to generate pages for products along with description, but Wigix (Want It Got It eXchange) has a financial incentive that may actually drive a significant amount of users to the service.

Each product in the Wigix database has a unique SKU number and Wigix is accumulating the information about the products by allowing ownership of each SKU to various members who contribute to that items page. For instance, I submitted a description for the page on the 15.4" Apple MacBook Pro 2.4GHz, which now renders me as this item's SKU owner (or homesteader) and I am now therefore entitled to 5% of the revenue generated from sales of this particular notebook on Wigix (ad revenue and transaction fees). There is no limit to the number of items a user can become homesteader of (which could be seen as good or bad), and users can also add new items that are not yet contained in the Wigix database. Additionally, Wigix allows for the buying a selling of SKU ownership (homestead trading) which introduces a secondary market to the product marketplace.

For sellers, an advantage of Wigix over eBay is the cost of transaction fees. While eBay charges a fee for each and every transaction, items listed under $25 on Wigix are subject to no charge for either party. Items up to $100 charge a flat rate of $1.50 for the buyer and seller, while items between $100 and $1000 charge 2% of the transaction total, and items priced higher have a reduced 1% transaction fee. Also, since the process of adding items, photos, and descriptions is done in advance (by homesteaders), sellers have no need to go through that task and can focus on choosing a price they are willing to sell for and finding a buyer.

For buyers, finding an item is as simple as opening a Buy Order. The advantage here is that buyers can place a bid for an item that is not yet available for sale by a seller. By inputting the "Price you'll pay" and other conditions (such as color, quantity, and product condition), Wigix will automatically notify buyers when an item has been listed meeting their criteria.

In addition to all of this, Wigix also throws in several other traditional web 2.0 features, including the ability for users to write a blog on any product, write reviews, start discussions, and even ask question to owners of any particular item. A small hint of democracy also comes into play for category experts, who are first assigned by the Wigix team for 1 year (pending application and approval) but must run for re-election by Wigix users following that term.

The Wigix marketplace just goes to show that there is still innovation to be had in the online auction/trading field and is proof that eBay definitely needs to do a lot more if it plans on remaining on top. As I see it, the only clear benefit that eBay still has is its large following of users and the beta release of Wigix is defintely on the right track to taking more of their shine.