Free Golf Auctions Dot Com

I just ran across a site called Free Golf Auctions that aspires, I think, to be the EBay of Golf. It’s a nice idea, (though not original) but will suffer from the same forces that have relegated every other auction site irrelevant beside Ebay.

Here’s the basic conundrum: Sellers post their auctions on Ebay because it’s the site with the most buyers. And buyers visit EBay because it’s the auction site with the most people selling. Buyers want the maximum number of sellers and sellers need the maximum number of potential buyers. The two elements feed off of each other and leave no opening for any other site.

After seeing the success of Ebay, Yahoo tried to start its own auction site. And becuase they offered lower fees, I once considered posting serveral items there. But I then came to an obvious line of reasoning: if I want to get the best price for my items, it’s to my advantage to have the largest possible pool of people bidding against each other. I decided to pay the slightly higher fees on Ebay.

I haven’t heard much from Yahoo Auctions lately. It’s still running, but no one seems to use it. A search for Taylormade products, for example, turns up six items: five baseball hats and an umbrella. The same search on Ebay turns up 2,717 items.

The only advantage that a smaller auctions ite may have is that it would be easier for your item to cut through the noise. Right now, Ebay is the largest purveyor of golf clubs in the world. That means that there are several—if not dozens of every imaginable golf item for sale there. With all of that competition, it may be hard for your item to get noticed.