The Third Incarnation of Wagglepop Part 1

In January 2005 eBay announced an increase in basic store subscriptions from $9.95 a month to $15.95 paired with a Final Value Fee increase from 5.25% to 8%. Sellers were horrified. Raymond Romeo, who was and still is still an eBay seller, with an eBay store and currently using the ID printed442; announced that he was founding an new venue. Wagglepop launched with much fanfare and a great deal of support from other sellers (who wanted an additional venue as an exit strategy) on February 16th 2005.

About one week later Wagglepop closed abruptly with this (much abridged) announcement

Within hours, I will be closing Wagglepop for good, and forever. The servers will be shut down, and all drives reformatted, destroying any and all personal data.

An estimated 2000 sellers were stranded, many with no way to service paid sales.

Wagglepop II launched very quietly May 16th 2006. By January 2007 Ray is quoted in an interview on commerceguide.com saying

Our current Alexa Traffic Rank after just eight months in operation is currently at 47,303,which puts us on par with or ahead of most other independent alternative online auction sites at this time and ahead of all internal projections. We average roughly 2,000 unique sales per week, and currently have 140,000+ listings available in a variety of formats for bid or purchase.

And they all lived happily ever after .. ..

Well, not quite. Within three months of rebirth, Wagglepop II CSR Karen was making strangely 'Ray like' posts in the forums "They visit us and blow the horns of despair, hoping someone, anyone will 'hear the call' and follow up the hill of negativity to nowhere." Karen was succeeded by Andrew Pittino (Director of Business Development & Customer Care), a Richard Ambrose clone, with a unique touch for customer questions as in this response to a potential seller who did not want to use PayPal.

You are exactly the kind of idiot eBay is trying to get rid of, and we don't want you here either.

There were, and still are 'issues' with the site search engine. Wagglepop sellers learned not to mention this to management. The February 2008 newsletter places blame squarely where it belongs, on the sellers.

Conversely, incredibly, in excess this past month of 75% of all keyword searches by those 50,000+ unique visitors yielded "0" search results!

Mind numbing.

It's time we stopped thinking about Stores in the hundreds and talked about them here at Wagglepop in the thousands or tens of thousands - this is the opportunity everyone has been looking for and now is the time to populate this site! 200 or so Stores and 100,000+ listings simply won't support the incredible amounts of traffic we get each month - unique shoppers looking to buy!

I am unsure how many times and how long we as a company can repeat our message - becoming a Wagglepop Merchant is a real opportunity to break away from eBay that everyone has been clamoring for for so long. Let's go online selling community - no more excuses. More than enough online sellers know about Wagglepop. We have thousands of buyers looking for your items and products!

It is rather obvious to me at this point that third-party vendors are not going to support sites outside of eBay and so-called auction-related "independent reporting" news sites are not going to risk their affiliate eBay relationships (and affiliate and/or advertsing income) either.

It's going to be up to you. Revolutions are made, not observed.

Wagglepop II page views peaked in March 2008 claiming 67,810 month unique visitors.

It should be noted that Wagglepop does no paid advertising or promotion. This is considered to be the responsibility of Wagglepop store operators who are encouraged to spam boards, newspaper comment sections and blogs. WagglePop does NOT permit use of the logo by sellers in advertising. Store fees up to May 31st 2008 were $9.95 per month and sales incurred a 2% - 3% commission which on eBay would be called a Final Value Fee.

Statistics:
As of today Wagglepop's Alexa ranking is 178,928. There are 83 stores; 3 Showcase stores, 14 Featured stores, and 65 basic stores paying 39.95 a month, one of which has a notice of pending closure.




Mid March sellers received this (much abridged) communique:

I have been issued a direct deadline within an approximate six month timeframe to achieve new ownership participation goals. Should those goals not be achieved, we must then consider either adjusting participatory costs or realigning site services and structures to match participation.

It is a shocking reality that makes many things more apparent to us than ever before regarding the entire vision of Wagglepop as designed and presented. Had everyone stayed that signed up, we would have near 5,000 Stores and about 3.5 million listings.

Our single month high was 910 Stores, but that is a bit misleading as we had a delinquency rate at that time in excess of 65%.

The past two months plus showed a low of 110 Stores, 546 new ones, and 376 closed or suspended for non-payment bringing our current count to about 280.

Pretty high attrition rate there Andrew?

Maybe this customer comment in June will give you a clue why.

One thing for sure is that Wagglepop management need to go to school and learn what customer service is because when you ask a simple question or you ask the wrong question or you challenge what Wagglepop management is saying they have no ability to be professional and answer the question in a professional manner; instead they resort to name calling, throwing a tantrum, deleting threads or posts and anything else that is immature.

Chronologically this is the next installment or episode in the ongoing e-tail soap opera at Wagglepop.com

Final episode coming soon.

Y'all come back!

Wagglepop or Wagglepoop?

Yesterday Andrew Pittino, Wagglepop.com Director of Business Development, made the announcement Wagglepop sellers have been awaiting for months. Seller store fees will increase from $9.95 with the existing SmartSell Pro Package replaced by "SmartSell Enterprise Package" at $29.95 a month. The only difference would appear to be that any Enterprise sales are commission free, a savings of between 2% - 3%. A seller would need to have GSV over $1200.00 per month to see any savings. Upgrading is not optional, sellers wishing to remain on Wagglepop will pay the new rates.

The real news

In the coming weeks we will be introducing Wagglepop Marketplace Marketshare. Marketshare has the sole purpose of "completing" the Wagglepop Marketplace by offering, direct through Wagglepop LLC via dropshipment and other agreements, the items and products that we do not currently offer within the Marketplace through lack of population from the online selling community. Basically, we will be "in the trenches" with our existing Marketplace Merchants attempting to fulfill the wants and needs of our shoppers. We owe the very best experience possible to those that consider and visit Wagglepop, and what the online selling community has not provided we will provide ourselves through a variety of methods.
As per existing policy, we are proud to state that we do not and will not accept outside advertising within Wagglepop for competing items and products as on eBay. Our Marketplace Merchants have earned and deserve that protection from outside competition - the Wagglepop Marketplace is for Wagglepop Merchants' items and products, and the items and products from Marketshare.
When people come to Wagglepop looking for something - we want them to find and buy it - and Marketshare will help to build that.

Wagglepop has a nice clean interface, very similar superficially to eBay. When I decided to write about the site a search of stores showed 299 total of which 13 are Showcase stores and 28 Featured. These numbers do seem to fluctuate. Stores are listed in order by numbers of listings which vary from 2 to 3067. Charts at Power Sellers Unite show 85,352 listings, no traffic figures are available. Wagglepop does no promotion. Wagglepop has a devoted band of boosters among sellers.

As I was browsing the site I had difficulty with the search, I was unable to bring up stores even by exact name. A search for 'teacup' (my not so secret addiction,) brought a total of 11 items including some astoundingly priced $40 + S&H Fiesta Ware.

Wagglepop has an interesting history, for background this ecommerce-guide.com article from 2005 is a must read as is this Appscout.com article earlier this year. Full disclosure: I signed up in 2005 and again this time around although never listed anything.

Dissent is absolutely prohibited.
A Board participation clarification issued last November is breathtaking. It seems that correcting wrong information is also forbidden, I saw two posts pulled, one of which said that Revolution Money Exchange is backed by a bank in Brookings SD not 'It's a bank out of ID' The second censored (deleted) post said that this statement

Also, Google checkout will soon become a viable option. The only problem there is that you have to have a minimum in $10 to use it. If you don't sell small items, then that isn't a problem. But if you are like us, and sell small, lower-priced items, then you'd have to force a minimum purchase requirement on your customers. That will again reflect more on the seller than the payment portal.

is not only incorrect it is a direct violation of Google Checkout Seller TOS as stated in Section 2.4 Prohibited Actions.


Closing a store results in total banishment from the site. You may not return even as a buyer. The following quote is Andrew Pittino's response to a long-time seller who asked if she would be able to keep her feedback and remain as a buyer if she closed her store:

wagglepopCC2 03 May 2008 17:56
I think it would be a mistake (and unfair) to rework convention in the name of making leaving the Wagglepop Marketplace an easy transition.

Part of the benefit of dedication to the Marketplace is that the feedback earned is kept as an ongoing part of that dedication.

If a seller chooses to leave the Marketplace by closing their SmartSell account, they also leave behind the Feedback Score associated with the account. Dedicated long term sellers will and should benefit from an ongoing seller feedback score as part of their "permanent" record.

I think that is highly appropriate and reflective of what we see as a common sense dynamic. AP

Finally some quotes from former sellers.

....I wondered why all the posts about the change were positive. They must be pulling all the posts from those of us that are leaving, to sway public opinion.
....They say they locked my account due to non payment for the last three months...HELLO, I only owed this month and it's not due till the 10th. What a bunch of scam artists over there. I have to say, I find WP WORSE than eBay, and that says a LOT. What a toxic environment. So glad to be gone. Good luck getting money from me WP. I'm done.
.... Several have said that they cannot afford that kind of increase. Two are single mothers. Andrew just spits his this is good for the sellers crap and if you open 5 stores, you'll get 5 times the sales. Last time I checked, 5 x 0 = 0....

1:57pm 5/3/2008 - 225 Stores found
3.00pm 5/8/2008 - 216 Stores found
10.00am 7/23/2008 - 83 Stores found





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